"Which will you choose, Ariel?"

 I blinked, coming to awareness. Arista's light-blue eyes stared in wait for my answer. She was holding up a gilded clam in one hand, a bioluminescently patterned one in the other. Possibly to try on as cups for our bosoms.

 "What?" I couldn't remember what was happening.

 "You know, for the opera."

 The opera? Oh right, the opera! That's today? I remembered everything. I was supposed to sing a solo after my sisters. Looking around, I saw that we were in the castle garden, a vibrant space full of pumping xenia, open brain coral, bispira, and even deadly fire coral. You never touch the fire coral, my sisters often reminded me. The edges of the space were confined by golden pillars. Waves of light playful bouncing off the gold.

 "Someone’s in a daze, again," I heard Adella's dreamy voice croon. She came forward from behind me. "I think I know why." She looked down at her hands coyly as she fiddled with my comb, the comb she must have swiped from my hair. Sticky fingers. Once, Adella had taken Father's trident without him even noticing. Of course, when he found out, she was punished justly. But Adella never could stop her thievery.

 I snatched it back from her. "What would you know?"

 Adella turned up a smirk, and beckoned for the rest of my sisters to surround me with an uncomfortable stare. "Do you see what I see?" she said to them all with crossed arms. "All that light in her eyes, the glimmer on her lips?"

 "You're right," they gasped.

 "What is it? What is it?" I demanded.

 "Oh, tsk, tsk, tsk. It's mighty bad, isn’t it?"

 "Terribly."

 "Our Ariel's gone and gotten her heart stolen."

 "But by whom?"

 I turned away from them. "All of you are out of your minds." As my heart began to flutter at the mere thought of him, I started to grin. I whipped back around, "Will you all keep a secret?"

 They clasped there hands and nodded excitedly. Each of there tails flipped in quick motions. I noticed Attina was not around. Good. "I met someone."

 "Who?"

 I relaxed myself on a giant stone above their gazes. Flounder snuck out from behind me and snuggled himself under my arm. "He's not like anyone in all the sea."

 Adella sighed, leaning against the rock I sat on. "Sounds romantic."

 "Of course you'd think so, Adella," Andrina said with an eye-roll. "She hasn't even told us what he's like yet."

 "He is fearless, and talented, and—"

 "Handsome?" Arista suggested.

 I giggled, "Yes. Very."

 “Do you know his name?”

 I jumped when I heard the oldest, Attina. She wore a skeptical expression, coming forward. Though her hands were folded together, the bracelets were still jangling. "His name?" I said, "His name is Er... Ares." Ares was a very mermadic name.

 Attina gave me a dubious hmph. "And just how do you plan to see him again? With Father's rules on leaving being stricter than ever."

 Classic Attina. She never ever allowed me a moment to just be happy. I peered at her fiercely, "Rules are only strict to those who follow them."

 I could tell our other sisters were stifling their gasp. A smoldering tension passed between mine and Attina's stare. She raised her hands and clapped, and the others obeyed the signal, leaving me with her.

 I never wanted this to be our relationship. I had understood why Attina was so strict, just like King Poseidon. I had expected it from the oldest, the heiress to the throne. But I also wished she would for once stop being so secretarial with me and simply be my sister. The way she had been when I was younger.

 "Attina, listen—"

 "I'll spare you from explaining, Ariel. I saw you save him."

 My mouth shut. Shame, now shadowing me. But it made no sense for me to be ashamed. "He was drowning. What should I have done?" I earnestly wanted to know. Were there any rules or guidelines that could have helped me through that situation? When his body had begun to jerk violently as it filled with sea water. When in seconds his bravery evanescenced before my eyes. In seconds, he had appeared so helpless.

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 "You should not have been there in the first place!" Attina blew a bubbling breath, "I knew it was only a matter of time before you'd have met one of the monsters you admire. Why? Why had I tolerated you?" The rocks in the ring in her nose changed from garnet to amethyst. "Your behavior would have gotten me in trouble."

 "Attina, why do you act as though Father is watching you from every side of the ocean?"

 "It’s called integrity, Ariel. A word you will have much time to think on."

 I tilted my head at that strange and implicative point.

 Then she said, "You're not going to the opera. You are staying in the chamber."

 "What? You can't make that decision!"

 "But Father can. And he has."

 My heart dropped. "You told him."

 Attina neared me, bringing her frown close to my face. "I warned you. I'm sorry, but if this is what will teach you to be a mermaid, then sobeit."

 I was so angry that my body boiled the water around me. "Just how much have to told him?"

 Attina removed her gaze from mine.

 "Attina!" I heaved. I read through her silence. "Not my collection? Not my collection!"

 "It’s time to say goodbye to the upper world, Ariel."

