The Story

Being a mermaid is weird.

It’s supposed to be like… ethereal or magical or tragic but like, it’s just weird? You don’t really fit in anywhere.

People on land.

Fish in the sea.

I am literally half and half. And no body wants you! The fish are scared because you’re a predator. The humans would try to cage you. I heard some of them even made up these REALLY rude stories about us drowning people. Which yeah we have some monsters among us who have done some… not so kind things, but so do they. At least we don’t dump our murder victims into their house like they’ve done to us so many times. There were a few years where we just stopped visiting the piers of New York.

My granddad talks about once he was crossing through Italy, moving at night, quick and quiet, to get something or another and WHOOSH dead body dropped right on his head. He even has a scar where the concrete the poor human’s feet were stuck in ripped his shoulder.

Really the only creatures I get along with outside our village are the octopuses, and they don’t even have names. At least not ones that I’ve figured out how to say. They’re brilliant and I love their quiet touch language.

You’d think for as long as they have been around, they would have all these wise sayings. But as one I met in the Pacific told me, they bore with advising the world around them, especially when so few listen. So instead they tell the most outrageously raunchy stories! I mean, when I say they’ve seen everything… they have seen EVERYTHING. Sharks that eat their own tails, sailors that eat their own captains, anything and everything sexing up anything and everything else that moves. One had kept this little booklet it found from a shipwreck near the Arabian Sea that had humans bent in shapes that even in a current I can’t manage.

On top of that, octopuses are hilarious! Thousands of years to prepare the perfect punch line makes results. There’s this one that I visit down near Australia, she told me one that goes like this…

Did you hear about the red ship that collided with the blue ship? All the sailors were marooned!

Haha, I love it! Well, I guess that one wouldn’t be so funny for you.

Okay how about this one: Why was the ship shaking at the bottom of the ocean? It was a nervous wreck!

Not that one either? I mean, you have to be a little lighthearted about your situation, you know.

Like me- I know that my family and I are never really going to fit in. We tried once with the humans, but that’s when those drowning-rumors started. We were trying to introduce ourselves, and we figured the best place to start were the sailors who already spent a lot of time in the sea. But apparently all that sun and saltwater got to their heads and they couldn’t understand our language. They thought we were trying to seduce them or something. Like a mer-lady with any self respect would want to seduce a man without a dorsal fin. Ridiculous.

We still have fun with it, though! Sometimes my siblings and I will go by a cruise ship at night, or by a quiet beach, and hum a few notes, make a couple splashes, just to see what the humans do. They used to just gasp and run, now they try to get a picture of us! As if they could catch us!

And the sea creatures aren’t wild about us either. Most of them think we’re trying to eat them, and the other ones want to eat us. And it’s not just the sharks like you might thing, there are some big spider crabs that can get a wild hair sometimes.

Hair, ha, you know what I mean. Crabs don’t have hair. A wild claw? Mom says I’ve been spending too much time by the coast and I’m picking up these phrases that don’t make a lot of sense.

But if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have found you! And I don’t remember the last time I had such a lovely conversation. Don’t get me wrong, the octopuses are lovely but with their whole practically-immortal thing, they’ve kinda lost their sense of time and they can just taaaalk and talk and talk, you know?

I should take a note from that though and let you tell me about yourself instead of just going on and on. So! Are you from up there? Near the cliffs? Or were you visiting? Must’ve been a vacation with that big jump you did. There are these teenagers that come by every summer and jump off from those same rocks all whooping and hollering. Dad gets annoyed hearing them but I think watching them is so fun! They can’t dive well at all, so it’s funny. And they look funny too- with their bright colorful coverings like they’re trying to attract a clown fish or something!

I like your outfit better. Dark colors, long pants to cover the pale skin of those legs. You’d fit in better around here, it’s better to blend in to the ocean water than stick out. So would your friend in all his dark clothes too! The mask was weird though, he have to take that off to make calls underwater. Why didn’t he come in with you? Is he afraid of water? I’ve heard some of you are afraid of water, which I think is silly, beacuse-

Oh me! I’ll hush now and let you talk!

…

Sir?

…sir?

Oh. Oh no.

The Word

Unworldly (Adjective): 1. (of a person) Not having much awareness of the realities of life, in particular, not motivated by material or practical considerations. 2. Not seeming to belong to this planet; strange.

Unworldy- get it? She’s a mermaid! In the sea! HA!

Wait wait, please don’t go- I’ll stop with the bad jokes* I promise.

So we have a cute little story today, a young mermaid who may have found a victim in the ocean, but is way too excited to have a listener to realize she should probably find him some oxygen…

No big meaning or talk here, it was just a fun idea I wanted to share with you all! Have a lovely night, and be safe by the water!

*Maybe. Probably not.