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The sun rises as Eric finds his way back to the shoreline. Although the sea was kind enough to calm down, his body is heavy from his journey. But his heart feels much heavier. Eric knows if he focuses too much on the night for just a second, he won’t make it back to land. He sees his mother, Grimsby, and others run to the shore to meet him.
As he tries to stumble out, he cannot find it in himself to fully leave the sea. It’s the last pieces Eric has of her; the dress he grips tightly in his hand, and the ocean that gave her to him but took her twice over.
“We- we need boats,” he heaves, as Grimsby walks into the water to lead him out.
“Sire… please,” Grimsby speakers. Eric takes shaky steps back, further into the ocean.
“No, no. I have to find her!”
He knows how he looks like a madman, yelling an order while soaked in saltwater, his shirt and her dress destroyed from the fight. He recognizes the sympathy and worry in Grimsby’s face. No one else has spoken. They don’t understand the fear that drowns his lungs faster than water ever could.
“I-I lost her once. I can’t. I can’t lose her again,” his voice waivers in his pleading. The weight of what he has witnessed of Ariel threatens to drag him down. “Please. Please, no.”
Eric turns away from Grimsby, mesmerized as the sun glistens on the calming waves, and holds the dress to his heart. How dare the sky lighten while she is lost to him once again. He feels her absence in the bitter wind that chills the sea, in the way her voice rings in his ears without end.
I want to tell you everything.
Immeasurable sorrow settles deep into his heart. His soul is overwhelmed in despair. The way Eric felt when Ariel first rescued him; addicted, determined, longing; is nothing compared to the loss he feels now. At least before, he had only her song to desire. Now, he knows her touch, her laughter, and the way her eyes sparkled with curiosity. The way she looked up at him, and how her smile lit his heart on fire. Now, there was so much more of her to long for. To miss, and mourn.
The Queen walks into the ocean to him and places a gentle hand on his back, as if she knows he’ll fall without support.
“Eric. I’m so sorry. I can see how real your feelings for her are. It’s just… you’re both from two completely different worlds.”
Her words cut him like a knife. The ocean world, known and uncharted, he can cross. He’s crossed it time and time before. He would find her. But the terrible question that’s been burnt in his mind since he watched the sea witch become one with the sea is asking over and over, “ Is she even still out there?”
Grimsby attempts again to lead him to shore. “Eric, we can gather a crew, once we make sure you’re in good health-“
Is she even still out there?
The fear is all consuming. He doesn’t understand how anyone could focus on anything else.
Ariel! Grab onto my hand!
“The waves were so tall. It was so dark. I saw her, on- on a ship.”
Look out!
Eric distantly registers his mother gliding her hand to his shoulder to squeeze, and splashing behind him from what he assumes is Grimsby wading to them. But he loses himself in what he remembers, the waves pulling and pushing him, stealing his oxygen, but not before his guardian angel grabs his hand to lead him to air. A monsterous tentacle crashing between them. Watching the sea witch raise the trident towards him as Ariel’s boat crashes into her, and her grasping hands crushing the ship where he had last seen the owner of his heart.
“She turned the boat- to cut into the sea witch. It was so dark… all I saw was the witch sink and grab onto- the boat went down with her,”
The quiet splashes stop instantaneously. Grimsby knows what is implied.
“Eric..” His mother treads, and it’s the sorrow in her voice that cuts the final string holding him up. Not entirely in touch with himself, he feels seashells and rocks cut into his knees and the silk of the dress on his bare chest.
Eric sees how the water goes farther than he could ever imagine, and knows even the infinite expanse of the ocean cannot begin to measure how long a grieving lifetime will feel without her.
He silently curses the sun for rising to start a torturous, endless cycle of day and night he cannot share with her. Time will carry him further from her, every second worse than the last.
“I think-“ he sobs into his mothers waiting arms, dress still caressing his heart. “I think she-she’s gone.”
The entire kingdom is shaken with the prince’s grief.
———
The rest of the day passes in a blur. Eric’s mind is fogged by sea foam and salty mist, and haunted by entrancing brown eyes and orange hair. He registers very few things.
Eric knows it takes his mother and Grimsby until the sun is fully risen to drag him out of the ocean. When they do, it vaguely reminds him of the palace guards carrying him back to the castle after his shipwreck. Confused, hurt, and with the nagging yet undeniable feeling that he has forgotten a piece of himself to the sea.
He knows his mother helps him into fresh clothes, and holds his face in her hands as she begs him to rest with sadness in her eyes. It makes Eric feel like a child. When she closes his bedroom door behind her, he briefly wishes she’d stay to lie and tell him that everything will be alright.
