War of the Ocean

Chapter 8

There was only one positive side to her situation; she still had time. Although she didn't have very much of it—10 days at most—she had some at least.

She pushed the bed covers off of her body and looked down. The first thing she noticed were the two smooth things where her tail used to be. It was not the first time that she had seen her new legs, but they still amazed her each time. The second thing was that there was some sort of strange material covering her body. It was similar to the fabric that she had seen on the human women she drowned, only much thinner. She searched for the word she had once discovered; clothing. Someone had put clothes on her. Under the sea, the only thing that came close to clothing were the seaweed wraps that the mermaids used to cover their breasts. The humans had out something else on her too, something that felt even stranger than the clothes; underwear.

Arelena did not understand how human women could wear something so... uncomfortable. Shaking her head, she attempted to climb out of the bed. For a long while she tried to work out how to make the legs work, only to discover that they responded to her commands as easily as any other part of her body. She swung her legs off of the bed so that her soles of her feet were touching the floor. Taking a deep breath, she stood. It gave her a strange feeling, to be standing. Her new legs trembled beneath her, the muscles inside them unused to such movement. Deciding to test them further, she took a step forward.

Her legs buckled beneath her and she collapsed onto the floor. For a moment, she allowed herself to sit there until she gathered up the strength to try again. She had to drag herself back up onto the bed using her arms as her legs were too weak. How did humans use these things? Perhaps she underestimated their strength, for if they could walk—and even run—on their legs, they must be one of the strongest creatures alive. How was it that their children learnt to walk?

That's when it hit her. To walk, she would have to pretend she was a little human child and learn to walk as they did. Baby steps. She recalled a time when she had watched a human baby take its first steps aboard a ship mere moments before she sank it. The child had crawled from place to place prior to then and pulled itself up, using the objects around it to balance as it took a few steps. She knew that could do the same, only without the crawling part. Humans would not think it acceptable for a grown woman to crawl and she had to at least appear normal to them.

Rolling onto her back, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and prepared to try again. Feet on the floor, she stood but did not remove her hand from the bedside table, using it to remain balanced. As she continued to walk, she was forced to quickly switch her hand from her table to the wall. It was in that split second that she stumbled and fell. But instead of falling to the floor, she hit the wall side-on. As much as it hurt, she was glad that she hadn't ended up on the floor otherwise she knew she mightn't be able to get back up.

A few hours later, Arelena picked herself up off the floor for what felt like the hundredth time. She had been practicing walking for so long, she did not know what time of day it was. When a knock came at the door, she was just making her way back to the bed. Seating herself on the mattress, she waited for whoever it was to enter the room. A young, dark haired woman stepped inside carrying a silver tray. On that tray was a glass water jug, a cup and a silver dome covering a plate.

'I brought you some lunch,' the maid told her. So it was around noon, then. 'I'll just set this down over here.' She walked deeper into the room and began to speak again, clearly because she wanted to fill the silence created by the princess. 'I would have brought you breakfast but you were still asleep and I did it wish to disturb you. We did not know if you would even wake up today, you were so ill when those men found you.' Wishing to put the nervous woman at ease, she offered her a smile, hoping that this woman would not be like the servant her brother had assigned for her back in his palace.

The maid place the tray on the table by the bed, poured water in the cup and backed away to allow Arelena to eat. The princess frowned at the cup of water at first; while underwater she had never had to consume water the way she did food. Moving onto the food, she lifted the dome and set it aside before turning to her meal. She could not remember the last time she had eaten. In her brother's palace she had been served endless trays of delicacies; from seaweed salads to clam dishes. Staring at the food before her, she could not help but be surprised by what was on her plate. There was a pile of some sort of light green, human version of seaweed, a few round, red berry things, several small, pale yellow blocks and some sort of white meat. Fish.

The princess had to remind herself that these were humans and they believed her to be one of them; serving a Mer fish meat was considered an offence as Mer themselves had fish-like tails, only without any scales. For a moment, she stared at it before glancing up at the maid who had a worried expression growing on her face.

'Is everything alright?' The maid asked.

Reaching for her paper and pen, Arelena scribbled down her thoughts and presented them to the maid. The woman grew nervous all of a sudden before admitting that she could not read. A little surprised, she searched for another way around the situation. She pointed to the fish on her plate, hoping the message would get across.

'You do not eat fish?' The woman asked and she nodded in reply. Understanding, the maid plucked the plate from the tray and began to carry it away. 'I'll be back in a moment,' she announced before exiting the room.

As she promised, the maid returned a short while later, another plate in hand. Once it had been placed on the tray, she could see that the fish had been removed and the other food that was there before had multiplied in its place. Picking up a miniature silver trident, Arelena skewered food on its prongs and began to eat. She did her best to hide the cringe that came as she tasted the food for the first time; it was just so different to anything she was used to.

Once she was done, the maid carried the tray with the cup and plate away. Alone once more, Arelena went back to practicing walking. She had a feeling that she would need the skill very soon.

I'm back! Hope you enjoyed both this chapter and the previous one :)

So I logged in today to see that this book has reached 1K reads.

Wow.

I really wasn't expecting that. I've been watching the number of reads creep up for a while but I didn't think many people would actually read this. I thought that this book would get maybe a couple hundred reads like my other book but no. And while 1K might not seem like a lot compared to some books with 20+M reads, this is a personal milestone for me and it means a lot.

I'm really grateful for all my readers, thank you so much for giving my book a chance.