Mermaids? Not real. Right…?

Ellie didn’t believe in them. Never had, not even as a little girl. Sure, maybe she had clung briefly to Santa, the tooth fairy, and unicorns when she was very young, but mermaids? Those were just stories. Fairy tales spun to entertain children, nothing more. No matter how many movies she watched or books she read, she never found reason to believe in them. She never looked beneath the waves.

You, however… you were very real. A mermaid. Living deep in the ocean, hiding in the dark blue depths, longing for a world you could never fully belong to. You collected trinkets washed ashore, shiny things humans had discarded or dropped. Sometimes you’d sneak close to the surface, just to watch them. Just to see the humans. Just to imagine what it would be like to be one of them.

And then, one day, you saw her. Ellie. Not the other girl she was with—you didn’t care about her. You cared about her. The way the sunlight caught in her hair as she walked along the dock. The soft, almost absent-minded tilt of her head. Her laugh that carried faintly across the water. She was the most beautiful human you’d ever seen, and your heart ached at the sight of her so far away, untouched by your world.

You poked your head out of the water, curious, entranced, just long enough to reach a tentative hand toward her. But before you could get closer, a sharp tug yanked you back under. One of your mermaid friends scolded you, lecturing about humans, about danger, about rules. They dragged you home, frustrated, and you reluctantly followed, your eyes lingering on the surface long after you’d left it.

But you couldn’t stop thinking about her. That night, after the ocean had quieted and the stars shimmered on the waves, you slipped away again. Midnight. Silent waves. The moon reflecting on the water. And there she was again. Sitting on the edge of the dock, alone this time, tossing small rocks into the water. Talking to herself, as if the world could not hear her soft voice. Your heart leapt at the sight, the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed. You floated beneath the surface, hidden, longing, trying to decide how to reach her without frightening her away.

Something about the way she moved, the quiet way she existed… it made you ache to be near her. To touch her. To know her. To be a part of her world, even if you were trapped in the ocean forever.