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This will be a sort of prologue to the story, which is why it is so short-the rest of the story will not be in this format.
This story is based off of 'The Little Mermaid,' but I took a few creative liberties with it. Don't worry, just a few. You may not even notice them.
In the depths of the ocean, were no human could dive and no ships traveled there existed a beautiful palace made of exotic shells and shining pearls. Most of the ocean floor exists in darkness and cold, but this palace shone with light as though it pulled sunshine down through the waves by some paranormal force.
This was the royal palace of His Majesty, King Sasori.
King Sasori had once been happy and bright and had smiled. He had married Queen Deidara, and had children. He would spend his days walking through his underwater garden with her and making art with her in their room when winter came to the sea and the brilliance of their garden faded.
But one day, the vibrant queen fell ill and could not leave her room. A renowned medic named Kabuto was brought to the palace, but to no avail. The Queen died, leaving King Sasori alone. He could not bare to gaze upon his children, for they all bore some trait of their mother and reminded him of a pain in his heart that could never be eased or numbed. He retreated to the room where he had spent his winters with Deidara and rarely ever left.
The raising of his six children was left to Grandmother Chiyo. If she could not pull her beloved Sasori from his sadness, she could at least provide for his children.
Chiyo was proud of her royal status, and raised her charges to feel that same pride. Every night she would tell them bedtime stories of foolish humans, always ending her parables by assuring them that it was a blessing to be born a mermaid and not a human.
All but the youngest, Kisame, accepted this as the gospel truth.
After the death of the queen, the royal garden was given to the king's children, who each tended it in their own way. Kisame grew brilliant red trees and flowers and waving fronds in his corner of the garden. He spent a good deal of time here, wondering about the world above the waves, which by order of Grandmother Chiyo was forbidden to him until his fifteenth birthday.
Kisame grew to love the color red. It was the color of blood, something Kisame shed regularly. He was by no means peaceful-merpeople on the whole are not. He was equipped with teeth like broken glass and muscles to aid him in dragging struggling soldiers from sinking ships. He kept a blade called Samehada strapped to his back at all times. As the years passed, he grew restless.
His older siblings had all seen the land above the waves before him, and agreed with Chiyo that merpeople were by far the superior race. Kisame had questioned them, and was told again and again that humans were gullible and not worth wasting thought on. But Kisame refused to believe them. He felt that there was something up there that didn't exist down in King Sasori's palace. He had no reason to think that whatever he was looking for existed on land, or that it even existed at all, but he did.
By the time he reached the age of fifteen, he had testosterone pumping through his veins and was beginning to drift away from Grandmother Chiyo and accepted her authority less readily. He grew more quarrelsome and impulsive. Chiyo wondered privately if it was prudent of her to allow Kisame to see the surface, but there was not much she could do to stop him. It was all she could do to keep him from going early.
Maybe if she had been able to stop him, things would have been different.
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