 I shrieked in revolt. "I hate you, I hate you!" I flipped past her. I zoomed my way to the cave not far from the castle. The cave where I'd hid my treasures. For the entire swim, I repeated my hate for my sister under my breath.

 By the time I reached the cave, I noticed the dark form peeping out of the opening. Heard the jangling of his string of crabs. I froze as Sebastian caught sight of me. He barked at me to not run away which was just what I had planned to do. "You get yer spoiled tail hover eer dis histant!"

 I knew he was most likely not alone. My Father must have been in that cave. I braced myself as I decended over to him. He stood at my side, taking me into the darkness. The moment we passed through the gap, I looked regrettably at the storage surrounding me. Chests, books, tools and charms all stolen from an old sunken ship and stored within in the gaping walls of the cave. My trove of treasures filled the cave in a spiral up to the aperture of light that fell to a single spot on the sandy floor. In that spot, glinted the new addition to my collection saved from the crash of The Royal; my Eric. His likeness in stone. That statue was made at his exact height. Someone had given him a sword in his left hand. The depiction wasn’t true to his character the way it stood there so dramatically heroic. But I liked to think that some side of him was that way.

 Under different circumstances, I would run my naughty hands over the stone chest, and rest them on the puffy shoulders of his sleeves. I would peer into the glossless eyes and speak girlishly to it things I would never have the gall to say to the real him. Now the thought of that behavior made me blush in front of Sebastian.

 “Har you going to hattempt han hexplanation?” he urged.

 I shook my head, “There is nothing to explain.”

 “I agree.” The chilling, voluminous voice of my father vibrated the water.

 “Father?”

 His mammoth figure moved into the light. Brightness bouncing off his snowy hair and beard. My Father had seen thousands of years. And with that much time, his mind was settled for topics such as humans. I remembered being a young minnow shielded under his wide shadow. He loved me more than any of my other sisters. And because of it, my betrayal struck him the hardest.

 "I see exactly what you have been up to for the last, what, year?" he said.

 “Yes,” I confirmed.

 “This is a direct defiance of the law, of many laws. I don’t know what to say. I've had commoners disobey me, but my own daughter...”

 “Commoners? Like Scuttle?” I immediately regretted opening my mouth.

 The cave water was still, like Father's body, and like his expression. “How do you know that name?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me in. “How?!”

 "I went there! To Prisoner's Passing. I went there." I squeezed my eyes in sorrow. "He was my friend. And you... You killed him. You killed him," I whimpered. If the water did not exist I'd have cried.

 He released me. "Clearly your secrets run deeper than I know. You have gone to the surface several times, you saved a human, and you spoke to a prisoner."

 "I guess that would make me a criminal, wouldn't it?"

 King Poseidon grumbled in annoyance. "I don't understand you, Ariel."

 "Because you don't try to understand."

 "Don’t try? All I have done is try to understand your antics."

 "Only to confine them with another one of your rules. Father, I understand that you have seen the humans slaughter mermaids and kill whales, but I live in this time. And I have not heard or seen of such instances."

 The king only grew with anger, his grip tightening on his trident. "So you, an inexperienced pike, think that you are the judge of humanity's righteousness?"

 "No, but—"

 "You think he is worth your mercy?" He pointed his trident at the statue. That motion alone caused me to tense.

 "You don't... you don't know him."

 "Know him? I do not have to know him. They are all the same!" His arm remained extended as his furious gaze narrowed on the statue. "Spineless, savage, harpooning fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling—"

 "Father, I love him!"

 His head faced me, his arm lowered. "No. Not you, a mermaid in love with a human. Ariel, listen to yourself."

 I lowered my face. "I can't ignore what I feel. Even if I want to. Tell me, Father. Are angry that I could love a man?" I drew my eyes to his, finally making a dangerous claim. "Or scared that he might love me back?" These words ment nothing, because Eric hadn't ever seen me save him. But I wanted to put the idea in my father's head, just to have him the slightest bit stumped. And it worked.

 His eyebrows shot up with unbelief. "So, help me, Ariel, I will get through to you. Whether it takes this!" He raised his golden weapon at one side of the cave. A mighty blast shot forth, destroying and disintegrating the objects.

 "No!"

 "Or this!" His blasted the other side.

 I grabbed his muscular upper arm. "Father, please!"

 Ignoring me, he lowered his trident back at my Eric's image. "Or this."

 "Don’t!"

 In one blast, he disintegrated my Eric, destroyed my dreams, and by proxy, killed me. I fell upon the sand and cried as the king and his second-in-command left.

 I felt my will slipping from me. I was considering the thought of giving up. Of becoming a normal mermaid, an obedient princess. As I lie there, my mind reminisced on everything I had collected and the stories behind each thing. So much I lost. So much I would never get back.

 Flounder found me. He whispered in bubblinese: Come. Up top. A witch.

 "A witch?" I said.