He remembers falling onto the bed, not bothering to find a blanket or rest his head on a pillow. A bed that has only ever occupied him now feels far too empty with no one by his side.
He doesn’t remember drifting off into a pitiful sleep, or the nightmares that followed. But when he jolts awake, with tear tracks down his face and an ever expanding ache, he can fill in the blanks.
One look out to his balcony tells him he’s slept the day away, despite the lingering exhaustion he feels in his bones. The night is perfectly clear. Eric takes it as a betrayal that the stars would dare bless the evening sky after the world has already ended. As he lays back down, trying to control his breathing, he hears whispers coming from the other side of his door.
“Leave him be, Your Majesty.”
Eric knows of only one person in their kingdom that would tell his mother what to do.
“I want to make sure he’s resting, I refuse to keep seeing him hurting like this-“
“With all due respect, Eric is completely fine. Tired from his night at sea, yes, but he is perfectly alright. It’s his heart that needs mending.”
But there is nothing left to be mended, Eric’s heart screams. His heart resides in the same place as his quinine, now; the bottom of the sea.
“The girl-“
Aries. Aries? Ari-. Ari-ul. Ariel? That’s a beautiful name. Written in the stars.
“Ariel.”
“Yes, she was a sea creature. Surely Eric must know-“
“If you could have seen him with Ariel, you would understand. Their connection was instant, and I have never seen Eric so at peace and carefree, even at sea. They complimented each other wonderfully. She was the only one that let him forget about his mystery girl. But it was Ariel, all along. And to find that the two he loved the most were the same girl, but lose both in one night…
There are no words to describe Eric's loss.”
It’s disastrous, how torn apart Eric is. He can hear a portion of his own grief mirrored in Grimsby. It reminds him how real she was, how much light she shed on his life and island in such a short period of time. Ariel nestled herself into the piece of his heart he didn’t even know was reserved for her.
How did he not realize the truth? How could he be so blinded by her beauty, her attention, that he never put the pieces together? Eric runs himself in circles. If he knew sooner, he could have done something, figured out how she got here and who stole her voice. He could have found a way to protect her. Save her.
In his mind, he is back on the beach, choosing differently and turning away from the stolen siren song.
Do not worry about what should be; focus on what is.
The melody is enchanting, but it means nothing without Ariel. A beautiful voice is still just a voice, and that’s all. But Ariel- kind, gentle, passionate, curious, wonderful, Ariel - was real, and more magical than any siren song. She was what made her song enchanting, and not the other way around. Eric never wanted to hear a melody that didn’t come from her lips.
He imagines himself running to her bedroom, the way he meant to. Barely stopping to catch his breath before knocking on her door. She would open it slowly, and smile with something that could take Eric out at his knees when she realized it was him. Maybe she would welcome him in, and he would take her hands like a lifeline to confess his endless affection. If they kissed, just once, Ariel would still be here. They’d share a million more kisses. They’d visit the shoreline for picnics and strolls. They’d watch the sun fall into the ocean in admiration, without fear that nightfall would take it all away from them.
“…Let me know if he awakes, Grimsby.”
With no meaningful words, Eric is ripped from the fantasy world where he gets everything he’s ever wanted. The night is cold and lonely, the ocean, once a home, now a bitter reminder, and the sunset that decided his and Ariel’s fate has already passed.
He’s already made the wrong choice, and it cost him a life.
———
Two sunrises and two sunsets pass, and each one buries Eric’s heart deeper in the sand.
Sleep does not come easy to him anymore, if at all. In a twisted form of punishment, he forces himself to watch the sunset from his bedroom balcony, and raw memories terrorize his mind. Meanwhile, nighttime is too loud. He hears crickets talking, soft waves crashing, and whistling winds that sound too much like music. Everything reminds him of her.
For another night, Eric takes his sorrows onto his balcony. There are two lonely chairs, but he takes neither. His elbows dig into the railing as he leans for support, and he buries his head in his hands. As he looks out to the distance, Eric wonders if the waters are in mourning too. They’ve been eerily calm since the storm, as if the sea king is also numb in his despair. Does he blame Eric? Would the ocean come alive to swallow him whole if he dared to voyage again?
Eric is almost lost in thought enough to miss the golden light that strikes through the sea.
His head whips up to look for a cause, and sees nothing. But the air is charged. The hairs on his arm stand as if he’s been shocked, and the night breeze becomes a tad warmer. Everything looks the same, yet Eric feels like the world has been flipped upside down.
And for the first time since that torturous night, his heart is called to the ocean.
Eric’s walk turns quickly into a sprint as he flies through the castle, past the walls of his kingdom, down to the markets. His soul craves and flinches from any definitive answer of Ariel’s whereabouts, desperate to know the answer and terrified to know the truth.
