Most stories, I would say, begin when you wake up. When your eyes clench shut against the warmth of light before fluttering open, like little wings on this pale blue thing eternally circling our fiery mothball of a sun. Stories begin when something changes the way we live our very ordinary lives. It could be the change in the host of that radio show your alarm is set to because you miss your mother singing you awake. It could be that they're out of pizza at work or you're running late. It could even be that your left sock caught in the washer and tore, and you don't even notice until it's on your foot and stretches to reveal the pale pink skin beneath. There are so many ways in which a story, or someone's life, may be affected. However this story has nothing of that sort. It starts, as I alluded to, not at the beginning, but at the end. When a frail woman of about 23 coughs and shuts her eyes the way rain settles over the ocean, slipped into her first dreamless sleep in years.
Dreams can be meaningful and intuitive, they can be harrowing and unsettling, and they can be comfortingly subtle. For every night of her life, Arista had dreamed of pretty pearls at the bottom of the deep, of the light shifting through kelp near the surface. Sometimes these dreams mixed with the adventures her youngest sister, Ariel, told her of when they were on good terms. In the idle hours they smiled and played, exchanging quick words to pass the time. Yet the most captivating of her own memories, the day she turned 15, was a personal favorite to relive in her dreams.
In her family it was customary for a princess to surface on the day of her 15th birthday. The very first time this happened, when the beloved eldest daughter and heir to the throne, Attina, arose, it garnered a long and beautiful ceremony full of excitement. There was even a feast, and a whole musical performance to accompany her upward swim. On her visit she saw the darkening sky and the low flying birds and struck with awe dove back down immediately to tell her family.
Aquata, the second eldest, requested the same treatment when she came of age later that year. She surfaced and saw a grey whale breaching the waves, the sun high above hurting her eyes,making her see spots. Disoriented, she returned to her sisters and slept the rest of the day.
The next princess, Andrina, was the first not to request the ceremony and had only a long heart to heart with their father before going. She saw a pod of dolphins playing in the waves and joined them for a game of chase around a sandbar. She returned later that night to tell everyone of how soft the sand was where it was constantly sifted by the waves, how she'd found a pretty kelp bed and seen the endless expanse of the sea.
Arista herself wasn't interested in making a ruckus or in bothering Triton, and gathered with her sisters before her surfacing only to promise them a story or two as her sisters had before her.
It may be later noted that by the time Ariel came of age, she had already been to the surface many times and was missing from her bed by the time anyone had awoken to go get her.
Not even from her three elder sisters' tales could Arista imagine how vast the world above the sea would look from where she peered out, her eyes itchy from the air. Breathing in the rough stuff made her hack and cough though she was determined to see her fill. She wondered how none of the others had mentioned such difficulty as she looked to the horizon. She was stunned by the view, and squinting could just make out the shape of a great object, akin to the broadside of a whale and just as grey and bleak through the darkening sky. It toppled through the waves as black reefs grew over head and dropped down fresh water as fast as she'd seen any deep vents throw up bubbles.
Arista's older sisters had mentioned no such thing as what she saw now, it wasn't actually a grey whale as Aquata had seen. The general consensus of the human world was that it was filled with only endless blue on endless sea. It was altogether unremarkable after a while, albeit new. There was no reason any of them had decided to resurface after their first visit, and so this right of passage continued its purpose. If their father could keep them from the humans while dousing their curiosity, then all the better. Dissuading his daughters ever coming to harm was, and will always be, Triton's primary focus. He hardly payed attention to them otherwise, Arista soured, unless they whined or they happened to be their favored sister, Ariel. Who only got the attention they all sought by inheriting their deceased mother's looks and antics.
Sound careened over the worsening waves towards her then, and she knew there had to be something more worth the trip. Besides, she'd be the talk of the castle if she brought a more interesting tale than her dear sisters. As she battled the growing waves and neared the massive ship, for she could recognize it now as those wrecked in the deep, she could hear better the funny music of an accordion, along with the gruff voices of sailors she could not understand. She wanted to ask them about their instruments and mother tongue, heaving herself up atop a tiny ledge on the boat. She knew it was dangerous as her tail dragged her down heavily. She had to press the lightly barbed edge of it, as well as the pressure of its muscles, to the wooden slats in order to gain any sort of balance. A funny circular window let her peer into the ship from there. Her mouth was parted in wonder as she took it all in with wide eyes. It was a blast of color, she could only compare it to the day her father took her to see a coral reef when she was very young. Even though water still poured over the men, brightlight burned in the corners of their surfacefloor and they jostled and moved about in what she could only guess was dancing. The rhythm of their shouts and stomps filled her and she soon forgot the storm as well. Weird colored liquids sloshed from blocky wooden things they held to their faces, getting caught in the whiskers on their chins and staining the landkelp they wore. Some didn't wear any and the rain mixed in with the sweat on their backs.
Time slipped by, Arista became entranced as a young boy walked on from some area of the ship she couldn't see. He was by far the most interesting of the humans there. She thought he looked her age, if not less. He was soft featured and gawky, running about with a round orb reminiscent of her days playing kick the clam at school. Messy black hair fell all over his face, causing her to reach up and check on her own blonde locks, soaked as always but matted down from a life of salt and jelly treatment. An old beaky man chased after him when she looked back, something she later would come to understand was about the young boy missing lessons and being foolish.
She was loosing track of their location and night had long since fallen when lightning cracked across the sea and illuminated her face and eyes, which were previously glowing from a feature her kind share in common with sharks. It was well past the time she'd agreed to be back, and with some difficulty she dislodged her tail and slid into the murky waters. She hadn't noticed how far the structure had drifted from where she'd surfaced, and was disoriented in finding her way back to the still ocean where the castle stood. It seemed quite bland in comparison to all the bright colors of the bright and she found herself feeling a bit of loss. When her sisters, in their nightwear, surrounded her she had no words and a big grin on her face. "I saw everything!" She exclaimed with a sigh, and left them all very confused as she hummed the tune from the ship above the waves. They chalked it up to her being her normal ditzy self as she dreamed that night of the handsome boy, and wondered if any of it had happened at all.