Elsa opened her eyes. Everything was dark and cold, but there was a feeling of encapsulation, like the pressure of a heavy blanket.

She groaned. "What happened?"

Cautiously, she lifted herself up, pushing against the spongy ground. But when she moved her legs, one didn't respond. Did she lose it in the fall? Was she an amputee? No, because no leg was missing. It had become one powerful leg, covered in ice-blue scales.

Elsa's jaw dropped. She wiggled her hips. The tail moved with it. Her knees had disappeared. Instead, the tail extended from her spine, making it flexible enough to touch her toes to her head. If she'd had toes. Where they should have been was a thin, fleshy swath of gossamer silk.

Next to her, Rapunzel groaned. She lay on her side, blanketed by the mass of hair surrounding her like a cocoon. She rose as if from a slumber. "Elsa? What is-"

She stopped as she made her own realizations about her body. Brushing away the hair revealed a pinkish-purple tail where her legs had been.

Rapunzel sprang up. In air, she would have come back down, but in water, she stayed floating. Her yellow hair unraveled behind her. "We're mermaids!" She swayed her tail back and forth.

Ariel swam towards them. She was a mermaid too, wearing a bra made from lavender clams. "How do you feel?"

"Bizarre," Elsa said. "What happened? The last thing I remember is jumping off the bridge."

"I transformed us mid-fall into mermaids."

"You can do that?" Rapunzel asked, pulling away the hair gathered in her face.

Ariel nodded. "Here, I found these for you." She handed them each a brassiere made of clamshells much like her own. Rapunzel's was lilac-colored, like her tail. Elsa's matched her chiffon hair.

Rapunzel secured her bra under her dress and discarded her human garb. The support was comfortable and the stronger covering soothed her sensitive areas. "All the mermaids I've seen in paintings are nude," she said.

"Sure. If you like getting slapped in the face with a bag of fat every time you turn," Ariel said.

"That makes sense-pfft." Hair had floated into her mouth. "Now if I could only see."

"Here, I can help." Ariel swam behind her and unraveled the wispy mass. She snatched handfuls of hair and began winding them together, forming a complicated braid. "You can't grow up a mermaid without knowing how to do hair. It's a mermaid fashion to have it long and flowing."

"Doesn't the water make it hard to shape?" Rapunzel asked.

Ariel shrugged. "It's the fashion. My sisters know more than me. They spend hours putting in accessories and decorations. But at least this'll help you blend in."

"Blend in?" Elsa asked.

"Until we figure out what to do. We should stay down here for a while. Arcius needs to recover and I don't think he can find us. If he could, he would have come after us already."

"We did blind him, at least temporarily. That means he might not have any idea where we are. I think it's a good idea to stay. At least until we figure out what to do." Her hair done, Rapunzel turned to look at it. The plait whipped behind her like a streamer.

Rapunzel started to rotate upside down from the motion. She wiggled her tail and flailed her arms. Nothing happened.

Elsa pushed herself upward to help. She remained still, then floated to the sand like a leaf.

Ariel collapsed in a fit of giggles. "You can't act as if your two legs are tied together. It's like a wave. Here, watch me." She positioned herself horizontally. "Swish and flick. Swish and flick."

They both tried. Rapunzel bunching up her tail to herself and extending it, resulting in no forward movement. Elsa found herself moving backwards.

When Ariel could stop herself from laughing, she helped her friends correct their mobility. After a time of wiggling, writhing, and piteous cries for help, they started to understand. Elsa thought of it as a ululation--an unwinding of the body from slow to quick, like a whip. Rapunzel imagined rolling hills, following their motion one after another. Regardless, an half-hour's teaching and they were able to keep up with Ariel. Then they let loose, exploring movement in a three-dimensional space.

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"Whee!" Rapunzel said as she dive-bombed the two of them.

Elsa and Ariel floated out of the way. Rapunzel arched up from her swoop, kicking up a cloud of sand.

"Look at this." Elsa raised her arms and looped in a vertical ring until she got dizzy.

"Watch this!" Rapunzel threw her hair behind her and swam in a slow spiral wave. The hair followed in the same spiral, creating a unique trail behind her.

Elsa laughed. "How about this?" She kicked backwards, then bumped against a rock. "Ow. Is this all the lighter it gets?"

"We're in the Abyss now," Ariel said. "Unfortunately, we landed right in it. It's very deep. And there's a big flow monster that stops anyone from climbing out. The people here... well, I guess it's like the crummier parts of a town."

"Then maybe it's time to get out of here?" Rapunzel said, looking up at the strange plant that had been following them like a spotlight.

Ariel picked up her trident and led the way out of the crèche, into darker areas lined with rock formations and porous coral. Rapunzel hummed, creating a soft light from her hair that helped ward off some of the darkness.

Ariel noticed Elsa looking around nervously, like everything was going to attack her. She remembered feeling the same way the first time she was here. It seemed silly now that she was older, although she wouldn't have gone near this place without the trident.

