Trapped

12.

When we came to the other side I was greeted by the sight of a whole underground city. It was filled with other mermaids and mermen going about their lives like nothing was strange about their existence. I was wonderstruck by the beauty in the city before me, there were so many things to look at.

The buildings were like crystals shimmering under the lights that illuminated the city from above. Some buildings were blue others were green, purple, pink, orange and some were even transparent.

A group of gorgeous female mermaids swam up to Zac and batted their eyelashes in a flirty manner. There were three of them, one with red hair and green eyes, one with brown hair and hazel eyes and finally one with pink hair and a pair of sunglasses that covered her eyes. They were giggling and feeling his muscles.

I just ignored the strange feeling of jealousy that washed over me and distracted myself with the beauty of the other mer-folk. It was like all of them were the picture of perfection in their own way. Some were big and some were small and they came in all shapes, sizes and sexualities but they all seemed to fit in. There were no judgemental looks or whispering and everyone just went about their business without even paying any attention to what the others were doing.

There were a bunch of banners lining the buildings with advertisements of different things. Some banners even had motivational quotes on them or were there to make someone smile. I caught sight of one that made me chuckle, it read: 'what does a coral get stressed about? current events'

I was wrong about the judgemental looks in this town because when I looked back to where Zac was to tell him the joke the girls who were flirting with him were shooting daggers at me.

'What are you even like laughing about?' the girl with long wavy red hair said rolling her eyes, not even trying to hide the attitude.

'Oh, just the joke about the coral on that banner' I said laughing again and pointing towards the banner, trying not to give in to the part of me that wanted to mock her silly voice. She looked at it and then pulled a disgusted face.

'Like, seriously it's not even like that funny and it's been up there for like a year, you're like seriously overdoing it' she said, she really started to sound like shaggy from Scooby-doo with the overuse of 'like'. But I was not going to tell her that, I did not want her to know that she was annoying the living daylights out of me, because I guess that's what she wants to hear. If Angela was here she would have retorted an equally snarky remark but I just ignored her and turned to Zac.

'Can we go now?' I asked him and he nodded, turning to the ladies to greet them, but before he could the red head spoke again.

'Your highness, you know like, as the prince, you like don't have to take orders from her right?' The girl said in a sweet tone but this time she actually said something that I didn't expect.  My eyes widened and my jaw dropped as I stared at Zac.

'What, you're a prince?' I gasped, I could not believe that it was true until he confirmed it himself. How did he even become a prince, was it one of his biggest fears? That would explain why he was so worried about anybody following us, maybe he's afraid someone will kill him for the throne or something. Zac nodded and just as he opened his mouth to say something the girl spoke again.

'Seriously, have you like been living under a rock?' she gave me a pitying look as if she thought I was dumb. I couldn't help but think of the irony of her words because technically they actually were living under a rock because this whole city was hidden under a huge mountain-like boulder.

Zac, the red headed girl and the other two girls looked at me with confusion when I burst out into a fit of laughter over the thought of them, literally living under a rock. Zac took this opportunity to quickly say goodbye the girls who just complained and said a few harsh things like, 'Why would you even want to go with her?' and 'She's such an airhead' and 'She's not even that pretty'. When he was finally free he came to me and led me away by my elbow. I felt bad when I saw that his cheeks were red, did I embarrass him?