It's somebody's birthday! So, we've got a new story! I hope you love it, babe, and you have a great day.

~TLL~

Jude looked upward to see the waves rolling above him, close enough that he could practically see the sunlight. He flicked his tail behind him and came slightly closer to breaking the surface.

"This isn't a good idea."

He rolled his eyes and looked over his shoulder to see Mariana swimming after him. The water spread her hair out behind her as she raced to catch up with him.

"You don't have to be so worried."

"Actually, I do." With one last flick of her mermaid's tail, she was next to him, her dark eyes burrowing into his. "Jude, you can't want this."

"Can't what? Want to know more about the world other than the one that we're trapped in? I know that Mom won't like it and I know that it's wrong but you aren't my babysitter. You're just supposed to be my sister."

Mariana shook her head at him. "And I'm supposed to have a sister! Why would you care about the human world now? Mom told us it was dangerous and we didn't listen and we were up there anyway and now … Now, Callie's gone. The humans killed her, just like Mom said that they would!"

Jude looked away from her, down toward the bottom of the ocean. They were so close to the surface that he couldn't even see the far away sand that was down there. He was of the merfolk – the depths were supposed to be their home. Yet, all of his life, he and siblings had been fascinated with the boats that had passed overhead, carrying humans. These creatures that were so like them but so different at the same time, these creatures that weren't allowed to know that they existed, because their mother had warned them that things would go terribly again, as they had in the past, if humans were reminded of merfolk existence. And it had been more than a warning. Their mother wasn't just any mother – she was the queen of Atlantica and, as the royal children, they were expected to take heed, though the only one of them that ever had was their queen's first son, Brandon. The rest of them had been adopted – Callie and Jude had been found abandoned on the palace steps and Mariana had been rescued from the sea witch's cave, her parents having made a bargain that they couldn't fulfill, giving up her to the sea witch's custody and resulting in her brother being cursed.

"What about Jesus?" Jude asked, trying not to think of Callie and trying to get Mariana to come along with him. "Are you really not going to see him again?"

"Don't make this about him," Mariana snapped. "This isn't about him. This is about you and your obsessions."

"It's not an obsession," Jude said, slowly starting to move. She grabbed onto his hand. "You know that. We've talked about it. Callie's yelled at me for it. I know this is my family. I love you but I've never felt right down here and something about feeling the wind on my face and feeling my hair dry and direct sunlight on my skin … Something about the feels right to me! I can't give up that feeling."

"Mom's going to kill you. Don't let her hear that."

"I know." It was the one thing that he had never been able to confide in Queen Stef about. She had raised him from the time that he was a child, she was everything to him, and, yet, he knew that this was the one thing that she would never be able to understand or accept. The world of humans was one that was off-limits to any merfolk and he had never been allowed to forget it. "Come with me."

Mariana glanced upward.

"I'm going with or without you."

With a few flicks of his long blue tail, Jude broke the surface. He took a deep breath, feeling the air fill his lungs. It was such a different feeling than the way breathing underwater felt and something about this made him feel much more satisfied. He let his arms float along the surface, looking around him. On the horizon, he could see the barest hint of land that held human civilization. There were craggy cliffs towering above him but there had never been people that lived there. He had never let himself get too close, though he had desperately wanted to at times. He had wanted to see it and see how real human cities worked. But he had always kept himself in the wide, open waters of the ocean where only ships crossed. Mostly, it was because Callie had never let him go alone. And, now that she was gone, Mariana was behind him, still making sure that he wasn't alone.

He let his arms float to the surface, the sun just starting to dry off the fine hairs on his arms before the water lapped over him. He took another deep breath, bobbing along the tops of the waves. He swam with his head above the water, heading out to the sharp rocks that many a ship had run ins with before. On one of the rocks perched a seagull. Jude could see the bird playing with something, the sun glittering off of it. Jude wanted to call out to him but he couldn't risk someone else hearing the sound. Whether it was a ship that he hadn't noticed or a dumb adventurer on the cliffs above him, Jude knew that he couldn't draw anymore attention to himself than he needed to. Otherwise, his mother would have his tail.

Besides, it was always more fun to sneak up on him and then let out a call of, "Jesus!"

With a predictable squawk, the bird rolled off the rock and splashed into the water. Mariana picked him up in her arms and placed him firmly back on the rock, pulling herself up on the boulder.

"Watch yourself, Jesus."

Jesus opened his wings and shook out his feathers, spraying water droplets all over Jude.

"One more time and I swear –"

"Swear what?" Jude asked. "Gonna swim down and catch me?"

"I used to swim," Jesus said mournfully, dipping one webbed foot in the water. "I used to be you."

"I know."

Jude had never known Jesus before the curse had turned him into a seagull. He had met him as a bird, the one time that Stef had authorized merfolk to go to the surface to track down the young animal. They had found him and settled him on the rock that he now lived on. Stef had used her trident to make his rock a protected place, one that no one could harm him on, and, so, he rarely left. He flew to the top of the cliffs to get food and then he was back down. Jude didn't understand his decision to stay grounded. If he had the ability to see more and do more, he would.

"I was better looking, though. Look at you. You have the face of a twelve-year old."

"You've been saying that since I was thirteen," Jude snorted. "I'm sixteen. Find a new insult."

"Bird brain doesn't have it in him."

"I will push you off this rock."

"Jesus, you're, like, ten inches tall. There's no way you're getting me off this rock!"

