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Deep under the sea, everything is quiet.
Of course there’s life glimmering in the dark. Fauna and flora paint a myriad of colours, pulsing and flowing with the ocean's slow heaving breath, alive in the space between muted shades of blue. It's beautiful and calming, when one stops to listen; and there's not much else for deep-sea merprince Shinkai Kanata to do around here.
But the silence starts to turn oppressive after a while.
It gets to the point that Kanata heads to the royal library on a whim one day. Slipping through twisting pillars of stone and connected caverns of books and scrolls, he finds the spell in the same place he’d left it. It’s on a slip of enchanted parchment tucked between the pages of an unassuming diary, between the recipe for a love potion and notes on the thaumaturgical preparation of seaweed. It’s a simple charm. It requires only a few words, spoken with intent, and a pearl to use as a vessel. But it always works.
Kanata lowers the veil of the library entrance gently behind him when he leaves. He tucks the parchment safely in his storage pouch. Taking a lesser-known hallway, he exits through a side cavern, rather than the main palace doors; and avoiding the public routes, he uses his personal volcanic vent to head towards the surface.
The water starts to change as warm bubbles accompany him upwards. More light starts to intertwine with the oppressive blue, as the shadows fall away and the shapes of fish around him become smaller and varied. The water feels lighter, in a way, when he breathes it in.
For the last leg of the journey, Kanata lets go of the swift travel spell. It takes longer to swim towards the surface himself, and the water is growing darker—the sun must be setting above—but he likes to take some time to explore when he’s travelling. He doesn’t get the chance to come up here often.
Eventually, the gap between the surface ripples and their reflection on the sand below close until Kanata almost can’t swim any further. He grips his pearl, murmurs the incantation, and holds his breath.
The night shines brilliantly silver when he stands on two legs.
The night air is cool and refreshing compared to the murmuring atmosphere of the party Kaoru leaves behind. As he closes the balcony door behind him, it fades to bearable background noise.
He lets out a long sigh.
He gets how important it is to attend these dinners—to rub shoulders with higher-class people, to find potential business partners, to help the company make new conquests. This is the least he can do in return, considering how far his father’s money has brought him.
But part of him—the part who never wanted to study business and still misses his mother as if she had been there the day before—flinches at the thought of going back inside. It gets so stuffy.
At least facing the ocean at night, it’s easier to breathe. The moon is full in the sky above, and there’s a great view of the ocean. The party is at an expensive seaside venue, low and stylish, sitting almost on the sand. Kaoru leans over the railing, watching moonlight gild the blackish water with silver. The tide is high and calm right now.
It reminds him of simpler times. When his mother had been alive, she’d often taken him to the beach. She’d been a marine biologist. When it grew late and they watched the moon rise over the water, she explained how its gravity affected the tides and how all the ocean and its creatures were drawn to its weight. Even the mermaids? Yes, even the mermaids. Look. Maybe you can see one now. They’d peered into the water, always searching, but never able to find a mermaid.
But mermaids aren’t real. He knows that, now that he’s more or less an adult. When he looks into the waves, as always, there’s nothing there. It feels strange to see the same thing his mother must have seen—no mermaids, just steady ripples. Steady ripples… and a human figure walking out of the sea?
Concern jolts through Kaoru’s body. Why is someone out so late? Why are they in the water? He can’t make out their clothing from his distance, but it doesn’t look like it’s anything suited for swimming alone late at night like this.
All thoughts of responsibilities and the party behind him are gone. Kaoru swings his legs over the railing and stumbles down the beach.
Kanata tilts his head at the human approaching him.
They seem to be around the same height as Kanata when he has legs, with sandy hair tied back in a low ponytail. But his vision is a lot fuzzier in this form, and he can’t make out much of their features in the dark.
“You okay?!” The figure is out of breath as they approach Kanata. “Hey, are you okay in the water there?”
Kanata realises that the figure – closer up, he can see that it’s a young man around his own age – must be trying to talk to him.
“I am ‘fine’.”
