Whether you’re a fan of mythology or not, there’s no denying that everyone’s familiar with, or at least heard of, the concept of merfolk to some extent. From ancient folklore to modern fictional media, it is a widely known subject with various different interpretations. May it be sirens luring sailors to a watery grave, a magical race of aquatic folks existing in secret, or the result of science experiments, the only limit to depictions of merfolk appears to be the imagination. And like the aforementioned examples, as well as many others out there, the depiction you’re about to see in the following story is like a testament to those lack of limits – one involving intelligent extraterrestrial beasts possessing incredible abilities, a few good Samaritans, a famine, a “survival of the fittest” mindset, and a couple of young adults unwillingly dragged into a matter of life or death.
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It all starts with a first contact between worlds; those being our own, Earth, and another world, one covered in water and inhabited by aquatic life forms about as intelligent as ourselves. However, what makes these creatures of the deep remarkable doesn’t stop there, as evolution on this planet seemed to have taken a route very unlike that of Earth’s.
In fact, the last stage of this planet’s evolution had given its inhabitants the most advanced ability to manipulate certain things to their will through waves and signals from their minds.
To give you a good idea of what that means, here’s what the creatures mainly did with their abilities; when hunting down prey (mind you, these creatures at the end of the day are still animals despite their intelligence), they could warp the prey’s body and mind to their advantage. If a kind of prey had defensive systems in their bodies preventing them from getting eaten, such as venom, the creatures would warp their physical form to something more edible. And it was no use for the prey to try swimming away from their predators, as the latter could easily just control the former’s minds with their own to make sure they didn’t.
Most impressive of all, these abilities were evolved to such powerful extremes that it was possible for the creatures to even manipulate and warp the fabric of space to some extent. More specifically, the creatures could biologically create a sort of passageway – a rift in space, so to speak – through which they could travel extremely long distances in the blink of an eye.
Needless to say, thanks to their unique, powerful abilities, these creatures were able to climb to the top of their world’s food chain as the dominant species. With this also came the arrogant notion, not unlike with us humans, that they were the superior life forms who deserved to live and prosper more than any others in their world. Any life forms that weren’t evolved to have the same abilities as them only existed to serve their well-being, as far as they could see.
And with this notion, also not unlike with humans, came experimentations that pushed the limits of their capabilities, fueled by this question; How far could these abilities be used to benefit their lives to the fullest?
This was what motivated them to see how much distance they could cover with their rift abilities, as a means to travel more of their world’s waters in a short amount of time. And so a large group of these creatures gathered one day to challenge their limits. Together, they combined their powers to create a rift – the strongest rift any of them had ever created thus far – that they hoped would be able to reach the other side of their planet.
Little did they know at the moment however, that the combined powers were much stronger than necessary, resulting in their rift reaching far beyond the other side of their planet… far beyond any distance they’d ever travelled through their rifts.
What knowledge they also had little of once the rift had been made was whether or not they had succeeded. So in the less riskiest move they could think of to make sure, they sent one of their smallest and weakest ones into the rift, similar to miners in the old days sending canaries into coal mines to check for poisonous gases.
What the small creature discovered when it came out the other end was indeed deep blue sea. Not the sea it was used to though, but rather a sea that covered more than 70% of a completely different planet that housed completely different kinds of life forms.
The creature was baffled at the sight of the waters it was swimming in filled with life much like that of its own world in appearance, but so different in size, lethality, and more. These were smaller than the average life forms on its home planet (in fact, the creature had never seen so many animals around the same size as itself), and didn’t appear to possess any particular abilities either.
The strangest thing of all that this planet’s life had, as the creature came to find, was the existence of non-aquatic life. As something that had lived all its life on a fully aquatic planet, the idea of things that couldn’t live in water at all was something completely unheard of to the creature. Yet here it was, witnessing life forms that traversed on dry land, walked and ran rather than swim, and breathed air through their lungs instead of water through gills.
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And right now the creature was looking at three of those curious life forms barely being able to float themselves on the surface of a stormy sea, while a broken streamlined structure made out of wood was seen half-sinking into the water near them.