The way they argued reminded Jude of Callie and the way that they used to talk to one another. It was too hard to listen to and he found himself scanning over the horizon. It was then that he saw it: a ship. He could see a ship!

"I'll be back."

"Jude –"

Jude dove back beneath the waves, knowing that he could move faster when he was under the water. He came up on the ship and he carefully poked his head above the water. It was broad daylight, much more of a risk of being seen, and it still didn't stop him. There were sailors up on deck. Jude grabbed onto one of the ropes that was trailing in the water, letting the ship pull him through the waves. He looked up again as he heard a woman's loud voice shout, "Prince!"

A sandy-haired man laughed, leaning back on side of the ship so that Jude could only see the back of his head, his hair swaying in the winds. "Lena, you are the reason that sailors always said women were bad luck on ships."

"I'm not going to watch you do something foolish and die."

"I'm the prince. I can't be wrapped in cotton. I have to sail, I have to lead. Come on, let go a little. I'm not a child anymore, you're not a nanny."

"I am here to look out for you."

"And nag me."

The woman finally came into view – a pretty woman, with dark curls and dark skin, a shawl over her head to protect herself from the bright sun.

Jude just stared up at them. He didn't need to see the man's face. He didn't need to see either of their faces. He knew these two. The prince's ship often crossed through. The prince liked to sail and he often took a route around the cliffs and Jude would be lying if he said he hadn't often waited for this particular ship. He was fascinated with the idea of a human who loved the water. He wondered how he saw the world that Jude called his home. He wondered what the prince, whose name was Connor as he had often heard Lena shout, would think of the fish that humans never saw and of Atlantica. He wondered about the prince as much as he wondered about the rest of the human world combined. He wanted to be able to talk to someone about the human world who wanted to talk to him about his world. He wanted the give and the take and he just wanted to talk to a human.

The prince always seemed so curious about the water. Jude didn't think that he would hurt him before being a merfolk. He didn't seem like the type of human that Stef was always warning them to be aware of and to avoid. If only Jude ever saw him alone. He was a prince, and, so, it seemed, he never was. Jude was the youngest of Stef's children but he was still a prince of Atlantica. Yet, he didn't have the kind of bodyguards and people around him that Connor always did. It made him wonder if there was more badness in the human world, if there was more that a human prince needed to be protected from. He wanted the opportunity to ask. The same as he wanted the opportunity to ask about the bright lights that humans sometimes shot up into the sky in their arrays of colour, the same as he wanted to ask about the clothing they wore, and the way that he wanted to know what a human house looked like, compared to the palace in Atlantica.

He wanted to know.

"Lena, will you tell me the story? The one my mother liked?"

"About the merfolk."

Jude gripped the rope tighter and risked pulling himself up a little higher, risking it so that he could grip every word. The humans had known about them once upon a time, it was why Stef was so adamant that they stay out of the way, now. If humans saw them again, they would be that much more fascinated. He knew that. It was why Callie had died. They had seen the flick of her tail, and had shouted that they had seen one, throwing spears. One had caught her and he and Mariana had taken her in the arms and gotten her home, but even the queen's magic wasn't enough to save her from the human's weapons.

"Yes."

"You know that story, Prince Connor, probably better than I do."

"Probably," Connor agreed with a laugh. "She loved that story. She really believed she saw one, once. She said that she had a dark green tail and long blonde hair, was wearing almost nothing and was sunning herself, on the rocks, just over there. She said that as soon as the mermaid realized she was being looked at, she disappeared. Right below the water."

"She was just a child, then," Lena said. "Sixteen, on the ship over to be married to your father. She probably hadn't slept the whole journey. You know how she hated boats. And the water."

"And yet, she talked a lot of mermaids." Connor laughed and Jude smiled at the sound, leaning his head against the sun-warmed wood of the ship. "I don't think she was crazy. I think that she was right. There's got to be something out there that we don't know."

"You believe there's people under the water?"

"Not people, Lena, merfolk. I think that we could find them, if only we could swim deep enough. Do you think they're curious about us too? Do you think I might ever see one? Do you think they're more fish or more human?"

Jude laughed under his breath.

"Come on, Prince Connor. We're almost home. It's time to think of more practical things."

Almost home? Jude lifted his head from the side of the ship and looked around him. They were too close to the human world! What if there had been another ship? What if someone had seen him? Stef's warnings filled his head and, for a moment, fear filled his heart. Jude threw himself from the netting, hitting the water with the smallest flash that he could manage. Under the water, he turned to look up and he saw that the prince was staring downward. Had he heard? Might he have known? He wondered if the prince could see him now. But, then, Connor turned away and Jude knew that the prince couldn't have brought himself to look away if he really had been spotted.

Jude dove deeper, just to be sure he was out of sight, and then headed back to Mariana and Jesus.

Like the last time we did a Disney spin-off, this story will only be updating once a month! I hope you enjoy.

On tumblr I'm: we are all of legend now (with dashes between every word). If you want to find my replies to anon reviews, add backslash tagged backslash anon dash replies. If you want to see anything I post about Part Of Your World, add backslash tagged backslash part dash of dash your dash world. Note that the punctuation is spelled out due to fanfiction's restrictions. If you have any problems accessing the extra content on tumblr please send me a message and I can help you out!

I don't own anything recognizable – that being either TheFosters characters or anything affiliated with Disney.

~TLL~