Chapter I: Dissolve


Princess Ariel's heart had stopped. It felt like the most important thing in the world to her. It was supposed to be beating. And her arms and tail weren't supposed to be dissolving into sea foam.

She also couldn't move.

Suddenly Ariel felt very silly. Of course her tyrant of a father and Sebastian had been wrong, of course she'd been right to leave the sea and pursue the human Prince Eric's affections, but... maybe taking the witch Ursula's deal hadn't been the best way of doing it. It definitely felt that way now she'd failed at, well, everything.

Ariel floated, alone and nearly lifeless, beneath the surface of the shallow sea. The wedding ship had moved on, and dim red light of the just-set sun danced weakly in its wake. There was an odd feeling as her intestines fell out of her dissolving torso. A sort of... well, she had nothing to compare it to, really.

Ursula's power was doing this, unravelling her, killing her. But why? Ariel had thought that Ursula would turn her into one of those terrifying withered things if she failed. If she was lucky, maybe Ursula would have ransomed her back to King Triton, her father. But Ariel hadn't expected to fail, and Ursula was more ruthless than she'd feared.

Had Ursula killed Flounder and Sebastian too, while Ariel was unconscious after being transformed into a drowning human at the bottom of the sea? It all seemed so obvious now. Why hadn't Ariel just slowed down and let herself realise what was happening?

But no, she was a fool and they were dead, just like Scuttle. Ariel didn't even know how that had happened. The gull's broken body had been left floating in the sea behind the ship, in a cloud of his own blood. What could have done that? He didn't look like he'd been hit by the ship. More like he'd been crushed and discarded by a callous sea monster.

She had meant to go back for him.

How had Ariel failed so badly?

Her shell bra floated free from her dissolving body and she felt oddly exposed, despite now lacking what it had been covering.

But, wait, what was Ursula's goal if she was just planning on killing Ariel? Why do all this?

Ariel barely felt her jaw drifting loose. She watched numbly as it dissolved into a stream of foamy bubbles.

This was the end then. Triton's youngest daughter would be the first of them to die, joining the friends she had let down.

One last memory haunted Ariel. The sun had set and she had reverted to being a mermaid. After she had removed her heavy human clothes and caught up with the wedding ship, Vanessa had glanced down at her from the deck. Eric's wife had simply smiled and turned away, just before Ursula's power took control of Ariel. Maybe Vanessa just liked seeing merpeople. But her smile had a cruel edge. Perhaps Vanessa had been gloating in her victory.

Everything became nothing.

Actually...

Not nothing. Nothing couldn't flow.

And she was not nothing. She was... something else. She had forgotten her name. She was supposed to have one of those, because... wait, was there such a thing as individuals and labels used to differentiate them, or was that just a dream? Everything was a mess.

Focus. What was she?

Flowing. Liquid.

More precise.

Water? No, sea foam.

Where?

She slowly became aware of her surroundings, by touch rather than any other sense. She was foam carried on a cold wave, blasted by rain and icy winds.

Her wave broke against a cliff and she flowed inside it. There were cracks and empty spaces in the soft sandstone, carved out by the sea. She filled them and felt the stone move around her. The roaring vibrations of the salty sea were drowned out by a loud cracking noise, like the sound of a ship's mast snapping in a storm.

A mast snapping. That was part of an important memory. She tried to hold on to it, examine the rest of it, but it was torn away in the churning flow.

Around her, through her, the cliff collapsed.

She became aware of something powerful approaching her. It wasn't a person, or even a thing. More an idea - an idea that she had become the fulfilment of. So now it was her and she was it.

No longer just sea foam. She was a force of nature.

The collapsing cliff scattered her into the sea, and her grip on time and space seeped away. She flowed without form, connected to her domain. Years passed like heartbeats.

Rivers carved out canyons. Clay yielded to the rush of streams. Dry desert winds blasted rocks into sand. Erosion took its natural course throughout the world, and she had a small amount of influence over it.

A small amount of influence over a long time could make a huge change. Probably. She decided to test her powers.

Two streams flowed down a mountain, feeding rivers rushing in opposite directions. She encouraged water and temperature changes to weaken and break certain rocks. Eventually the side of the mountain collapsed. One of the streams changed course, joining the other. That river flowed stronger with the waters of the diverted stream, carving out a deeper, more direct course to the sea. The weakened river, which the stream used to feed, meandered and silted up, deprived of its strongest source.

Had she a mouth to grin with, the elemental spirit would have grinned.

She was now many centuries downstream from when she had started. That wasn't a problem, she sensed, because time was a direction she could move in. She braced herself against the structure of the universe then launched herself against the rush of time, like spray flying back up a waterfall. It was fun, and surprisingly effortless.

Something undefinable tugged at her, and she let it guide her as she rejoined the stream of time. As she did, she heard a voice, distant but clear.

"O Goddess Ariel, we make this sacrifice as our ancestors did, that you might protect our land and home as you protected theirs."

Wait, Ariel? That was her name! She had a name!

Wait, Goddess?

Wait, SACRIFICE?