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There comes a point in most of the conversations she has with the people she meets, where Ariel is asked a simple question. Discussions with everyone from pompous diplomats, haughty monarchs, timid servants, boisterous market sellers, even wide eyed, curious children, all eventually lead to the same question: “Don’t you miss being a mermaid?”
Ariel tries her hardest to always stay humble and gracious and kind and welcoming to the constant, invasive, overwhelming questions that everyone has for her about her former life. But Ariel didn’t leave her whole world behind on a whim. She has good reason for leaving the ocean, and it was all a bit too complicated and dismal for her to unload onto strangers. She herself hasn’t fully processed her feelings on the matter, only speaking her half-formed thoughts aloud when she’s alone with Eric.
For as long as she could remember, she had felt disconnected from the ocean around her. Taboo as it was, she had always been fascinated by the mystery of the surface. It was so incredibly close, yet so inconceivably far. As a child, still unaware of social conventions, she would rattle on to whoever was in earshot about all of the rumors she’d heard about the human world and the sunken treasures she’d only caught glimpses of. But instead of excitement and awe, the responses she’d receive were of annoyance, or disgust, or fear, or worst of all, avoidance.
Ariel never once felt that she was understood underwater. Everyone seemed determined to crush her curiosity, to make her feel absolutely terrible and even ashamed for wanting to learn more about the world above. It wasn’t just her father, although he was her main obstacle. All of her sisters, in their own ways, would try to dissuade or distract or redirect her attention from up above to down in the depths where they felt she belonged.
Ariel knew that her family was only trying to protect her, that their actions were based on the fear they held from the trauma of her mother’s passing. But no amount of thinking logically could change the conclusion she’d come to: she was a pest, the annoying, troublesome littlest sister who had the wrong interests and the wrong feelings. So she learned to withdraw, to isolate, to hide her passions and curiosities. As she grew older, she grew further and further apart from her sisters, and in turn the entire community of merpeople.
Her curiosities only increased as she got older, morphing into a desperation to leave where she was and transform entirely. She became resolute in her conviction that life would be better if she herself was different, if she was part of another world. Becoming human was the key to true happiness, to freedom. The waters she breathed seemed to suffocate her, threatening to drown her if she spent one more moment alone as just herself, with a tail instead of two legs.
The first three days she was able to live her dream weren’t easy by any means. But for the first time ever, she felt listened to, understood, appreciated. She had no voice, and in retrospect no control, but she was free. Free to explore, to learn, to unabashedly indulge in her wildest and heretofore impossible dreams of feeling sunlight on her skin, of seeing the sky’s colors in clear view, of walking and jumping and dancing on two legs.
Now her wish had been granted permanently and without strings. Her dreams were real, every day she uncovered something she didn’t even know was missing from her life previously. Everyone wanted to hear about the enchantment and allure of mermaids in the deep sea, but that was all so normal to her that it didn’t feel magical at all. Humanity is where true magic lived.
The way the weather and seasons change is magic. The phases of the moon are more exciting than anything below the waves to Ariel. The colors of sunset transforming into stars in the night sky are far more spectacular than her tail or even her hair color seems to be to the humans that compliment her. When Eric is touching her, holding her, even just looking at her with his blue eyes and warm smile, that’s him casting a spell greater than anything under the sea.
So, to put it succinctly, she doesn’t miss the ocean, not at first, not for a long time.
Sometimes, in the early mornings when Eric wakes up and his restless mind can’t fall back asleep, he’ll steal outside and find someplace to watch the sun rise. He’s always gone to the ocean to decompress. The nights have been as warm as the days this summer, so on mornings like this, Eric will slip away and dive into the water for an early morning swim.
It can’t be far past 5am when Ariel awakes without Eric by her side. She hears barking coming from outside, and when she looks out the window she sees Eric bobbing in the water, Max running in joyful circles along the shoreline.
Ariel throws on her nightgown and runs down the rugged cliffside path to join him on the shore. Max notices her arrival first, and bounds over to her happily, kicking the sand up everywhere. Eric grins wide as he sees her approach, and Ariel feels fire in her stomach when she gets close enough to see the water rippling down his bare skin.
“My darling,” he whispers after he’s waded out of the water and enveloped her in his arms. Ariel squirms and laughs as he gets her clothes all wet.
She looks over his shoulder at the ocean and realizes she hasn’t been in the water since she left it. The two of them have made plenty voyages in ships, but she hasn’t swam in the sea since she had a tail.