The creature could immediately tell how unfit these life forms were for the water – from none of the four limbs extending from each of their bodies having any sort of feature for traversing water (like fins), to the round heads they were just able to keep above the surface desperately gasping for air into their lungs. Most of all, the creature sensed if they were to stay here, they’d drown and die, as they had no method of saving themselves from an environment unwelcome to them.
Normally if any one of these extraterrestrial beasts saw any helpless creature smaller and weaker than them, they’d pay no attention as it wasn’t worth their time and strength. Or rather, even eat them up if they felt hungry. But this particular creature was different. Back in its world, it too was considered smaller and weaker than the rest, and was thus always looked down on or neglected by its own kind, who considered it, as well as others like it, not worth caring about. It was always the bigger and stronger ones that were deemed worthy of surviving in a world where the superior held dominion over the inferior, thus they always were the center of attention. So seeing a bunch of creatures rendered utterly powerless and possibly to be left for dead without anything or anyone to help them brought out the sympathy in the creature, and likewise a desire to save them.
But how to do it? There was no sign of any above-water land nearby for these creatures to take refuge on, and the creature was too physically small and weak even in this world’s standards to carry any one of these lives to safety, let alone three. If only these poor things were so much as partially fit for underwater life, they wouldn’t have to die out here, the creature thought.
That was what gave the creature the surefire way to save them. If they couldn’t survive underwater, it could change their physical condition to make sure they could! Especially since it had the ability to do just that with its mind…
The creature then focused all its concentration on the three struggling forms bobbing above it. As its mind analyzed the land-dwellers’ bodies on a cellular level, it also sensed they wouldn’t last long like this, so it had to hurry. The creature figured the quickest and most efficient way to go with this would be to change only the necessary features and leave the rest as it is (only with mild alterations suited for an underwater environment), and went to work right away before it was too late.
By the time it was done, having changed the physical body of three life forms at once, the creature slumped down on the ocean floor, completely worn out. But all the strength consumed was worth it. As evidenced when the creature looked back up to see the three land-dwellers now not only sporting scaly fish-like tailfins where their lower limbs used to be, but also breathing perfectly fine in the water, albeit with extremely mindblown looks on their faces as they tried to comprehend what had happened to them.
The creature breathed a sigh of relief to itself. Now these three creatures would be able to breathe water as casually as they breathed air, and swim through the waters as quickly and efficiently as any aquatic life form in both worlds. It would later return to it home planet through the overly powerful rift to tell its kind of the things it had witnessed.
Of course, every creature who heard the tale, from the existence of a whole new world besides their own, to the creature’s rescuing of the land-dwellers, could barely believe what they were told. An amazing discovery for sure, yet after a while they figured it was best to close off the rift for now and continue what they’d originally set out to do with their combined abilities. That was what they were here for in the first place after all, and also they saw no need to take risks in exploring the unknown for themselves when they were leading perfectly good lives in their own world right now.
This is not to say the incident was easily forgotten, as the story continued to be told amongst the creatures for generations to come. But no other contact after this first one was made again as the creatures simply continued to focus on their own lives and their own world, without anything else in mind… for now.
This first contact went on to have an effect on that “other world”, AKA Earth, as well over time. What with humans with singular fins below their hips instead of two legs suddenly having been brought into existence, this curious phenomenon made other humans’ minds race. What could this mean, and how could they explain it?
Eventually, what with mythology always having been used throughout human history to explain phenomena that couldn’t be explained, the same was applied to this particular happening as well. People began making up speculations or wild stories trying to make sense of these aquatic human beings which, over time, gave birth to the concept and mythology of merfolk.
And from then on out, the rest is history, as you may be able to see for yourself how this creation of the human imagination has been used and depicted throughout our culture over the ages. Whether it be fairy tales from old times, a popular animated feature film from an almighty corporation, or even a form of professional sport. But regardless of how much one may be interested in merfolk or how they’ve affected our culture, there’s no denying one thing has always remained consistent about them – that they’re just a figment of our imagination and there’s no way they could exist in real life… for now.