The Girl with the Green Tail

Chapter Three: The Dinglehopper and Other Human Items

"Ariel! Wait for me!!" Flounder called from behind me.

I was eager and impatient for what discoveries lied before Flounder and I. "C'mon, Flounder! Hurry up!"

By the time Flounder reached where I was, he was out of breath, and panting. "Ariel..." he said in between breath intakes, "you know... I can't swim... that fast..."

"Flounder, look!" I said, pointing in the direction of the old sunken ship that lay before Flounder and I.

Flounder was known for his fear of most things, and he said, "Yeah, uh, cool... Now, can we go home?"

I wasn't gonna take Flounder's fear as an excuse for not getting to discover today. Not today. "You're not getting cold fins NOW, are you?"

He played it off as though he weren't afraid at all, "who, me?" Flounder asked, clearly trying to hide his fear. "No way!" He assured me, as he swam closer to the ship with me. However, his fear began to get a grasp on him again. "It, uh, looks pretty...damp in there."

"Flounder, we're underwater, of COURSE it's damp in there!" I told him.

He wouldn't give up until he could leave. "I, er, think I'm coming down with something...." He swam up to me and said "Yeah, uh, I've got this cough!" Flounder coughed very unconvincingly,  trying to think up every excuse not to discover with me.

"Okay," I said, "I'm going in." He didn't want to go with me, so I decided to give him a little....motivation, if you will. "You can just stay here, and watch for sharks."

I swam into the ship through a small circular window.

Flounder seemed okay with this at first. "Yeah, you go," he said. "I'll stay here and-" His eyes got wide as he realized what I had said. "What?! SHARKS?!!" He began to panic. "ARIEL!!"

He tried swimming in straight through the window, but he couldn't fit because of his circular shape. He was struggling to get through on his own, and finally gave up. "Ariel, help!" Flounder called.

Slightly giggling, I went to pull Flounder from the window.

His voice dropped low, "Do you really think there's sharks around here?"

Knowing everything was perfectly safe, I told him, "Oh, Flounder, don't be such a guppy!"

Flounder got really confident in his tone of voice and said "I'm not a guppy!" And with a final push from Flounder, and a pull from me, he was free from the window.

He began to swim around, and I began looking for new discoveries. Flounder said to himself, but loud enough for me to hear him, "You know, this isn't so bad." He swam a bit slowly now, cautiously. "Excitement, adventure...danger lurking around every corn-" A blood-curdling scream filled the ship, a bit of floorboard caved in, and the next thing I see is Flounder swimming right on top of me. "ARIEL!!!"

Flounder rammed into me at full speed, and knocked me over into the wall. "Are you okay?" I asked him, slightly smiling.

His green eyes were super wide, and he was shaking from gills to tail. "Y-Y-Yeah...I-I-I'm okay...."

"Sh!" I told him. "C'mon!"

I swam through the cabin of the ship into an empty chamber, where I saw the glimmer of something small and silver. As I got closer, I saw that it took the form of a small, silver trident, and I exclaimed in wonder, "Oh, my gosh....Oh, my gosh!!" I swam over and picked it up, showing it to Flounder. "Have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life???"

Flounder gazed at it in amazement. "Woah! Cool!" He then grew confused. "What is it?"

I answered him honestly, "Oh, I don't know!" I put the silver thing in my sack of human objects. "But, I bet Scuttle will know! Come on!"