Our sisters wailed.
Our Grandmother cursed herself.
Our Father's tears mingled with the salt of the sea.
You do not know this, dear sister, but you were mourned far more by us than by that honey-lipped prince of yours.
Did he even think of you? Even as an afterthought?
Your clothes gently descended down to the kiss of the ocean. They darkened, water weaving through them. Then they sank, slowly, like jellyfish, the depths of the ocean.
We let them sink.
We hung at the surface for hours. We mourned for you.
The sea frothed in her sorrows, her tides turning and twisting.
But that wretched sun you so loved, with its crimson, orange, and blood-red rays, it just set like it was just another day. Like it was just another day, not the day its greatest lover died.
The ship of your pretty prince sailed ahead and its merriment continued.
Your clothes sunk.
But the knife didn't.
It remained.
I caught it instead of you when you fell. It cut through my palm and crimson hot pain ran down my wrist to my forearm and mixed into the ocean. It was still warm from the heat of your hands.
One by one, our sisters returned underwater. Then our grandmother. Then our father.
But I stayed, dear sister.
I stayed and I scavenged for sea foam.
YOU ARE READING
Sea Foam | ✓
Fantasy❝Why did it have to be you, sister?❞ A retelling of the classic fairytale, The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen from the perspective of the sister of the mermaid and her recalling the loss of her sister. ©irya kadlec, 2020 cover credit:...
