Chapter Text
Fishermen tell of legends about the ocean. In one such legend it is said that the sea used to be personified by the avatar of a young woman. This woman was the essence of the ocean’s beauty and she ruled over the humans that lived under the sea, but as is the nature of one from the ocean, she longed for the land.
One day, unbeknownst to her subjects she fled her underwater prison of a palace and stepped foot on land for the very first time, the feeling of the fluffy sand between her toes was everything she had dreamed it would be. In her excitement to walk upon the land she ventured further.
As she walked upon the beach her beauty caught the attention of a local fisherman. In awe of her beauty the man couldn’t help himself, he approached her and greeted her as a friend. The woman was overjoyed to have met someone from land so soon, she insisted in childlike wonder that the man show her the wonders of the land, to which the man had no complaints.
Hours turned to days and days turned to weeks. The woman of the sea fell in love with the fisherman’s stories and the fisherman was entranced by the personification of the sea, their love in turn conceived a child.
It was not long at all before the young woman was found by her subjects, taken whilst her love was out on the sea, she was forced to return to her underwater prison. For months she wept for the man, only finding solace in the child that she would eventually birth.
When the time came and she finally gave birth, it was to that of a baby girl, who’s beauty was only rivalled by that of her mother. As the child had inherited the beauty of her mother, she had also inherited something of her father’s… she could not breathe water.
The child was kept alive, safe in the air pocket of a giant clam, though this was only a temporary solution. The woman would have to give up the only thing that linked her at all to her love of the land. In her grief she took her own life, evaporating into the sea from where she was born.
That night, whilst the ocean grieved for their lost goddess, a change also occurred in the humans that lived in the ocean. Where they once had two legs now remained a scaly tail, for the goddess left her people bound to the water just as she had been. Whether this was done out of spite for her entrapment, or remorse that one might never make the same mistake that she had, none can say.
The child was delivered to her father that lived upon land, with this the news that the woman he loved had taken her life. The man was charged with taking care of this child, but when he looked upon her face all he could see was the beauty of the ocean. He jumped from the nearby cliff that night to return to his one true love, as for the child, her fate is unknown.
Legends say that one day the ocean will return for her child, only then may she ever forgive humanity of land and sea both. This is the tale of how the people of the land and sea, once living in unison, were separated forever…