This is a response to The Writer’s Mess’s weekly Friday Picture prompt which I was going to post Monday, when I realized something was already scheduled for Monday… Read along about the story of a young Mermaid finding her way to the forbidden surface, and not quite finding what she expected…
She closed her eyes against the intensity of the light, the pain of not water flowing into them only registering seconds later.
She opened them again slower, blinking away the stinging this not water gave. She couldn’t look directly at the sun, it burned her eyes, even as it dimmed late in the day.
Now that she could focus she looked around, quickly, eyes darting. She knew she couldn’t stay long, not without risking being caught in the above.
The law was swift, the penalty would be harsh, but she had risked it, her need to know greater than her fear of punishment.
She circled again, and then again, and with a growing sense of disappointment she realized that this was it.
The sun was not the shape she had known, but other than that there was nothing. The colors of the not water were muted, the most vibrant as dull as dead reef.
The surface of the water was flatter than expected, and everywhere else there was nothing, not a plant or animal in sight…
She looked around for a few more minutes, desperate, and then she allowed herself to sink back into the water, slowly heading for home.
When she returned to her school on Monday, her friends were dismayed to hear of the vast nothingness that was above, and she wished more than anything that she hadn’t looked. That she hadn’t destroyed the dream of above with reality, and now she had to live with it.
Anne McSommers' Writing Nook 