This time, as he stumbles down the path to the shoreline where they met, he hears the strike. Similar to lightning, but softer, without the purpose to hurt. If it’s possible, Eric runs faster, the moon his only guide as to where to put his foot next. He doesn’t know what to expect when he reaches the shore, but it isn’t the same old sight he’s memorized throughout his life. The beach is untouched, pretending as if some magical force had not run its course through the grains of sand and washed up seaweed.
Desperate, he cries despite his heaving breaths, “Hello! Is anyone there!?”
Eric holds his breath, waiting for any changing sound. The silence that follows is unwelcome. Had there been a golden light at all? Is he going mad with his all-consuming grief?
“Please!” He screams into the world, not caring if he wakes every creature on the beach.
Running wild hands through his hair, Eric spins, searching for something. Anything. Begging to be wrong, begging the worlds that collided them to prove what he thought happened to Ariel that night to be different.
Losing his hope, he prepares to yell one last time-
And to his right, something in the sea reflects the moonlight.
A silhouette; one he could recognize with his eyes shut, his hands tied behind his back, without any doubt.
“Eric?”
If the ocean wants to swallow him whole for his sins, so be it.
He runs into its grasp for her.
I’m not leaving you.
“Ariel,” he whispers at first, not completely trusting the words that slip from his mouth. “Ariel!”
Her dress absorbs the moon's rays, sparkling and iridescent in shades of green, purple, and blue, similar to her tail. It’s strapless, with nothing covering her collarbones but her cascading orange locks. It’s nothing like he’s ever seen before, and Eric is overwhelmed, because it's her in the dress . After everything, she’s moments away from him, despite the odds, tragedies, and world dividing differences. She looks like a figment of his best dreams.
“Hi!” Ariel greets him as she tries to meet him in the middle, but he’s too quick. Too desperate to close the distance.
By the time Eric reaches her, he is knee deep. The water is freezing, but she’s laughing, and he can hear it, and it makes him forget the misery of the last few days. He vows to make her laugh until the day he dies.
Ariel wraps her arms around his waist with such vicious longing that it almost takes him down, but he grasps onto her just as tightly. He takes on her weight, refusing to let them fall. Eric lets his head rest on the crown of her head as his other arm keeps her close. It feels like they’re trying to blend together, and he welcomes the feeling. The crushing weight on Eric lifts as if it were never there at all. In relief, he closes his eyes and breathes her in.
Ariel moves back to look up at him, still holding him tightly. She is beaming, and has a wonderstruck look in her eye as if she, like him, cannot believe what she’s seeing. A lock falls in front of her face, and he gently moves it behind her ear. The sun has reason to rise again.
Eric cups her face in his hand and she melts into it, her hands coming up to hold his wrists.
“Ariel,” he whispers again. A part of him is afraid if he moves too much, breathes too loud, speaks too much, she’ll disappear.
“My father gifted me legs. Do you like them?”
Her big brown eyes never leave him, and they have a hint of mischief shimmering in them. But mostly, Eric sees his future. He feels his heart beat steady for the first time in days.
Mirroring her mischief, he takes her by the waist, lifts her, laughing, and spins her around. She yelps in surprise, but laughs with him as she holds on. The train of her dress flows behind her.
“Yes, yes! I love them!”
They’re still laughing when he sets her back on the sand, and she dives into his chest for another hug.
“I missed you, Eric, so much,” she says into his heart.
“And I, you. Desperately.” He responds, at a loss for just how much, and kisses her forehead instead.
“I thought I lost you for good,” Eric decides, voice wavering in sadness. Saying it in darkness might be easier than admitting what he thought happened in the daylight. Ariel looks up, crosses her arms around his neck, and stands on her tiptoes on his boots. She touches her nose and forehead to his.
“No. Never.”
Ariel’s magnetic promise calms the fear he has. He would cross the seven seas to follow her, wherever she may go. She is the light of his life, the missing piece that clicks everything into place. They can’t be separated by their worlds any longer; not if she is his world.
Delicately, he closes the final distance between them and presses his lips into hers. It’s everything he thought it would be, and more. Her lips are soft, and she kisses him like her touch can shatter him. It can.
They part, only because their kiss becomes more teeth as they smile into each other. Eric is at peace; they have a million more ahead of them.
“I love you,” he swears to her. It feels like flying. The sun will rise, the ocean is salty, and he loves her with every atom in his body.
Ariel tilts her head and squeezes his neck lightly, as if to remind herself he is as real as she is. If possible, her smile grows.
“I love you more.”
Hand in hand, they leave the ocean together.