Existence Of Love [Harry Styles Fanfiction/A Mermaid Tale]

1. Harry

Under the water, it's harder to be heard.

My people and I, we communicate with each other by the frequency of high pitched sounds. Kind of like dolphins and whales but with more meaning, more thought behind every noise.

I'm 17, almost 18 years young and my life is already planned out ahead of me. My father is chief, king, ruler, leader -which ever you would like to call it- of our pod.

We are very slow creatures, moving cautiously but peacefully through the waters that make up our home. Although, we have been discovered before when my mother was captured in tuna nets, a few months after my birth.

Father was lost and heartbroken. I can never ask him questions about her without bringing pain to his face.

He tells me to never go above the surface, that these humans are vile and vicious and wants nothing more than to treat me like an experiment and kill off our kind. He says our safety resides in the deep blue of the ocean, in the colorful schools of fish, and the living reef.

Of course, that didn't stop my curiosity.

I would always peek around from the water to a place known to us mer's as "The Danger Grounds". (To you, it would just be "land".)

Whenever I was told of not going anywhere near the surface, whether there was land in sight or not, it made me want to do it so much more.

I was told stories of something called love, by others in our pod, but of course they were banned from talking about it.

My father said that love is nothing but a trick that our minds play to our hearts to make life better, or seem that way, anyway.

He says it doesn't exist.

But I know he's wrong.

I know it because I've seen it. I've seen this forbidden thing called Love once before, between a man and woman who looked to be ripe in age. I didn't get close to land, however. They were on a boat that waded in waters not far from shore.

The adoration in their eyes when they looked at each other, the smiles shared and the laughter plenty. And the sweet long, lingering kisses that they gave one another.... It had to be love.

And if love makes someone happy, who wouldn't dream of it? Who wouldn't want it? Humans show love to each other in many different ways, and observing kisses and hand holding from the distance with the knowledge that I won't feel that same joy, had left me blue-r than the sea around me.

But no matter the feelings wafting like hurricane winds inside of me, father has planned my marriage at the time I turn 18, to a stuck up merman who only cared to be in charge. My father said that, that is what makes him suitable for me, but it only makes him undesirable and a burden to be around. The authority he bestowed could very well protect us, but I couldn't, for the life of me, see myself happy with him.

-

Father and I are at the head of our swimming party, circling around a place known to humans as Australia. We move throughout the day because staying in one place could be dangerous. We constantly swim because we're told to constantly live in fear.

"To be cautious or to be reeled in," Father always says.

"Evanjaline," My father shrieked my name without ceasing on his invisible path we've been on for days now, with only time to sleep when all the boats are docked for the night. "Tuck tail, and take up the back. Make sure no one is falling too far behind."

I did as told and flipped my body up to swim to the back, over my people. It was the females or the oldest mers who would stray behind, tired from always moving- those who complain the most. And I couldn't blame them. We don't eat as much as our bodies need to, and we don't sleep the amount of time that we should for all this traveling.