Kanata says the words through his lungs. He remembers from his lessons that humans don’t tend to appreciate the telepathic communication which deep sea species are so used to. It feels strange to speak like this again, after so long.
“That’s a relief.” The young man’s figure seems to droop, his arms sagging to his sides, even as he continues to gasp from exertion. “I was worried! You’re not cold or anything?”
Kanata blinks at him. Cold?
“Ah… please excuse my rudeness.” The young man coughs a bit. “My name is Hakaze Kaoru.”
Oh. Kanata knows this one. It’s a self-introduction. The Deep Sea mermaid colonies have a similar custom.
“I am Shinkai Kanata, grandson of His Majesty King Shinkai of the ‘Third Trench colony’, eleventh to the throne of my ‘waters’.” He should also list some of his roles and duties around the palace, and possibly a list of his father’s most notable forebears, but Kanata hopes that Kaoru won’t know enough about royal self-introductions to notice.
Kaoru is staring blankly at him. “Sorry, what?”
...Had Kanata replied wrongly? The Deep Sea is far enough from land and Kanata far enough down the succession line that he hadn’t received much instruction on human customs and diplomacy.
But no matter the culture, Kanata thinks that it’s best to know each other’s names. “Please call me ‘Kanata’,” he says.
“Ah. Right. Kanata-san.” Kaoru coughs. “Kanata-san, are you feeling well enough to get home from here?”
“Why would I ‘go home’...? I have just arrived.”
“...What?”
“My home is in the ‘sea’,” Kanata says. “I have just arrived at the ‘shore’.”
Kaoru looks even more confused. “What do you mean? It’s dangerous to swim so late at night. Do you have a car or somewhere you can dry off nearby?”
“A... ‘car’?”
Kaoru doesn’t respond. Eyebrows pinched, he runs a hand through his hair. “Wait, so, how did you get here?”
“I ‘swam’,” Kanata says.
“And... where did you swim from?”
“The ‘sea’.”
“No, but before you went into the sea...” Kaoru sighs, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Maybe you are a mermaid.”
“That’s right,” Kanata says. Oh, had his human form confused Kaoru? He smiles apologetically.
Kaoru blinks. “Sorry, what?”
“I am a ‘mermaid’, and my home is in the sea.”
“But,” Kaoru says. “But mermaids don’t exist.”
“Yes they do,” Kanata says. Ah, that’s right. His tutor’s voice rings in his mind: with the regulations introduced to limit contact between merfolk and the land, humans were often unaware of mermaids’ existence. Maybe if he showed Kaoru. Stooping, Kanata catches the threads of magic in the sea and carefully weaves clear water and moonlight into a small clear ball.
Concentrating on the ball, he projects onto it the view of the kingdom from his bedroom window.
It’s not Kanata’s best work: moonlight is weaker than sunlight and the water is impure. Bits of shell and sand are caught up in the wavering reflection of his thoughts. But from Kaoru’s sharp intake of breath, he thinks he must capture the beauty of the trench well enough.
“This is...”
“My home,” Kanata says.
“It’s amazing.” Kaoru’s eyes are wider now, fixed intently on the scene. “It’s not a magic trick or anything?”
Kanata frowns. It is magic, but... “A ‘mental projection’, not a ‘trick’.”
Kaoru lets out a few small rapid huffs of air. It must be a human laugh.
“Wow,” Kaoru says. “I guess... you’re really a mermaid? With a tail and everything?” He glances down at the shallow water around him.
“Yes, I am.” Kanata is happy that Kaoru finally understands. He allows the makeshift picture globe to dissipate.
“So,” Kaoru says. He smiles a bit disbelievingly, and gestures at the water between them. “That’s where you live?”
“It is,” Kanata says. “Deep in the sea.” He extends an arm to point out the far horizon, from which he had come from beyond.
“The deep ocean, huh? I’ve always loved it.” Kaoru’s eyes are distant and a bit sad, like he’s remembering something he hadn’t realised he’d lost. “What’s it like?”