Ariel finds it a little funny that all her life she wanted to leave the ocean and get as far away from it as possible, and all Eric wants to do is set sail and explore his uncharted waters. But Ariel spent her whole life in the sea, now that she’s out she’s hasn’t been in any hurry to go back.
The sight of Eric’s wet hair, the water cascading down his strong body, and his gentle touch makes her think it might not be so bad to join him in the waves. He helps her peel her nightgown off and lay it across the rocks. She hopes no one else has the idea for a twilight swim along this stretch of beach; she shudders at the thought of the Queen’s reaction to the two youngest monarchs’ state of undress in such a public location.
He leads the way back into the waves confidently, but she jumps and scrambles a few feet back when she feels how ice cold the water is. She’s shocked, and instantly she begins to panic. It feels like the ocean is rejecting her, freezing her as some sort of punishment, like the ancient merfolklore she learned to fear when she was small.
Eric grabs hold of her hands, quickly explains that it always feels cold when you first get in, before your body adjusts. Her fear recedes a little, but she still grips his hand tightly as they start to wade into the waves again. They go slowly, step by step, until their entire bodies are submerged. It takes a while, but she does adjust to the temperature, just like Eric promised.
It’s weird to relearn to swim in her new body. Her limbs feel slow and awkward, and she chokes and sputters when she forgets she can’t breathe underwater. It’s so hard to remember to hold her breath, so annoying to have to keep coming up for air. A part of her wants to swim deeper and deeper like she’s used to, but she knows her body won’t allow it.
Eric can see her getting upset, and when she resurfaces with tears in her eyes, he gently grabs her arms and envelops her in a hug. “Can I show you something?” he asks, and she nods her head against his collarbone.
He lets her go and moves to her side, a hand still on her back. “Lie back,” he encourages. She does, and once she’s comfortable she opens her eyes. A calm sense of serenity washes over her as she floats gently on her back.
Ariel had always been able to travel under the sea with total freedom and ease, but not once in her life has she ever floated on the surface. It was forbidden. Not anymore. She smiles.
There’s no possible way she could ever return to her old home, at least not without magic. She’s made her choice, and her pride forbids her from doing anything but adapting to these new challenges. Her human body had so many limitations, but her life itself has ultimately been freed.
Eric removes his hand from underneath her back once he sees she’s ready, and lies down to float next to her. Together they watch the sky lighten, stripes of orange and pink appearing as the sun finally rises.
Up until this point, becoming human had been Ariel’s greatest wish, her near-singular fixation, for her entire life. She felt in her very bones that transforming into a human would solve each and every last one of her problems. Naturally, given the unprecedented circumstances of achieving her impossible dream, she was ready to take this adventure head-on and experience everything she possibly could. Of course, Ariel’s happily-ever-after wasn’t her ending, it was only her beginning. And her new reality proves to be just a bit different than what she’d dreamed it would be.
It’s dark in their room when she finally shares how she’s been feeling with Eric. He can read her so well, and she knows that he knows she’s hiding something. He’s holding her to his chest and softly stroking her hair, and she’s not falling asleep like she normally does. He gently asks her if she’s okay, and that’s when he feels her start to cry.
Ariel had felt entirely wrong for the ocean for her entire life, and frustratingly, she comes to find that she’s still out of place on land. She feels totally out of her element, a complete stranger to the culture and environment and everything around her. She was so eager to learn, and she knows it’s unintentional, but most of the people around her make her feel alienated. Ariel had felt so lonely underwater, so misunderstood and shamed for her passion. And she still feels lonely now.
At least back home she knew the customs intrinsically, knew what everything was and how everything worked. It was monotonous and dull for her, but it least she understood it. Now, she doesn’t understand anything. Gravity makes her trip and fall. Gone is the weightlessness of water- everything she tries to carry feels heavy in her arms. Her assumptions about her thingamabobs and whatsits are usually wrong, and sometimes it stings when people laugh at her misuse of items.
She constantly feels awkward in public, and it’s not helped by the unceasing attention and stares she gets any time she leaves the castle. There are small moments where she feels that it was better when she had no voice; at least then nobody knew who she was or where she came from.
Ariel so desperately wants to have real conversations with people, but it feels like strangers see her as some precious, fragile object; like an innocent, naive baby; or worst of all, an ethereal, supernatural goddess. Ariel just wants to be seen as a normal human, wants to make friendships and true connections.
It wasn’t like she was great at making friends before. Under the sea, she spent most of her time alone, or with Flounder and Scuttle. Even though she had changed physically, inside she still feels the same, still out of place and crushingly insecure.
