Ursula's Beginning

9. He's quite a catch, isn't he?

Ozmoses and Aether had been a couple for so long that their every movement looked like a graceful synchronized dance. The mysterious jellyfish stopped a few paces away from Ursula and Ephram the Venerable, then flipped themselves so that their domed tops pointed toward the temple floor and their chiffony tentacles at the ceiling. They shimmied those innumerable filmy limbs downward and inverted the main dome of their body such that it was turned inside out. As they did this, their true, fairy-like bodies blossomed from the center of the new dome, and one could see that their tentacles stemmed from their waists. Above the waist, they were perfectly formed people. Aether's lower half looked like a ballgown, so flared was the half-sphere of her inverted dome; Ozmoses appeared to be clothed in trailing robes from the navel down, as he was longer and narrower than his mate.

"Thank you for coming at this hour," said Ephram.

"It's no bother," Aether replied in her musical voice.

"We woke when we felt him pass on to the next realm," Ozmoses explained. Like Aether, random words and phrases emerged from him in two octaves at times and in multi-part harmony at others. It was beautiful, if slightly unsettling.

"Do you know where he's gone, or why?" Ursula asked.

"Do you mean to which spirit realm? We should be able to find out," Aether sang. "But why do you ask 'why'?"

Ursula described the king's final moments to the two shamans. "I think it might give his family...really the entire kingdom...some peace if they understood why he died. Why he was called away and by whom," she concluded.

"We will travel through the realms and find out all we can," said Ozmoses.

"Thank you," Ursula and Ephram responded simultaneously.

"Farewell," the Diaphanous hummed in unison.

They were folding their gossamer bodies back into their original camouflaging positions as they retreated, and it was easy to appreciate how these ethereal forms were able to slip between worlds in a way that no one else could.

It was time for Ursula to leave the temple as well. The High Priest dispatched Roch to wake the royal family, and as Ursula swam toward the place she was raised, she imagined the scene of her beloved being roused from sleep to learn the the awful news. The thought of his shock and pain produced fresh tears. Nonetheless, in the back of her mind, she was relieved to be moving past the purely selfish concern of their relationship, if only for a moment. To be in touch with someone else's pain instead of nursing her own felt more noble.

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It was a very long and nerve-wracking day waiting for the royals to arrive. Fortunately, Aunt Melisande knew how to distract Ursula in helpful and productive ways. They talked over the vitality spell because it now presented a puzzle to be solved: if the king hadn't been called away, would the spell have successfully brought him out of his coma and restored him to long-term health? Or does it backfire when cast on someone who is ill? None of the volunteers who enjoyed the vitality benefits it offered had been sick--just old and tired. Nepp wasn't very old for a merman, so did age have something to do with how well it works? Melisande encouraged her to research the spell further and document her findings, rather than turn her back on the ancient tool she had unearthed and already used for good on so many.

Then, in her industrious way of caring, Melisande insisted on making her adopted daughter a new mourning cloak. "You haven't been to a funeral in ages so I doubt you have anything appropriate to wear," she asserted. Ursula didn't exactly agree, but rather than argue, she requested that the cloak conceal her completely.