Chapter Text
“Ugh…”
I slowly open my eyes. The sun feels too bright. I can feel water on my legs.
My legs? Wait, what just happened? How did I-
The memories of what just transpired come rushing back to me.
“All I want…All I’ll ever want…is to be in a world with you!”
Mari in my arms.
A bright flash of light.
Us in the air. Falling.
Feeling the light inside me.
Me burying deeper into Mari.
Not knowing if she’s al-
“Mari!” escapes me. Where is she? I look around and see her on the shore.
“Mari…” I try to get on my feet to get to her, but suddenly a jolt of pain strikes through my body.
“What…ah.” My legs are covered in scratches from inside of my heart. Whatever transformation I went through didn’t heal me. At least not completely.
Wait. If I’m not healed, then what about Mari?
I try to stand up, but even stronger pain stops me.
Crawling it is. “C’mon…c’mon, I just need to know that you’re okay.”
When I finally reach her, I feel my heart drop. Her eyes are closed.
I crawl even closer. Close enough to push myself up enough to rest my head on her chest.
Instant relief washes over me. She’s breathing! I can feel her heartbeat!
I mumble, “Thank goodness,” against her. I shuffle a bit closer and throw my arms around her. It’s my best attempt at a hug I can muster.
Now I just need to wait for her to wake up. She’s alive. She’s breathing and alive and that’s all that matters to me now. My legs will heal.
“Lara?” It’s barely a whisper, but it’s enough for me to snap my head towards her face.
“Mari? Mari!” I lift myself away from her and sit up, so I can properly look at her. To take her in.
Mari looks disoriented. She props herself up on her elbows. She looks around and then finally at me.
“Lara, what just happened?”
“I- You-” I try to stop it, but it’s useless. My words get lost as I burst into tears.
Which seems to bring Mari back from whatever trance she was in.
“What- Lara, what’s wrong?” And now she’s the one closing the distance between us.
“Lara? Tell me what’s wrong ple-ugh…” She doesn’t get to finish her sentence because I throw myself at her and wrap my arms around her waist, as I can’t reach any higher.
It’s awkward. She’s kneeling after crawling over to me, while I’m half-sitting because my legs don’t allow me anything better, with my head resting on her legs.
I dig my hands into her soaked uniform.
“I’m fine. I’m just really happy you’re okay.”
A hand is placed on my back. And another. Then I feel Mari’s head on the back of my own.
And just now I realize that Mari is shaking.
“Mari?”
Did I miss some injury? Is Mari not okay? Of course she isn’t. I kill- she died. I haven’t healed perfectly and I wasn’t the one who died. Of course she’s not okay. I need to check how serious it is before it’s too late.
But when I try to lift myself up, Mari shakes her head and her grip on me tightens. A drop of water lands on my head. Then another. And another. It’s then that I notice Mari’s haggard breathing.
Oh.
“Dummy…”
We stayed holding onto each other for a while. Neither of us was willing to let go just yet.
———
After we had calmed down, we sat next to each other, still on the shore.
“So, I died and came back?”
“Could you sound even less concerned about that?”
Mari just shrugged at that.
“I feel pretty alive now.” She looks at me and flashes that confident smile of hers. “Did you think I would let dying beat me? I still have tournaments to win and a cake to eat.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Ahaha, Mari!”
Silence settles over us.
Did Mari hear all the things I said back then? Does she…Does she know why she died and why she came back?
Before I get the chance to ask her, she beats me to it.
“Do you think you can walk?” she asks with a nod towards my outstretched legs.
I try to move them, and it still hurts. I’m not sure how much time has passed between me waking up and now, but the pain seems more manageable at least. Or I’ve just gotten a bit used to it.
I try to stand up, but my legs buckle under me. Luckily, Mari catches me.
“Easy there. Don’t push yourself. Is this okay?” She flings my arm around her shoulders to support me. With my weight mostly on Mari, I could probably make it at least to Lisa. If I remember right, she shouldn’t be far away.
