oneshot ;; the human and the merman

the human and the merman

oneshot ;;

In all of Jay's life as a mermaid prince, he had never once imagined he would dream of a black-haired human with the ability to walk.

He had met the human quite by accident.

Jay always had a knack for the unknown; had a secretive, adventurous side that made him somewhat brash. So it happened that with a rush of adrenaline and the high of rebellion that Jay broke the longest and most strict rule Ed and Edna had enforced:

Never, ever, ever break the surface of the human world.

"We were separated for a reason."

Jay remembered his mother's words clearly.

"Humans and mermaids do not interact. Millennia ago, we were one. But acts of terrorism were continuously being committed to the other side, from the both of us. Our ancestors agreed breaking our different worlds apart would be best for us all."

And after, she would smile at him softly. This small tale was Jay's bedtime story. Time and time again, his mother spoke it to him before bed.

Of course, the restriction of it made it all the more tempting.

"Do you understand, pumpkin? We are separate for a reason: we do not belong in each other's worlds. It's best to leave it that way. If human see you, who knows what they'll do? We never break the surface. Do you understand, baby?"

When he was in his childhood, his teacher made him write and talk about the human world. So, he did exactly that. He began researching them, researching their culture and their weird inventions. Researching their land; their wars; their weird anatomy. They had two oval feet, with five smaller feet at the tip. Apparently, this balanced them as they walked on the ground.

How crazy! They were glued to the ground, forever bound to the gravel!

Jay had never been more curious after that essay. It both ruined and built his young, impressionable mind.

He read about the sun, the stars, the moon, the beautiful light which became from the sun. This sun would rise every morning up from the ends of the earth and would light up the world in the colors of a human invention known as 'fire', which heated their nights and their souls. The books described what they called a 'sunrise' as otherworldly. They said that the light would change from purple to pink to red and it would explode and implode into a multitude of colors that made you feel like everything would be okay.

Jay wanted nothing more than to experience it. A whole new day, fresh of mistakes.

Though his mother's words ran wildly in his head like a warning alarm, the temptation of watching a sunrise outweighed his morals. In the late of night, when the kingdom was asleep and the guards were at their most vulnerable, the young prince had snuck out through his window and flapped his blue tail and swam and swam until the water got warmer and warmer and his heart climbed higher and higher in his throat and the anticipation —!!

He broke the surface, gasping for breath after an hour of non-stop swimming, and widened his eyes as he stared at the 'sky', which, until today, had always just been more water.

The books weren't kidding.

Stars.

They were these little, twinkling dots that shined and lit up the entire land, cloaked in darkness.

The moon.

A circular object, suspended in the middle of the magical night sky, and to the inexperienced Jay, he thought that the moon was like a protecter of the humans' land, watching over its children.