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Chapter 24: Canoe

Jel watched the little child in the canoe, staring up at the sky in wonder as a flock of birds flew overhead. She was swimming, pushing the canoe gently down the stream, not a real rush in the world. She didn't want to get to their destination. She didn't want to have to say goodbye.

Her heart hurt, a distant throbbing, like a clock that was ticking down her moments in this peaceful bliss.

This child would have been hers if the court would've gone with the original plan.

Gender and sexuality was really fluid for mer-folk, most of them actually able to help create children no matter what sex they identified as. It was a gift that only their species have. It was a reason that despite the high influx of same sex couples, their population hadn't gone down drastically. Well, not because of that reason. Mer-folk populations were still declining for other reasons.

Sport hunting, lack of food from competition from fishermen, normal everyday accidents, underwater internal fighting, and the worst, trafficking all hurt their numbers. It was pretty bad.

That's why things were a bit tense as of late. Anyways, the ability to have children no matter what was mostly that way for most mer-folk. The more human blood you had in you, the less likely it would work.

And there in the canoe next to the little child was her wife, Rive, who was almost three fourths of the way human.

Mostly human mer-folk were still considered mer-folk. Sure, there were some discrimination in some clans, but in Sally's clan Rive was accepted just like any mer-folk. Because of how strong mer-blood was, you had to get really really high levels of human blood for there to be any profound effects. And even then, once you get so little mer-blood it practically just disappears. That's why you don't see half human half mers running around on land using mer magic. That's why there isn't a huge influx of water magic users with mer-blood. Because they either are mermaids, or the blood is so little that it's practically not there. That's why Sally was so excited for her experiments. She was going to create something that could both have the benefits of the mer-blood and the ability to be above water for more than ten minutes at a time. At least, that was the time limit for Jel. For Rive it was a tad bit longer. About thirty minutes. 

They had been trying for a child for so long. They had joined Sally's clan, hoping that once she was able to artificially make children, she would give them one.

And she did.

And then the clan leaders took that child away from them.

Jel didn't care that Fundy was weird. That everyone treated her like something unnatural. Jel had loved Fundy at first sight.

"Humans shouldn't play gods."

That's what she had been told. But looking at Fundy, her cute little ears and soft tail, Jel couldn't help thinking that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing if they had gotten such a beautiful end result such as this.

Then again she wasn't the person paying the price.

Rive and Jel were so hopelessly attached already. In fact, Rive and Jel were the people who named her.

But she did have to admit, it would've been hard taking care of Fundy permanently with the problem of her being unable to breathe underwater. They had asked Fundy to try holding her breath underwater once she had gotten good enough at swimming, and it turns out she can hold her breath for an impressively long time.

But it wasn't breathing underwater.

Jel knew in some part of her head she was just torturing herself. Volunteering herself as the couple that was to take Fundy to her dad. She was teasing herself, giving her and her wife a few weeks of what could have been.