“I think so. Maybe we can at least make it to Lisa? She should have a car somewhere. But I’m not sure if she was still here by the time…that…happened.”
“She is. Well, was.” She hesitates for a second. “She told me which direction to go to find you.”
What? Lisa knew Mari was the person? But she saw me with Luca. But there is no other reason why she would have sent Mari towards me than to be sacrificed.
Ah. She sent Mari to her death.
My anger must show on me, because suddenly Mari adds, “She told me I would die if I go to you. Said something about us humans not being able to see the light or whatever.”
I frown. “Then why did you-”
“I was going to see you, Lara. I told you I would find you. I didn’t care about some light I couldn’t even see.”
My head is reeling. Mari knew she’d be in danger. And she still went after me.
“Mari-” But I get cut off by a shout. I look away from Mari, back forward, towards the sound.
Lisa
“Lara!” She’s rushing towards us, with Kota close behind.
Next thing I know, Lisa’s hands are on me.
“Lara, I don’t know how but you did it! The light is back!”
“Huh?” I stare wide-eyed at her as she pulls back.
“I can feel it, Lara, the light. Can’t you?” I can. Of course I can. I just wasn’t sure the others would feel it too. After all, my light wasn’t born the normal way.
It was born from love for a human. For a world in which I can live with her.
“I can, I just, I just didn’t know if it worked for everyone? I passed out and woke up not so long ago.”
Mari stays silently next to me, holding me up on my feet.
“Kota, well, Kota was turning into foam. Their time almost ran out, but then we felt your light.”
We both look towards them. They seem better than when I saw them before.
“Thank you, Princess Lara. I’m glad my time isn’t over yet.” Their eyes flicker towards Lisa as they say it.
I just nod and look back to Lisa, who just now seems to finally register Mari next to me.
Her brows furrow.
“Lara, how is she…I thought that-”
Mari cuts her off. “Can we first get Lara somewhere to treat her wounds? We can go to my house.”
Lisa shakes her head. “No, mine and Kota’s house is closer. We’ll take Lara and drive there. You can go back home.”
She takes a step closer to be the one to support me instead.
“Wait, Lisa-” I feel Mari’s grip on me tighten. I look at her, and if I hadn’t spent months getting to know her, I wouldn’t be able to tell she’s showing any emotion. But the tiniest frown is forming between her eyebrows. She also doesn’t want to let me go.
I answer Lisa’s questioning gaze on me. “We can go to your place, but Mari is coming with us.” I squeeze the hand Mari has on my shoulder.
Lisa takes a few seconds to study both my face and Mari’s. Her mouth twitches, annoyed, but ultimately says, “Fine. The human can come as well.”
Mari’s grip on my shoulder loosens.
She looks at Lisa. “Thank you.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “What’s there to thank me for?”
———
“We’ll bring things to clean her wounds, you just help her onto the couch.” She nods towards the room and leaves with Kota.
We walk over and Mari helps to settle me on the couch. With Lisa and Kota gone, I finally have an opportunity to carefully look over Mari. She didn’t say anything, but I still find it hard to believe she really is fine.
“Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself, idiot. I’m not the one with bloodied legs.” She gently pushes my shoulder.
I shake my head. “I just need my legs to heal. You came back from the dead. I think you are the one with a worse injury.”
“And I’m also the one who is fully healed. See?” She spins around to show she has no injury. There is just a hole and blood on her uniform, from where the dagger hit her.
She looks at what my eyes are studying and comes close enough so I can reach her.
“Look at the tear,” she says quietly. “I don’t even have a scratch there. It’s like it didn’t even happen.”
Without thinking, I reach forward to poke her through the shirt.
“Hey!”
I giggle as she flicks my hand away. “Sorry, sorry! I just needed to know you really are okay.”
Mari is about to say something, but Lisa and Kota return with medical supplies.
