The last rays of light disappeared from the indigo waters of the Sea Kingdom, and the crystals which illuminated the palace in the night created menacing shadows on the paintings of the deceased.
Ariel swam past each one, her emerald tail creating powerful bursts of water which propelled her faster than any other fish. Her glorious, auburn hair styled into an elegant braid cascaded over one creamy shoulder, and her inquisitive blue eyes skimmed quickly over each painting until she stopped at the very end of the hall.
Inlaid in an exquisite white quartz frame was a painting of a woman with kind, amethyst eyes, light caramel skin and sleek mocha hair. Ariel's eyes filled with tears as she remembered her mother, playing with her and her sisters in the warm, turquoise lagoon at the top of the reef, wrapping dried anemone in seaweed for the family to eat while setting the food on flat rocks, her hair like a sheet of brown silk screening her face singing a half-forgotten lullaby.
It was then that Ariel realized she had forgotten the sound of her mother's voice.
She bent slightly and clapped her hands together, with her fingertips touching her forehead, as a sign of reverence to her dead mother as she exited the room.
"Ariel?"
She gasped and turned to see her sister Attina, standing by the door, the well-lit foyer rendering her nothing but a silhouette.
"I'm... I was just..."
"Ariel, what are you doing down here? You know father doesn't approve. Especially not before your fifteenth birthday, you mustn't be late to the celebrations later tonight. Come, get some rest."
Attina had obviously inherited the warm, caramel skin and mocha hair from their mother, but unfortunately, she had also inherited their father's powerful arms and held her little sister in a judo grip.
They swam past hallways and corridors, brilliant, cascading sets of obsolete stairs and around glass chandeliers until they reached the bedroom that all seven sisters shared. Several beds like shells were inlaid with heavenly soft, sea-cotton mattresses, duvets and luxuriously squishy pillows.
Ariel sighed, slipped out of her sister's grasp and sank into her own bed of maroon, covering herself with one of the duvets and sighing contentedly as the bed sank to accommodate her weight, creating a sort of cocoon around the mermaid.
"I... I'm sorry for being so harsh." The hard look in Attina's warm, brown eyes softened, and she swam beside her little sister's bed. "You know how I feel about father's temper... But I know you miss mother. I miss her also."
The older mermaid of seventeen left the room with a swish of her magnificent orange tail, and Ariel slowly drifted off to sleep.
"See, children? Look at the sky. See how it's filled with those glowing lights? When a human dies, its soul rises upward to the Heavenly Kingdom, and shines brightly with everyone else. Look how beautiful they are!"
The seven sisters, the daughters of King Triton and Queen Aspera gasped as one at the sight of the lights in the sky, even though they had seen the stars a thousand times before.
They were floating on their backs in the safe lagoon they played in with their mother nearly every day, with nothing but the reflective inky water supporting them on the surface of the ocean.
"But mommy, if humans go to become one of the stars when they die, what happens to us?" Arista with milky skin, buttercream hair and a scarlet tail asked their mother.
"Well, child." Her mother sat up tentatively, and her offspring followed suit. "The ocean is not something you can control. Look at the water in our lagoon. And look at the vast ocean past our lagoon. Are they not one and the same? They may look different to you, young ones, but without the ocean, how would the lagoon have any water? The ocean is one body, one living being."
"Absolute wool fluff."
The sisters turned around to see their smiling father, and shrieked with joy as he repeatedly carried them and threw them gently into the water, laughing with them.
"Triton..." Aspera began, but her husband silenced her by holding her hand in his own.
"Darling, there's no such thing. The ocean is nothing but water, under our control." He chuckled and shook his head while his children clung to his arms and beard. "Alright, daughters, time to go home!'
They groaned collectively, but nevertheless followed their father into the deep midnight of the sea, to the softly lit blue light that was the Sea Kingdom.
"Goodnight, girls." The Queen kissed each daughter in turn, and rose to leave the room.
"Mommy, what DOES happen to us after we die?" Ariel's soft voice sounded.
Aspera hesitated for a moment. "Daughters, the ocean is a very special being. Sometimes, if a mermaid is righteous and good her entire life, or dies a perfect, selfless death, the ocean chooses them to enter the Celestial Realm, a magical place under the sea with more colors like jewels than you can imagine illuminating the water where there is happiness but not sadness, life without death, forever and ever. The body will not be found, for their earthly self will dissolve into sea foam, and only their life blood will remain."
The sisters were quiet.
"Will we go to the Celestial Realm?"
"My dears, I don't know. Remember to live your lives selflessly - be kind, and put other merfolk before yourself."
"We understand, mommy."
The sun was high in the sky, just in time for Aquata's seventh birthday. The whole kingdom rose to the surface and celebrated at a different lagoon, a bigger lagoon, though not as hidden from ships with boulders and vines.
"Triton, sweetheart, humans might find us here. Why don't we go back to our old lagoon, the one that the children and I share? There's plenty of room for everyone-"
"Nonsense." Her husband shook his head. "That old lagoon is far too small, and besides, the nearest island is hundreds of leagues away. Come, beloved! Enjoy our daughter's birthday. The royal chefs have prepared a sumptuous feast, and everyone's having a good time."
Aspera swam uneasily back toward her people and soon enough, lost herself in the rich yet airy music of the pipes and flutes, the dancing of the merpeople and the delicious feast which tingled her every sense.
'Maybe I'm just paranoid.' She thought to herself as she looked around. The sky was a rich blue and the sun rendered the turquoise waves perfectly translucent, with light seemingly dancing off the smooth surface.
But deep down in her heart, she knew she was right, and the black sail of a pirate ship was spotted right away by the imperial guards.
"CITIZENS OF THE SEA KINGDOM! IN THE WATER NOW! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!"
With that sentence, it was pandemonium.
Men threw their children and even wives into the deep, and for weeks later there were whispers that some infants didn't survive the impact.
In the mad scramble to leave the lagoon, merpeople knocked each other unconscious with powerful swipes of their tails, while for others limbs were broken and skulls were crushed, those immobilized left for dead floating on the surface of the ocean, screaming in agony as the sun blistered their scales and burned their sensitive skin, crying out for death to take them.
"Mother! Help me!" The ship was approaching quickly, and to her utter horror, Adella's magenta tail fins were caught between two boulders well above the water, the light of the sun glinting off her baby's iridescent, drying scales as she struggled this way and that.
Aspera wasted no time in swimming over to her daughter, and used her strong arms to pull herself up onto the rock.
"I'm sorry, mommy... The other mermaids and I just wanted to explore, and I got stuck..."
"Shh... Child... It's ok, I'm here now." Aspera had arrived just in time to pull her daughter's tail from between the rocks, throwing her daughter off of the boulder toward the ocean, she herself slipping down back into the lagoon, devoid of strength to jump.
To her dismay, the hoots and hollers of the pirates of the ship grew louder and louder with every passing minute.
"Queen Aspera! Help us! Please!" Those immobilized, trapped in the lagoon, cried out with their remaining strength, and being the good person that she was, she used the little energy that she had to throw a single elderly merman back to his ocean home.
By now the shadow of the ship had fallen over her, but she was too weak to move.
In the distance, she heard the frenzied cries of her daughters to return to them, but in that moment, right before she met her fate, looked over and stared directly into Ariel's sapphire eyes.
"Daughters... Be kind, and put others before yourself."
Queen Aspera's body was never found, and the last her daughters saw of her was bright red blood spilling over into the ocean, and fresh, white, sea foam dotting the surface of the lagoon.
"Ariel? Sorry I neglected to wake you sooner... It's time for the celebrations! You'll finally be allowed back up into the surface!"