Kanata understands that feeling of looking, of wondering. “It is beautiful,” he says. “Some people say the deep sea is the most ‘lifeless’, but…”
Kanata tells him about the sea: about the lantern fish and sea cucumbers and coelacanths, about the pulsing blue depths, about the ocean’s slow deep breath. About the peace he feels near the sea floor, and the comfortable living silence.
Kaoru’s eyes are clearer by the end of it. It makes Kanata feel warmer, too.
“Thank you,” Kaoru says. “I wish I could visit.”
Kanata tilts his head at him. It doesn’t seem fair, now that he thinks about it. He can stand here on the shore, feeling the solidness of the sand and basking in the light of stars. But Kaoru can’t choose to visit the sea in the same way Kanata can choose to visit land.
But Kanata could help him.
“Would you like to visit?”
Kaoru’s eyes go wide. “Huh?”
“Would you like to visit my ‘home’?”
“There’s no way I can do that,” Kaoru says.
“I can ‘bless’ you.” Kanata lifts the pearl necklace which holds his water breath from beneath his shirt, showing Kaoru the enchantment shimmering over its surface.
“You... you can? Really?” Kaoru looks at the pearl with great interest.
Kanata nods. “If you would like to.”
“...Okay,” Kaoru says. “I. Sure. I’d like to.”
Kanata focuses on the necklace. Sharing breath is easy enough, with his level of power and training. He inhales the above-water air and presses the pearl to his lips. Then keeping his exhale slow and steady, he wills the enchantment in the pearl to spread away from its core. Magic is about debt. This blessing – allowing a child of the land protection in the sea—is a simple repayment for the land allowing Kanata some protection up here.
Kaoru gasps. Kanata can see the magic wafting through the air, reaching his lips and nose and finding its way into his lungs. The process is over in less than a minute, and Kanata allows his pearl necklace to drop beneath his shirt again.
“Please enter the ‘water’,” Kanata tells Kaoru. “The spell will only last until ‘dawn’, but it will give you gills and a wonderful ‘tail’. So, please explore the water around here.” He pauses, remembering their conversation. “Though maybe you won’t have time to go to my ‘home’.”
Kaoru makes that strange huffing noise again—laughter. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ll... I’ll see you back here?”
Kanata reaches into the depths of his mind. None of his future-senses or omen-senses give him any sort of foreboding. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s meet here before ‘dawn’.”
Of course, Kaoru had been skeptical of the whole mermaid thing. Even as he waded cautiously into the ocean, dipping his head under the water and inhaling, he had half expected the water to block his airways with salt and force his head back up coughing again.
Instead, it had been as easy as breathing air.
If that wasn’t proof that all this was real, he didn’t know what was. Maybe the snow globe projection could have been a trick. Maybe he just wanted mermaids to be real too badly. But to breathe underwater...
Kaoru dives with new-found confidence, taking in a long slow breath as he does so. The salt water doesn’t even sting his eyes. As he swims, he starts to move faster and easier. Glancing behind him, he realises that his legs have morphed into an emerald tail.
Mermaids are definitely real, then. Kaoru isn’t as surprised as he probably should be.
After all, this isn’t his first time meeting one.
The water grows black around Kaoru, but his vision remains clear. The details of the world around him stabilise, and he pauses in the middle of a rock arch to admire his surroundings. Everything is grey in the dimmest moonlight from above, but he can somehow sense the structure of the seabed below him and the movement of the fish swimming around him.
They’re mullet fish, Kaoru notices. His mother had often brought him to the beach. The one they’d visited the most regularly was quite close to here, actually. They would walk along the wharf, and she would teach Kaoru the species which the fishermen had caught, and Kaoru would ask her questions. Then she would sit in the sun to rest for a while, especially when her strength started to wane later on. Kaoru was old enough to play by himself by then, so he promised not to go too far and she would watch him explore.
On one such day, Kaoru had strayed a little further than usual. He’d ended up discovering a cave in the cliffside. He’d peered into it eagerly—and that had been where he’d met the mermaid.