“I think it’s best if we clean them, disinfect them, and maybe we will even need to stitch some of them.”
I start to become pale just hearing that. “I don’t think that will be necessary- ow!” I look at the criminal who poked my leg. “Mari! What was that for?”
“For being stupid.” I glare at her, but it has no effect. “Your legs are clearly badly hurt, let them fix you up.”
“But…It will hurt a lot.” Mari gives me a look of disbelief, but Lisa interrupts us.
Lisa sighs. “At least let me take a proper look at it.”
I shut up and let her look, and I finally look at it properly myself. The cuts are somehow worse and not as bad as I expected. The pain I felt when the teeth sank into my tail was horrible. And they were deep enough to make me unable to move.
Moving them sends bolts through my body, so I expected it to look bad. And my own quick looks until now always made me want to look away.
But on the other hand, some are very shallow wounds and almost healed scratches. The light clearly helped me heal, but it just did not manage to complete the job. Maybe the strain of not only healing me, but also turning my tail into legs was too much?
After examining them, Lisa asks, “How did you get hurt?”
I glance at Mari and hesitate. Lisa sees it and raises an eyebrow at me.
“I got eaten by the heart as well. This happened to me when I was inside it.” All three look at me.
“You got eaten? But…” Lisa glances at Mari. After a moment of deliberation, she shakes her head and looks back at the legs, mumbling to herself, “So it’s an injury from the light.”
“Will Lara be okay?” Mari asks.
“It will heal slower than a normal injury. But at least she should be safe from infection. The light is clean. We just need to clean all the sand that got in.”
Lisa looks at Mari from head to toe. Realizing what she’s trying to figure out, “Mari fully healed. The dagger hit her where her uniform is ripped.”
A flash of something passes over Lisa’s face. But she surprises me again by instead shifting her focus to Kota.
“Kota, do you remember how long your cut took to heal? It was about two weeks, right?”
Kota nods and says something to Lisa, but I’m no longer listening.
Kota…got hurt by the light? When did that happen?
Me wanting to kiss Luca.
Luca refusing.
Me barely feeling any warmth, any spark.
Lisa took me away that day, and Kota is always with her, so it must have been then.
“Lara?” All three are looking at me.
I force a smile. “I’m sorry, I spaced out for a moment. What were you saying?”
“I’ll clean the wounds and bandage them, so nothing gets in them. Some of them are deep, but we don’t know if stitches somehow wouldn’t get in the way of the healing from the light.”
She nods towards Mari and Kota. “They will prepare a bed for you. You should try to sleep afterwards.”
I don’t like the idea of leaving Mari here alone with just Lisa and Kota. “I don’t want to-”
“No room for negotiation.” Lisa’s look makes it clear it’s final.
I still shoot one pleading look at Mari. It was ineffective. “You need to rest, Lara.” Traitor.
I watch Mari and Kota leave the room as Lisa gets to work.
I don’t know what to say to her. She wanted me to kill Mari and can’t accept the idea of me loving a human. But we’re still sisters.
Because humans are vile creatures.
It isn’t possible for a mermaid and a human to be in love.
But the light was born, wasn’t it? But our circumstances were so different.
I bite the bullet. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
Lisa’s hand pauses on my leg for a moment, before she continues cleaning.
“Do you want me to?” There’s sadness in her voice.
“Mari told me it was you who gave her directions towards me.”
I feel her stiffen up. “I did.”
“You knew I didn’t want her to come.”
“I know.” She keeps maneuvering around my legs, almost mechanically. It makes me wonder when she learned this. How can she be so calm right now?
“Isn’t there more you want to say?” Wanting an apology feels childish, but after everything that happened, I can’t help but think it’s deserved.
Lisa doesn’t reply for a moment. Silence hangs between us long enough for me to think Lisa is done with this conversation.
“You knew what needed to be done.” A pause. “What we thought needed to be done. If it was you or that human, of course I would choose the human. Besides, she was more than willing to go towards you.”