She doesn’t want Eric to think that she’s ungrateful, that all of their sacrifice and strife had been for nothing since she’s just a stupid, silly girl who can’t appreciate what she has. She’s not used to crying, of course, and at first she feels shame as she tries to conceal her tears. But finally, after so much heartache, she discovers a blessing of being human- crying has brought her relief.
Eric lets her sob into his chest, strokes her back and caresses her hair as she heaves into his shirt. Of course he doesn’t judge her, he tells her. He understands her. It’s natural that she feels insecure, this is an entirely new world for her. But he promises that no one believes what she thinks they do about her. Perhaps they aren’t used to her kindness, seeing as she’s a royal, and most people are used to his family being stuck up, conceited snobs. This makes her laugh. He continues to assure her that everyone is not only excited to see her, but they are enraptured by her wonder and openness to new experiences.
Ariel leans up to give him a watery kiss. There would never be words for the gratitude she feels for him.
Things do end up getting better with time, just as Eric promised her. It’s inevitable that she’ll make some mistakes as she’s learning how to be a human, and once she accepts this, her confidence grows. Without the cloud of self consciousness over her head, she’s finally able to achieve the connections with others that she so desperately craves.
Ariel has always been a fast learner, and her hobbies grow to a staggering amount- cooking, gardening, painting, sewing, pottery, and more. She tries her hand at all kinds of musical instruments, but she likes banging on drums with percussionists the best. She pours over history, astronomy and geography books in the castle library. She joins the island’s choir, where she swears the other singers’ voices rival any sirens’ songs she’s ever heard. She loves going to see concerts and theatrical performances both on the island and wherever they travel.
She wants to try everything at least once. She does all the grunt work in the castle; milking cows, tending to horses, laundry, cooking, cleaning. She doesn’t see herself as above the people that work where she lives, she wants to feel fully like a part of the community.
After a while, her endless curiosities start turning into opinions, into likes and dislikes. She loves the heat of summer and the frequent rain. She loves gently swaying in hammocks. She loves skipping down the street, sitting down and crossing her legs, kicking her feet while sitting on a bench. She feels the most joy when she’s dancing- with a crowd of people at a festival, in a circle with her friends at a party, or slowly with Eric alone in their room.
She’s surprised that the sea looks blue from the beach, since it’s clear when she’s under the waves. She finds that none of her food tastes quite right until she adds salt to it. She doesn’t expect to have to drink water all the time, or that your skin gets dirty and you have to clean it so often. Her skin sweats, and dries out, and gets darker and lighter as the seasons change, and it’s all brand new to her.
Eric teaches her to fly paper airplanes and skip stones through the water. Ariel teaches him slang words and idioms from the ocean. She still misses her grotto and mourns her old treasures, but together they collect more and more trinkets from their travels until their collection threatens to overflows their study.
She's building a whole life on land, a land she could only dream about before. She doesn't have to dream anymore.
It’s not for quite a while that she starts feeling homesick for the sea, but distance does eventually make the heart grow fonder. Once a week she meets Flounder, Sebastian and Scuttle along the shore to share everything that’s going on in their worlds, and she begins to walk away from those meetings with a small pang in her chest. She sees meadows of flowers and thinks about the coral reefs she grew up near. Groups of noisy children pass her in the town center, and suddenly she’s swimming by schools of fish, searching for Flounder to steal him away so they can explore. She remembers how she could sit on a single rock in a busy current and count hundreds of different species of fish and other creatures in a single hour. When Eric stays up late asking her wide-eyed questions about mermaid customs and culture, she realizes how much of the ocean’s beauty she took for granted.
The coral moon meetings are held on the shore now, and Ariel’s job is to bridge the gap between the human world and ocean. She is stunned- her family listens with rapt attention as she speaks of unity and cultural exchange. Eric is thrilled to join the meetings and begin official diplomatic relations with Atlantica. Ariel feels that for the first time, her father and sisters are actually trying to understand her. She finally feels respected and connected to her family.
She always gets a visit by at least one of her sisters during mer holidays. She misses the underwater festivals terribly, but they always bring her gifts from the ocean, which she lovingly stores in hers and Eric’s overflowing collection.
Ariel is thrilled to see more and more mermaids popping up out of the waves to gaze upon the island, to wave hello to her, or even to swim to the shore and meet humans. It warms her whole being to know that after years and years of division and fear, her worlds can now coexist peacefully.
Eric tells her that she’s the reason any of this is even possible. She just feels grateful. Her love for Eric, for humanity, and for the ocean all coexist inside her, all balance beautifully within her heart. She doesn't have to choose one over the other. She is free.