Prologue
Marina's POV
This is the story of the greatest adventure of my life. Well, the only one.
I grew up in a lake at the north of the land humans use to call Scotland. It was a beautiful lake, full of fish and seaweed and lots of sunlight coming through the waves. And yet, despite all this, I was not happy. I was never popular among the other children who lived in the village. All because I was different.
They were all the same. They, their parents, their grandparents lived in this lake. Me- I was a foreigner, I came from another sea, or so I was told. They found me back when I was still an egg, on a sunlit rock, as if some stranger made sure I was comfortable.
Oh, how different I was. I thought differently, I acted differently and above all, I looked different. Their skin was gray like the stones they built their homes with; mine is pearly white. Their hair is green as seaweed, while mine is the color of the sand at the bottom of the lake when it's lit by the sun, some kind of a light brown. Their eyes are yellow. Mine are bluish green, like the water when the sun comes through them. Their tail are silvery, mine is blue.
Ever since they noticed the difference between us, the children in the village used to laugh at me. As time passes, I learned to ignore them. I became an outcast, spending all of my time by myself.
At the center of the village used to stand a huge stone statue of the first queen of the village. At the base of the statue there were paintings, paintings of merpeople conversing with creatures that lived out of the water. Creatures that looked surprisingly like me… only they didn't have tails. They had legs. They were Humans.
The moment I saw those paintings I became fascinated with those creatures. So similar to me, and so different. I never before thought that something lived outside of the water of the lake. This discovery was what made me immerge for the first time, when I was about sixteen. Outside the lake I saw the huge stony structure near the lake, where lived so many humans. So close and yet, so far…
A year has passed. I've spend hours watching the humans attending their business all around me, wishing to join them so much. Wishing to belong.