Anger rises in me. “I killed her, Lisa! The one person who was kind to me from the start! I begged her to stay away from me and she still-”
“But Lara, weren’t you…Weren’t we all…born to love someone?”
There were tears in her eyes.
Seeing her. Hearing those words. I couldn't hold my heart back anymore.
I shake my head back to the present, tears pouring down my face.
“She still came! I almost hurt Luca, I just found out I hurt Kota, Grace is dead, father a-attacked me and- and you wanted me to kill the person I love? You sent Mari towards me to kill her? How could you?”
I weakly pound my fists against Lisa’s hands, which are still resting on me.
“Maybe my love was different from the love of the previous princesses, but it was still love! It wasn’t tainted or-or infected! I just needed…”
I just needed someone to believe in me. In my love. I didn’t even realize I had that someone until she died. Grace was letting me figure out my feelings for Mari on my own terms. Maybe things would have unfolded more peacefully if only I had realized this sooner.
If only I wasn’t so naive and so focused on the prince and Luca!
If only Lisa didn’t try to push me away from Mari!
If only my father at least tried to listen to me!
Lisa, father…they both wanted the best for our people. They didn’t believe there was any other option. Because of them, I believed so too. But how could I have killed Mari and then live peacefully afterwards? I never would have been okay with that.
Lisa stops my hands. I need to collect myself. All these emotions have been swirling inside me for weeks now, and with the crisis seemingly over, they are ready to burst.
I take deep breaths and look at Lisa. Her face seems sad, almost remorseful.
“I-” Another sigh escapes her. She looks away from me, facing the ground, her hands still holding mine. “I am sorry, Lara. We were desperate. We asked you to carry more on your shoulders than one should.”
“Huh?”
“We were wrong.” She shakes her head and looks back at me. “I was wrong. You still managed to find the light.” Another pause, then, a whisper. “Turns out there really was another way.”
I stare at Lisa in disbelief, but a warm feeling washes over me. This is the closest to her trying to understand since we reunited on land.
I squeeze her hands. “Thank you. It, it means a lot to me.” To which she nods.
“How did you do it? I mean, the light is back, but so are you and the human.” I narrow my eyes at the last words. If she can apologize, she can call Mari by her name, can’t she?
“The human has a name, you know?”
“I’m aware.”
…
A hint of a smile seems to be forming on her face.
I let out a little huff of air. “I killed her, or well, my heart did. In that one moment I just couldn’t hold it back anymore.”
Her determined expression, her unwillingness to let me go.
And yet I’m apparently the stubborn one?
“Then I let it swallow me whole. I thought that maybe I could trade myself in her place. Replace her stolen light with mine. Give it back. I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking.”
“And then?” Lisa nudges me to continue.
“I remember realizing I lied to myself. That I’m not okay with dying just yet. That I want…” Memories of everything I said flash through my head. I blush just thinking about it.
Lisa raises her eyebrow at me.
“That I want Mari and to be in a world with her.” And I flash her my first genuine smile in a long time.
Lisa searches my face. I don’t know what she finds, but she gets to bandaging and says mostly to herself, “I see.”
After that, she continues to work in silence. I don’t ask her another question this time.
It feels as if we’ve reached a truce of some sort. It will take a long time for us to find a way back to each other, but with the rest of our family and people still asleep, we will have plenty of time.
Lisa finishes wrapping the last bandage around my leg and sits back.
“That should do for now.”
I look down at my legs. They’re covered in white bandages, the pain still there but more manageable. “Thank you.”
Lisa nods. “You need to rest. The newly born light might have healed most of the damage, but your body still went through a lot.”
She starts gathering the medical supplies.
“And no walking on your own for at least a day or two.”
I give her a look. “I can’t just sit here on a couch.”
