Assana was free. Finally, after a torturous morning following every rule ever laid out by her tutors and older sisters, her father and royal advisors, her governess had declared all of Assana's responsibilities completed for the day, and she was free to do as she pleased until supper.
No one had quite figured out just how dangerous it was to say that phrase to Assana yet.
She raced through the palace halls, long auburn hair streaming behind her, completely unable to wipe the huge grin from her face. It had been weeks since she'd been "free to do as she pleased," and consequentially, she'd mentally planned every second of any spare time she could get her hands on. And there was absolutely no time to waste.
Assana left the palace and made her way expertly through the streets of the capital city, keeping her head down and sticking to the shadows to avoid being recognized. Fortunately, she had so many sisters that, as the youngest, Assana was often overlooked, and therefore not as recognizable as her eldest sister, Cordelia.
Once she left the city limits, it didn't take long to reach her destination. She lifted her face to the sun, broke through the surface, and took a deep, full breath of ocean air.
The world above! How she loved it up here. Everything about it was so utterly different from her underwater big, beautiful sun lit up the sky and warmed the air during the day, and at night was replaced by a silver moon. The sun's rays could not penetrate the water enough to warm Assana's home, and its light was weak and unreliable. They never saw the moon. Breathing air instead of water was always so refreshing, as it smelled salty and crisp, and didn't seem to weigh down her insides as water did. The sky and endless horizons made this world seem infinite, full of endless adventures and possibility, whereas every reef below the waves was the same as any other. Assana felt like she lived in a bubble, and every so often, she was granted the opportunity to view life outside of those confines.
With a flick of her mermaid's tail, Assana made her way to a cluster of large rocks all grouped together to form a wall around a pool. This was her secret escape, a place where her nagging sisters couldn't find her, and she was safely hidden from any human ships. She hid from the ships more because she wanted complete privacy than because of the horrid tales merfolk told each other about murderous humans.
Assana swam right over to her favorite rock, pulling her entire torso out of the water. If the tales could be believed, then this was the only parts of their bodies that the traitors had kept back in the days of old when a group of merfolk decided to live on land and eventually become humans. Which, in Assana's mind, meant the humans were half mermaid. Or she was half human.
And the merfolk of old had some serious magic.
Assana didn't put much weight into the old stories, anyway. People liked to think her father had the power to feel any disturbance in all the seven seas as soon as it happened, which she knew to be untrue. All she knew for certain was that the human world was beautiful and fascinating, and she wanted to know as much as possible about it.
Assana reached behind the rock and into a little pocket created by two stones leaning against each other. It was just the right size for her bag of treasures to hide in. The bag itself was a human treasure: a finely netted sack with a string Assana could pull tight and close the opening. She had found it draped over a coral bed a few years ago, and now it was stuffed full of human oddities.
She had several different scraps of something in varying colors and textures: blues and greens, mostly, and dirty whites. They looked as if they had been ripped from larger pieces, and from the fleeting glimpses of humans Assana had caught over the years, she thought the scraps came from garments humans wore. The textures were nothing like the seaweeds Assana wore as clothing, though. She also had several pieces of rope tied in different knots, each bigger and more complicated than the last. She had tried several times to replicate the knots on the sturdy vines the merfolk used as rope, but the knots were either too complicated or her vines too flimsy. Assan also had what was undeniably a book, although again made of different materials and writted with different symbols, or so she thought - a lot of them were washed away by the seawater. The last of her treasures included a very tiny picture of a woman on a chain, some round, shiny pieces of metal, some jewelry, and what looked like a tiny, less elaborate version of her father's ceremonial trident. Who could possibly need a trident this tiny?
Assana began her afternoon by trying for the thousandth time to decipher the symbols in the book, and finding her favorite pictures. Then she repacked her satchel, slung it over her shoulder, and went exploring.
This particular outcropping of rocks was a virtual treasure trove of human trinkets. The water was shallower, so ships tended to slow down as they manuvered their way through, and this was where sailors got the opportunity to toss things overboard.
