Sea Foam | ✓

xx.

The dagger was cool in my hands. It was colder than anything else, even the ice-cold waters of the ocean.

He sat at the temple steps again, your honey eyed prince, gazing at the moon. Or where the moon would have been, had it not been a new moons's night. The stars glowed in the necklace of the sky and in his eyes. His feet were dipped into the cool water, kicking around aimlessly. The city sang in the distance. His rosy faced wife was nowhere to be seen. A slow hum, a crassly poetic sea shanty slipped past his lips in coarse symphony.

I swam closer, cutting through the waters, slicing them, and reaching up to him. I emerged a few feet away from him.

He saw me. Worry and confusion darted through his eyes. "Hello? Girl! Are you alright? What are you—" His eyes caught the green gold shimmer of my scales, and then they scoured the water to confirm. Panic etched itself on his face, until he said, "Oh."

I floated wordlessly in the water, but my song started.

"Oh," He repeated in a dazed voice, as the song washed over him. "You're a mermaid."

"I am," I replied, breaking my silence.

He stared at me. I would call it a leer, the way he drank in my features and the way his gaze stroked over me with that hungry intensity. "A mermaid."

"Yes," I seeped in some of my power. My voice hung in the air. Heavy. Dark. Like ocean fog.

"Wondrous. Truly wondrous," He said finally, his eyes glazing over. The Prince reached out one elegant hand for me to take. "Come closer, mermaid.

I took it and I swam closer. The gold band on his ring finger was painfully warm against my skin. As though it burned. His bride, that pretty dark haired one, did she deserve it?

We were now face to face. I knew I could make my knife could caress his white neck, and leave a comet trail of red against it. But I didn't. I wanted him to know. He had to know.

"Hello, Prince." I said, softly. I stared in his eyes. And I wished, I wished like no other, that my voice would be more powerful than ever.

His eyes were fixated on where my skin met scales. "Hello, mermaid." He looked up and grinned.

He was the true siren here—with a smile like that, who could resist?

"What is a Prince like you doing here, all alone? Where is your princess?" I asked, reaching up and putting my arms around his neck, whispering in his ear as my knife, unbeknownst to him, lingered at the nape of his neck.

He was enchanted.

He said slowly, "I care not for any bride anymore. You are the only thing I desire, mermaid."

I continued humming. The song spilled from angry veins and the drum of his heart and the strings of his blood rushing through his body was the only tuneI needed.

The song grew louder.

Deafening.

The ocean screamed.

The wind howled.

The Prince didn't hear it.

His arms reached around my back, pulling me closer till we were nose-to-nose and all I could see was the earthy brown of his eyes. He leaned in to kiss me, his warm breath against my lips, and he said, "You are the most beautiful of them all."

"Liar." I hissed. The song crashed over us.

Fear finally crackled in his eyes, the realisation that what he was dealing with was not a little mermaid.

"You knew who was the most beautiful of all of us."

I think that was those words, along with the hum of the ocean, were the last things he ever heard.

I hope you'll forgive me, sister.

Because... I know.

I know that you didn't love him, sister.

You only loved the dream of him. You loved the white marble statue, on whom you could paint all your fantasies on. You loved the siren song of the land, of the above, the beyond, and the surface. You loved the dream of an eternal soul. Yes. You loved your dream.

I wish you had loved me more than a mere dream, sister.

THE END