She scoffs. “We have crutches here and a wheelchair from when we were testing the limits of the witch's potion. I’ll ask Kota to grab it for you when I tell them we’re done here.”
She looks over her shoulder back at me, with an odd smile on her face. “And you seemed okay walking around hunched over your personal walking stick.”
My jaw falls open. Did she just, did she just tease me? About Mari?
“Wait! Get back here!” But she pretends not to hear me and disappears into another room.
“Hey.” I look up and see Mari entering back.
My mouth opens on instinct, whispering her name. “Mari.”
“Your sister said she’s done here.” Mari’s eyes flicker to my bandaged legs. “And that you need to rest.”
I nod.
“Okay, I’ll take you to the bed we prepared for you.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll be careful, don’t worry.”
Huh?
Suddenly Mari’s hands are on me, and she’s lifting me up.
“HUH? WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MARI?” I yelp and hold onto her.
“You shouldn’t walk. This is fine.”
I try to look at her face. “B-but…” My attempt at protest is ignored. Being held by Mari isn’t so bad, it’s quite nice, actually.
When we move to the other room, I realize it’s Lisa’s room. The lights are unplugged and put out of the way. The minifridge, which once had an imitation of the potion inside it, is now empty.
Mari gently puts me down on the bed and moves to close the door behind us.
For a moment, neither of us says anything. Mari standing next to the bed, me sitting on the edge of it.
Mari looks at my legs again. “How bad is it?”
“Not too bad.”
She gives me a look.
“Fine,” I sigh, “not great exactly. But Lisa said it should heal, but it might take longer because of the whole being made by the light thing.”
She nods. After a beat, she asks, “Why am I fine when you’re not?”
“I don’t know.” I look Mari in the eyes. “But I have a theory.” The tone is meant to be lighthearted, but I sound more sincere than I wanted to.
It’s fine because it makes Mari give a tiny smile. “And what is this theory of yours?”
“I think it’s because of what I was focused on, what was going through my head.” I pause and think back to a few hours ago. All my thoughts revolved around wanting Mari to be okay and wanting to be with Mari on land.
And here we are. Mari is unscathed, and I have legs now. As far as I can tell, I’ve become a full human.
Mari nods at me to continue. “And thanks to Lisa and Kota, I know the light truly worked for merfolk as well, so there probably wasn’t enough in the moment to fully heal me as well, since it wasn’t what I was focused on.”
Mari hums. “What did Lisa think of this theory?”
“Don’t know, we didn’t talk about it.”
A silence passes between us.
Suddenly, Mari says, “You should rest. I will let you get some sleep.”
“No, wait-” I reach for her hand.
“Lara?”
“Please.” I gently wrap my fingers around her hand. “Can you stay here? At least until I fall asleep.”
I can’t look her in the eyes, I was throwing huge declarations around a few hours ago, and now I can’t even ask her to stay in a room with me?
A soft “Of course” reaches my ears. I gather the courage to look back at Mari’s face, and I see her softly smiling at me.
Instead of saying something, I give a tiny nod and start to move from the edge of the bed. As I move, I forget about my legs, and I hiss when I move the wrong way.
“Careful, let me just…” Mari helps to move my legs over and helps me settle.
Then I feel the mattress shift around me as Mari lies down next to me. That dip makes something in my chest loosen. I finally feel like I can breathe.
“Goodnight, Lara.”
“Goodnight, Mari.” I close my eyes.
…
I open my eyes and look at Mari. She’s lying on her back, with her eyes closed. I look at her hand between us.
I gently take hold of her hand to remind myself this is real. Mari’s fingers twitch on the contact. She opens her eyes and looks at me, then at our hands.
Then she turns her hand over and intertwines our fingers.
“Lara?”
“Mm?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow. We can talk tomorrow, so today just rest.” I swallow.
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” I echo and squeeze her hand. “Okay.”
I close my eyes again, this time with Mari’s hand in mine.
And it’s okay, because there is a tomorrow for us.