A school of tiny fish shaped like bees with angler antenna passed by. They peered at Elsa, then scuttled off in fear. Seaweed hands reached for them. Elsa and Rapunzel swam a little higher, brushing against a giant pink anemone shaped like a flower. Ariel pulled them away before the fronds reached for them.

"It's okay, we're almost there," Ariel said. She gestured above, where a ribbon of bluer water could be seen. "Just need to get behind this ridge. And once we get there, I can-"

Ariel peeked out over the edge. Something felt off about this area. Too empty. Too warm.

"That's funny...where are the flow monsters?" She scanned the seascape waiting for one of them to rise out and create a sucking vortex. But nothing happened. She couldn't even find their habitats. She swam to the middle of the clearing and looked around. Maybe they died?

Elsa and Rapunzel swam to her. "So... can we just go up?"

"I guess," Ariel said. It had been two years since she was last here. Maybe monsters had moved on, or-

A large shadow covered the ground. The three of them turned. A giant, pallid octopus rose behind them. One of its tentacles dropped like a falling tower.

"Look out!" Ariel said.

The three of them scattered. The tentacle landed on Rapunzel's hair. She jolted forward. Another tentacle wrapped around her, pinning her arms.

"Help!" She thrashed as much as she could, but only succeeded in wiggling the tip of her tail.

Ariel aimed her trident, then realized she didn't want to risk hitting Rapunzel. Instead she fired lightning at its body. White scorch marks appeared. It burbled in pain, but didn't release Rapunzel.

The octopus spurted forward, dragging tentacles as thick as trees. Its single gigantic eye darted back and forth, tracking their movements.

"Take this!" Elsa thrust her hands. Instead of shooting out frost, ice enveloped her hands. She tried again. The ice thickened and crystals spiked up. Something about the water was interfering. Ice couldn't travel like it could in air.

"Help me!" Rapunzel said as the octopus waved her back and forth.

"If I can't freeze you, I can punch you." Elsa swam up to the octopus's bulbous head and thrashed its head with her ice fists. The amorphous head swayed like a sack of grains. Its skin was too thick to damage, evolved from the underwater pressure.

Elsa dodged an incoming tentacle and swam up to the octopus's central eye. The oily inkspot pivoted to her. Elsa shoved her fist into the gooshy vitreous. The octopus uttered a monstrous groan and squeezed its eye shut.

"Ha-ha!" Elsa raised her arms in triumph.

A tentacle slapped itself across the eye. Elsa couldn't position her awkward tail in time to evade. One of the suckers scooped her up by her back, then wrapped around her. "Let go!" Elsa pounded on it with her ice fists.

Ariel dove and leapt as the arms collapsed around her. She was in her element, performing aquabatics few mermaids could. One tentacle swept at her. She leapt over it and spiraled underneath the next.

How was she going to get her friends free? She could shoot it all day, but it would only make it madder. Elsa had even punched it in the eye. Any normal creature would have run away after that. With its thick skin, living in so little light, it must have-

That was it. Ariel stopped dodging and floated into vacant water. "Here I am!" she shouted. "Catch me!"

"What are you doing?" Elsa asked, neck craned back.

The octopus shot out a limb. Ariel kept her arms pinned to her sides, trident pointed down. The tentacle slithered like a snake, gluing her in its clutch.

"Gotcha!" Ariel said. Both Elsa and Rapunzel looked at her quizzically.

A bright beam of light shot downward, splashing against the rock floor. The beam grew wider and thicker. Ariel started to rise up, as did the tentacle trapping her. The octopus, keeping its grip, began rising too. Ariel led the way, with the octopus along for the ride. Elsa and Rapunzel hung at the bottom with the other limbs.

Like a meteor in reverse, they rose past the craggy rock formations of the crevice. Finally, they burst out of the canyon into blue light. The octopus screamed. It covered its cycloptic eye with two free arms. Elsa and Rapunzel struggled free.

Ariel readied her trident, in case it retaliated, but the octopus turned around. With one great push, it sank bank into the chasm.

Elsa and Rapunzel came up to Ariel's side. "I hope he isn't hurt," Rapunzel said.

"I hope he is," Elsa said. "Then he'll think twice before coming back."

"I hope all gargantuans are confined to the ocean's bottom. All the nastiest monsters I've read about live in the sea," Rapunzel said.

Ariel laughed, waving it off. "I've dealt with worse. And that was without the trident. Sharks, bad luck creatures, the red tide, octopans, alligators, seaclops, howling hairfish, dinosaurs-"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture," Rapunzel laughed. "Being a mermaid isn't as magical and wondrous as the fairy tales make it out to be."

Elsa grimaced. "I don't know if you remember, but fairy tales usually have monsters, witches, curses, magic spells. All of which we've experienced." She swam forward. "You don't need to tell me about fairy tales. We're in one."