Unfortunately, it didn't appear as if a ship had sailed by recently; Assana wasn't finding anything to add to her collection. She was just about to give up for the day when something caught her eye.
A beautiful seashell, wedged between two rocks, peeked out at her only because the falling sun caught the surface just right. It was a white shell, with shimmering blues and greens spiraling through it, and small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. As a princess of Allantia, Assana had no shortage of beautiful shells, but this one was unlike any she had ever seen.
She was tracing the spiral with a finger when she heard the voices.
"Be quiet, Kai! You're just jealous!"
"Oh, really? Have you looked in a mirror lately? You're looking a bit green yourself"
Assana leapt about a foot in the air and dove underwater without a second thought. She may not have felt the same way towards humans as her father, but that didn't mean she was ready to be seen up close by them.
"Admit it, Riagen,we both know it's true!"
Assana thought her heart would explode out of her chest. Where were they?
"No, because it's not true! I don't want - did you hear that?"
Assana let out a squeak when she realized the voices were coming from the shell.
"Hello?" said the first voice. "Is someone there?"
"It's okay," reassured the second. "You can come out, we won't hurt you."
Well, they sounded nice. And normal. Not like bloodthirsty, ruthless savages all the stories made them out to be. The only thing unusual about them were their accents.
Assana should just stay quiet and let the shell sink to the bottom of the ocean.
"Hello?"
She held the shell close to her lips, unsure how far her voice would carry. She wasn't even sure what kind of magic was making this possible.
"No way. It can't be...can you hear me? Are you a talking shell?"
"I can hear you. I'm not a talking shell, I'm a...girl," Assana said, her guard coming up a little too late. She should not be speaking to these boys. But the thrill of speaking to humans was just too much to resist.
"You're talking through a seashell?" the other boy said incredulously. "This is...this is impossible!"
Assana frowned. "No, you're talking through a shell."
A quick back and forth revealed that both parties had found identical seashells on the rocks today. The first boy who had spoken was named Riagen, and the second was called Mahkai.
"So where are you, Assana?" Riagen asked.
"I'm still by the rocks. i just picked up this shell."
"Are you sailing as well?" Mahkai jumped in. Already Assana could tell he was the quieter of the two. "Perhaps we can see you. What's the name of your ship?"
"Oh, I'm not sailing. I..." Assana's brain scrambled to come up with a good lie. "I live on an island nearby."
"Really? I didn't see any land."
"Yes," Assana said firmly, remembering the area. "It's very small, about twenty knots west. I came up to the cove in a small fishing boat."
"I remember," Riagen said, "I hadn't thought anyone lived htere. Oh well, we're too far to turn back now anyway."
"Where are you sailing to?"
"Everywhere," the boys groaned in unison.
"My father's a very important, very busy person," Riagen explained. He said it very matter-of-factly, not in a showing off tone, the way Assana often spoke of her own father. "As is Mahkai's. So they're traveling all over the kingdom to make trade deals and other boring things."
"They thought it would be a good learning experience for us, so we got dragged along - for a whole year!" Mahkai added.
"That's terrible! A whole year?" Assana gasped. "I've never been away from home for more than a few days before. I couldn't imagine a whole year."
"Well, it's really - " Riagen started, but then a muffled noise sounded, and then silence. Assana stared anxiously down at the seashell in her palm, wondering if the magic had finally worn out.
After several agonizing minutes, Riagen was back. "Hey, Assana? We've just come into port, so we have to go. Is it all right...I mean...can we talk more later? Assuming it still works?"
What was a port? "Of course! It should still work. I hope it does. So we'll talk later?"
"Yes! Goodbye, Assana," Mahkai said.
"See you!" Riagen shouted, already sounding far away.
"Bye," Assana said, then waited a few moments to make sure Riagen and Mahkai weren't coming back.
Assana let out a squeal and turned several backflips in a row, clutching the seashell to her chest. Human friends! She had human friends! Well - if she was being honest, these were her only friends, human or mermaid. But what did that matter? She had someone to answer all her questions!