The cave had been dark on the inside, making the glowing blue lump in the middle very obvious. Kaoru had inched carefully across the rock at the edge of the cave. He didn’t want to fall into the water, even if it was shallow. As he’d gotten closer, he’d realised the blue glow came from what seemed like… a shock of hair? Hair belonging to a person—a boy about his age.
A boy with the tail of a fish.
Kaoru hadn’t been able to contain his gasp, but the boy hadn’t moved. Wading awkwardly to where he lay, Kaoru realised that his eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow.
“Hello?” Kaoru had said. His voice sounded too big and echoey in the cave. He reached out to touch the boy’s shoulder.
The boy stirred.
“Hello, are you awake?” Kaoru tilted his head, trying to get a glimpse of the boy’s face.
The boy didn’t respond. Then suddenly, he surged upwards, splashing seawater into Kaoru’s face. He yelped.
“A...” The boy spoke slowly, as though his mouth was unused to the movement. His voice was pale and melodic. “Are you… a ‘human’?”
“Yeah,” Kaoru said. “…Are you a mermaid?”
The boy coughed, wiping his mouth with his arm. “Yes.”
They had fallen easily into the rhythms of conversation after that. It helped that they had been children, willing to trust in the magic of the world. The mermaid boy had told Kaoru about the grand palace he lived in, his many sisters and a few older brothers, and the shrine which had raised him as a young child. Kaoru had told him about his house with his mother and sometimes his father, the gold stickers his teacher gave him for being good, and the park near his school with the really tall slide.
Time had slipped by like water. Before Kaoru knew it, the cave had grown darker than before, and the glow of the boy’s blue hair had become the main source of illumination in the cave. Worry twinged in his chest—was his mother looking for him?
“I have to go now,” Kaoru said. He paused, looking around. “Are you gonna be okay here?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “I can... swim ‘home’.”
“Okay,” Kaoru said. “See you later.”
“...See you ‘later’.” The boy smiled.
Kaoru had smiled back before turning around, calling a goodbye over his shoulder. He had waded awkwardly back towards the cave entrance, but he didn’t even need to go all the way before he found his mother. She had indeed been looking for him, her eyes wide with worry in the dimming twilight.
“I met a mermaid,” Kaoru had said. But when he turned around, the boy’s blue glow was gone and his mother’s expression was as concerned as before.
Kaoru had spent the car ride home still drenched in seawater and surrounded by his mother’s chiding silence. But he still remembers that day, even if he’d started to think it had been a dream. He still remembers what they talked about, and he remembers the feeling of magic which had seemed to strengthen each time he had visited the place.
They’d never really met again, even though Kaoru had wanted to. The boy’s memory had faded more and more with the years, he realises. What had his name been? Maybe something like—
Kanata stands. “Thank you,” he tells the critters in the rock pools. “I suppose that ‘confirms’ it.”
The water becomes shallow around Kanata as he leaves the recesses of the cave. It’s the same cave he’d first washed up in years ago, when he’d hit his head exploring close to the shore. The memory of the royal blood spilled then still lives within these rocks.
He’d been lucky a kind person had found him—that Kaoru had found him.
But Kanata had been young then. He hadn’t realised how dangerous it was to be alone and unconscious so far from home. All he’d known is that he’d been wanting to meet a human for a while, and he found Kaoru fascinating. It had been so fun to hear about life on land, and Kanata was sad when their time had been over. He’d spent some time with the shallow water creatures when Kaoru left, but it hadn’t been the same. So he’d returned home for the inevitable scolding.
At least it turned out well after that. Several hours of worried nursemaids and angry chancellors later, it had been agreed that there was no way to completely stop Kanata from exploring. His father had been curious when he was younger as well, and Kanata thinks he’s always had a soft spot for his youngest son. So instead of a complete ban, his father had placed a sand-charm on him: Kanata’s presence would be obscured from land-dwellers’ memories, as if covered in sand. Kanata could return to the shore, and this time, he could even mingle with the humans in the bright areas.
