Waves lapped against the rocks with careless abandon. They had a persistence that was not uncommon to the woman… well, mermaid… that sat upon the rocks watching the beach line for any sign of movement. Her tail swished patiently in the cooler depths of the ocean as it beat incessantly against the rocks eroding them with time. He would come… she told herself as she watched the never changing horizon. How odd, this timelessness that seemed to stretch on against all odds. The ocean, ever changing, eroding away the seemingly indestructible cliffs and rocks. Would that happen to her eventually? Would her resolve become as broken as the sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.
She sang, as she always did, a song for Jorick to hear and come back to her. No matter that it had been eighty years or so since she’d been cursed and seventy since she’d last seen him… He would return. He had promised. So she waited. Returning once a month to the same shore she was cursed hoping for some change, but it was ever as unchanging as the bluffs that circled this inlet that was both special and cursed to the mermaid.
“’Sydne,” the burbled voice spoke from the depths just below the craggy rock on which she sat. Halosydne’s song drifted into silence and she glanced down at the mermaid waiting for her just below the water. Some of her kind didn’t like coming out of the water. They disliked the reminder that there was a world above that they couldn’t be a part of… and yet ‘Sydne longed to join it once more but knew she couldn’t. To kill wasn’t in her… no matter how desperately she wanted to be human once more and run into the loving embrace of her husband.
“I’m coming,” she murmured back. Settling her hands behind her she pushed off the lone rock in the middle of the inlet surrounded by pristine white beaches and with barely a splash entered the water. “What is it now?”
“His majesty is in need of your expertise.”
When wasn’t he? But then again, did she truly want him making any important decisions if he were in one of his fickle moods? He changed his mind so often it was like the ebb and flow of the ocean itself. Fitting that he be the king of it. “I will be along soon – please inform him of this and to not make any decisions without me there.” The other mermaid nodded and dove into the murky depths of an ocean that hid a world more beautiful than the one above at times.
One last moment of nostalgia, she rose to the surface again breaking through the waves the stare at the beach expecting to see the youthful face of her husband waving to her once more, but there was nothing… simply crabs crawling across the hot white sands. With a sigh, she dove beneath the waves as graceful and athletic as any dolphin and hurried back to the Kingdom beneath the waves. “If this is going to be my opinion on another woman for his harem… I swear I’m going to wring his neck…”
