Greetings! So, this is my first Little Mermaid fanfic. It's more or less just a drabble, as I am trying to get a feel for a different fandom. Any tips for improvement would be loved. Hope you enjoy!
Eric watched Ariel from a distance. She had her arms rested on the balcony railing, watching the waves rolled in and out. He knew it was hard for her to live outside the borders of the sea; she was an ocean child after all, born and raised in the shimmering water. It was times like these, in the early evening when Ariel would watch the ever changing tide, that Eric was reminded of that even more. He often wondered where her mind was at these times too. Were they on thoughts of the twisty forests seaweed or the vibrant schools of fish that now she only saw in her mind? Eric often wished he could read Ariel's mind, that way he would know what it was she missed most about her underwater homeland.
Perhaps a good thing that came from Ariel's homesickness, were the stories Ariel shared of what was hidden beneath the surface. Tales of adventure, laced with delicate details were often what she told. The stories Ariel fabricated often made Eric wonder why she gave up a beautiful world to live on land, a place where things were not always beautiful. But then, he recalled, Ariel would end her story with an "I love you" making him remember.
After Ariel would share these stories with him, Eric was often rendered speechless. He certainly didn't have anything nearly as pretty to share. And he knew that anything else he said would be meaningless to her. She'd lived in a world that was nothing but beautiful and full of things artists vie to reproduce onto their canvases; anything he said would just seemed washed out to Ariel. So Eric would use those old reliable three words, that no matter how many times he said, he knew she'd never see them as meaningless: I love you.
With that thought, Eric stepped forward, ready to hear what tale his ocean child had to share with him tonight.