There was a catch, though—Kanata would have to self-study the intricate systems behind the deceptively simple transfiguration magic which allowed the merfolk to gain legs and dull their senses enough to face the noise of the human world. And so Kanata had paid attention to his magic lessons with a newfound motivation which made his tutors very happy. It wasn’t long before he was blinking in sunlight, stumbling on legs for the first time—now among humans, and with human clothes.
“Hello!”
A familiar voice had broken Kanata’s disorientation. Kanata turned, warmth rising in his chest.
“Kaoru,” he said.
Kaoru blinked. “How do you know my name...?”
It made sense. Kanata had read that memory-sand could only be washed away by the sea, and it was impossible for land-dwellers to come to the sea. That’s why it was such an effective spell. But it still made his shoulders feel heavy.
“Um,” Kaoru said. “My mum said, I should make friends with people. What’s your name? Do you want to come play in the rock pools?”
And that was that. Kanata didn’t always run into Kaoru on the surface, but every time they met, Kaoru’s memories of him were gone. They played together when they were younger, and would more often stand and talk as the years passed. But Kanata thought that Kaoru became warmer towards him each year. Warmer than he should have been with a stranger. Maybe something remained under the sand.
But Kanata was still a prince. The time he had for coming to the surface lessened and lessened. At some point one of his cousins’ families closer to the throne all met their ends in a mysterious accident, and Kanata’s responsibilities had increased. And with less surfacings, his chances to see Kaoru lessened too.
The last time had been a passing coincidence.
Kanata had surfaced to a bright sunny day, leaving the dregs of succession training somewhere far and deep behind him. With a pleased jolt, he’d almost immediately spotted someone with familiar golden hair by the shore. But before Kanata could call out Kaoru’s name, an unfamiliarly clear and high-pitched voice rang out from somewhere.
Kaoru started to turn. Their eyes met. Kaoru’s smile—cheerfully affectionate, framed by the wind and the waves, as if he was genuinely glad to see him—had been brilliant. For a moment, Kanata’s words dried.
But then Kaoru kept turning, looking past Kanata. An unfamiliar feeling, like a stone sinking at the bottom of the sea, had settled in Kanata’s chest. He turned away so that he couldn’t see Kaoru’s face as he called out.
“Hey!”
When Kaoru gets back to the shore, a lone figure stands by the water.
The water must have done something, cleared the dusty corners of his mind and let things he shouldn’t naturally have forgotten wash up to the surface. Kaoru remembers now. How did he even forget? He drags himself through the shallow water as best as he can, towards the figure—towards Kanata—and calls out.
“Hey!”
Kanata turns at the sound, revealing a serious expression and overcast blue eyes. He kneels to Kaoru’s height and holds out a hand.
Kaoru pauses. For a moment, they stay like that.
“Hey,” Kaoru says again. He takes Kanata’s hand, which is steady as Kaoru hauls himself up.
Kanata is the first to smile. The greyness in his eyes lifts, and he crouches to join Kaoru on the sand. “You have ‘grown’.”
Kaoru laughs, looking away. He lifts his hand to the back of his head—where his hair now hangs long, and Kanata’s no longer does. “So have you! I didn’t recognise you at first.”
“Of course,” Kanata says. “Everyone ‘grows’, Kaoru.”
They sit by the shore as the pre-dawn grows lighter and lighter. Kaoru feels as though he should say something, but the words won’t come when faced with Kanata’s quiet smile. His head feels light.
“Kaoru,” Kanata says, before Kaoru can probably embarrass himself ineloquently. “I am glad we have met again.”
“Yeah.” Kaoru grins, head still spinning a bit. He doesn’t need to say anything, he realises—Kanata understands. “Hey, so, uh, I’ll see you again later?”
“Of course.” Kanata giggles. “We can’t say goodbye until the morning. Don’t you want to see my ‘tail’?”
Kaoru does, but he’d meant more… “How about later later? After today.”
Kanata looks at him, gaze growing distant, and Kaoru wonders if he’d said something wrong. But then Kanata’s face softens into a smile, and he nods emphatically.
“Yes,” Kanata says, as the first of the sun’s rays starts to shine behind him. “We will ‘meet again’.”