And another round for y'all! This one is QLFC round 5, and the main theme was to write about different types of dimensions. Captains were assigned to write about a dimension beneath the earth, hereby defined as a secret world or society that operates beneath the Earth. After some questioning, I have come up with the fic I am writing now! I hope you enjoy it!
Word Count: 1012
Myrtle Warren was sitting in one of her favorite places to hide now that she was a ghost—the last stall of the prefects' bathroom. Some students had been there recently, and had, as usual, taken great pleasure in teasing her about her horn-rimmed glasses until she took up the pastime that had earned her the nickname of Moaning Myrtle. They had eventually left her to it, leaving for their classes or whatever it was they had to do.
Eventually, she ran out of tears—it briefly crossed her mind to question how she could produce tears now that she was dead—and looked around the bathroom. It was empty now, except for the portrait of the gorgeous mermaid in a corner of the room. Quite a few times, she wanted to destroy the portrait because its subject seemed too cheerful, but she couldn't actually touch anything or affect anything in the living world.
The mermaid was giggling as she normally did, but something caught Myrtle's attention. She seemed to be pointing at something.
"What do you want?" Myrtle demanded of the mermaid. "If you're trying to show me something, just do it!"
The mermaid never spoke for some reason, and Myrtle didn't particularly care why. If anything, the portrait probably would have been even more annoying if she did speak. Myrtle floated over to see what all the fuss was about. She peered out the window and saw a few people swimming around in the water of the Great Lake, but before she could get a good look at them, they ducked beneath the surface. She watched for whoever it had been to come back up, but they never did. She knew from her time being alive that whoever had been swimming would certainly have had to come up for air by now.
The reason should have been obvious. So much for having been a Ravenclaw, she thought. Mermaids were in the lake, that she had read in one of her textbooks when she'd been alive. She'd never seen them before, but now she could go to investigate. No
Flying out of the window, she made her way to where she'd seen the figures submerge. The water would have been cold to her living body, but she didn't feel anything now that she was a ghost. She made her way through the murky waters of the Black Lake and eventually saw some vague shapes heading into the depths.
Myrtle began her pursuit of the figures, floating through fields of dark green kelp and past the Grindylows and other creatures of the lake.
Eventually, she passed a large rock with paintings of various mermen and women holding spears and pitchforks, while others were depicted chasing the famed Giant Squid. The merpeople portrayed looked nothing like the mermaid in the painting in the bathroom. That mermaid was beautiful and aloof. The mermaids on the rock looked vicious and rough.
Intrigued, Myrtle floated the way she'd seen the figures travel. Passing another patch of kelp, the merpeople's village was revealed to her. The homes were crude, made from rough-hewn stone, stained with dark algae. Some of the houses had Grindylows or kelpies tied on stakes in front of them, like dogs. Still others had gardens tended by their inhabitants.
The merpeople were even more vicious-looking than even the stone carving had suggested. Their skin was as grey as the stone of their houses, their hair was a mess of green tangles, and their eyes were a burning yellow. Many of them wore necklaces of pebbles around their necks.
Myrtle realized that these merpeople weren't like the pretty, flirty mermaids depicted in the Muggle stories she'd been told all her life, nor the mermaid who had directed her here. These were closer to the descriptions she'd read of selkies. They were visually repellent, but like their cousins, they held an affinity for music (for she did hear many of them singing as they went about their daily tasks).
Myrtle floated through the houses and towards what appeared to be the village center, where an enormous statue of a merperson stood, holding a pitchfork. Myrtle made her way over to it, examining it as closely as she dared.
Just then, a pair of merpeople swam quickly over to her and crossed their spears before her, attempting to bar her from getting any closer to the statue. They couldn't do anything to her because she was a ghost, but the intention was clear enough—they did not want her to approach any closer to the statue for whatever reason. Maybe it was ceremonial or something.
"What have I done wrong now?" Myrtle questioned, beginning to sob at the thought that she would be yelled at by these mermaids who had never met her before.
"Do not approach the statue, ghost!" the first merperson rasped. That was a surprise as well. Even though they were outwardly rather unappealing, their singing voices had lived up to the reputation of the mermaids, and she had expected their normal speaking voices to match their singing. She had read that ghosts were able to understand all languages, but even knowing that, she had been totally wrong about these mermaids.
"I am dead!" she sobbed. "It's awful to be this way! Nobody cared about me when I was alive, and no one cares about what they do to me now that I'm dead!"
The mermaids gave her a surprised look. They appeared to have no idea what to do in the face of her tearless sobs.
"Just leave now," the second mermaid screeched. "Do not return here. We mermaids are separate and demand to remain so."
"Fine," Myrtle let out another sob. "I was never wanted, it's not a new feeling."
She floated away from the hostile mermaids. Her final thought about them was that she liked these mermaids better than the versions depicted in the stories she'd been told as bedtime stories. They held a bitterness and anger against the world that Myrtle herself understood all too well. They seemed more ral because they weren't… flawless.