Uncharted Waters

Mons Klint

Freja woke up to pain. Her tail felt sensitive and scratchy against the sand as it had never felt before. She could feel each of the little particles rub against her scales. Usually when a mermaids tail touched sand it could barely be felt due to the scales being so thick. 

A flash of her floating above the glowing circles as the light embraced her made Freja rub her eyes. It was all coming back to her now. She had passed out from the pain of the transformation. Her body had felt like it was being torn apart in several different directions, her tail split in two by the sharp teeth of sharks as it yanked it in opposite directions. Freja mourned as she laid in the remains of her tail. It laid beneath her, beside her and still a bit of it on her new knee, just discarded like old snake skin. She touched her new legs. They felt just like her arms.

Her toes were small and ticklish to the touch, Freja discovered after trailing her fingers between them. Her skin was so pale and boring compared to her scales who had glinted and shone silver but turned different shades of colours when reflected beneath light. Freja shook herself out of that train of thought. She needed to stay on track for the mission.

She began looking around to analyse where she was. Close to the shallow water, there had been just enough space to get away from the water and bump against the tall cliff. It was a narrow fit. The sea was quiet and there seemed to be no activity on it whatsoever. She knew better. Beneath the water, the mermaids were living their lives, her sisters were going about their day, the Council was squabbling, and they were probably worrying. She looked up at the top of the cliff, there seemed to be some type of green substance on it. It held a great deal of resemblance to sea moss and algae. On the cliff, there appeared to be no human activity either.

The new human pulled herself by the arms out of the skin of her tail. Honestly, pulling herself out of her old tail, that was not a sentence she'd ever thought she'd say. Sand made scratches and a small particularly pointy rock pulled some blood from her legs as she dragged herself. She hissed in pain. Freja looked down to her new body members and grimaced at the redness of her knee. Blood. There was blood coming out of this knee after just dragging herself against sand. She touched the small amount coming out of her wound and when she pulled back her fingers they were stained red. Huh. In the water, small bleeding wounds like this stung but the blood would usually be washed away by the water. It was the first time that she'd ever felt it between her fingers and it stayed there.

A voice in her head whispered that she'd wasted her pod's limited time with this quest. Look at her now, bleeding after such a minor altercation. How weak was this human body! She couldn't even walk like humans did. Her legs were too weak. Her family had always had her back whenever she faced a problem but now she was alone and facing a big problem. She couldn't move from her spot at the bottom of the cliff to get food or find society and she was alone. Panic set in as she started to wonder if she was going to die of starvation, never discovered and having never even begun her quest? She dragged her hands along the smooth skin of her legs and decided she hated them. What had been her strongest weapon, her tail, was now just another weakness. She pulled herself closer to the cliff so that she could lean against it at the place of just be cooked by the sun as she laid in the sand.

A strange noise disrupted the silence that she had never heard before. It was similar to a tapping that went in a beat. The vulnerable naked woman tensed up as a human female jogged towards her.

She took a moment to observe her. Her first human. She had dirty blonde hair that seemed darker at the roots and she kept it in a high braid out of her face as it screwed in concentration. Her pronounced cheekbones and stormy grey eyes added to this image of severity that she held. She reminded her a little bit of Lady Greta in that but Freja shied away from connecting a dirty human to one of the noblest mermaids. Her skin was mostly covered as her upper legs were in some skin tight dark material and her chest, arms and back were covered by a loose and thin flashy blue cloth. She's heard of these. Clothes. Humans were ashamed of their bodies and so they wore them to hide and disguise their flesh as something desirable.