The young woman could not feel her lower half, heavy under what the nice lady who bathed her called 'sheets'. The air was no longer abrasive nor sticky on her neck and forehead, and underneath the light duvet she could feel the warmth and security of the red nightgown she had been lent. Yet she was feverish, and the ponytail in her long yellow hair dug into the back of her skull where it was propped up on two feather down pillows.

It was not, consequently, the first time she had lain in a bed topside. No, her first experience was not one of such luxury. It was in a rather small cottage that smelled of straw and mold, where the mattress was hard and the air suffocating, that she had been captured before. Though she looked back on it and would not feel entirely regretful of the experience now. It had been the week her younger sister Adella turned 15. She recalled how the waves crashed relentlessly on the rocks of the cliff where the cottage stood, and the heat had boiled her shoulders, drying out her lungs and eyes accustomed only to salt and cool sea. She was suddenly very grateful for the cool stone walls and the warm bath she'd been given. The low murmur of worried voices outside and the open window across the room she knew looked out over the path leading to a little beach inlet protected by ocean. Where she'd left a part of herself, she thought.

Arista was always talking about strange lights that burst, like glowing jellies in the deep. She wondered if those topside had ridged... appendages. If their skin itched in the air or in the rain. And she hadn't seen their eyes shine in the dark, but she'd been entranced still by the young boy's and wondered what was different between them. She could speak of this, however, with no one. For a week she floated aimlessly around the castle, barely paying attention to her lessons or the chatter of her sisters. There was always something happening, and not even Ariel's latest mishap with a great octopus could drive her from her reverie. Adella was the most intrigued, as she was 14 and next in line to ascend. The three eldest daughters and Alana would not give either of them the time of day. So Arista took Adella as close to the surface as possible, where between the swaying kelp she could point out the direction she'd swum after the great boat, and touched its hull.

"Oh, it was so big! I could see nothing around it at all- and the way it pulled the waves under it in a swirl as it moved!"

Excitement bubbled over as they made a promise not to tell on each other there, below the sun and shifting light. Arista told her about the clouds she saw and the fire, which she described as "Bright light like orange seaweed lapping at the sky," which must "keep away the fresh pearls of water falling down". She told her younger sister in hushed tones about the music, her eyes widening as she threw out her hands and mimicked the playing of an accordion, forcing a strangled wheeze from her mouth to simulate the sound. Adella clasped her hands and giggled, and soon the two were swirling around each other, pretending to dance and play fake instruments from the strange world above. But Arista still would not tell her sister about the boy, or the beaky man. And they returned to the castle that evening to find Ariel pouting on the window seat in their shared bedroom.

The youngest of their sisters was 12 at the time and already getting into trouble. She was currently alone and hugging her cheek to the bend of her green tail, poking at the sides.

"Ariel, what's the matter?" Adella spoke up as she swam in beside the small red head. "Was father, um, being loud at you again?"

"Yeah that'd be so like him," Arista blew at a strand of hair that had fallen in her face and rolled her eyes. "What'cha do?"

Ariel frowned and turned her head to peer up at them through the shelf of her bangs. "I just wish he'd understand. I was only trying to pet it." She pulled the last few words into a whine, before sighing. "He beached me."

Oh dear everything, and stuck the curious preteen on lockdown with the rest of them? Who was daddy really punishing! Arista had groaned. When little Ariel wasn't out making trouble, she was trailing after the blonde on her errands into town or to the outskirts of the kingdom. It was when Arista stopped venturing out herself that Ariel started going farther, to the ship wrecks and coves, Eel-ectric City and the sharks' lair. Ariel told her sister of those adventures years later when Arista had other things on her mind. Since she wouldn't pay attention and frequently cut Ariel off to talk about her hair or something she'd seen in the market the day before, tension grew between them. Arista always secretly (or not so secretly) looked forward to Ariel's stories anyway.

Point is, Ariel admired her big sister. She wanted Arista to take her side on the matter. She did not, so Ariel, dejected by her sister's disinterest, filled with more sorrow and began to weep.

"Arista, tell her about it!" Adella suddenly asked. "Tell her about the colors, maybe, and the funny landkelp-backed humans!"

Arista settled her with a viscous glare as Ariel stifled her sniffling to hear. When she came up with the biggest, most imploring look she could manage, she fixed it on the elder sister and held. Adella quickly caught on and copied her. It was guppy-eyes overload.

There was nothing Arista could do. Feeling a bit frustrated and and a tadpole bit betrayed, she finally told Ariel her tale, sparing every possible detail she could. Ariel was confused about most of it, and though she could not escape the feeling there had been parts left out towards the end, she let it go. Telling her had done the trick, entrancing Ariel and changing her thoughts to focus on the world above. She never quite stopped thinking about such things, and so her interest in the human world began to grow from then on, much to everyone's dismay.

"I've never heard something quite so bold!" She exclaimed with a small smile. "You must have been very brave, Arista. I won't tell father." There was something to say about her adolescent sincerity. Arista was not at all set at ease, but the word of her sisters' was kept.

Where she lay on the bed in the palace Arista smiled warmly to herself from as she remembered how bratty those two had been that night, and how she wished to see them again. Maybe that was her problem. Impatience and impulsivity. Ah, but she was falling steadily back into sleep. As she strained to hear the ocean or gulls outside, and settled on tuning into the voices out in the hall again, her mind wandered to the promise that started her on the long journey home...

Two weeks after she was beached Ariel was off again, stirring up chaos in the fields. Attina held court with King Triton to prepare for the day she would be Queen. Aquata was out to lunch with a few very close friends from nearby. Andrina went out to help out with the tilling of the clam beds, and Alana spent the day at the spa.

Which left Adella to watch Arista as she swam back and forth down one of the castle's many corridors as she had been prone to do more and more often. She fiddled with her scales and twisted locks of her hair around her pinkie. Growling slightly to herself and cursing as she apparently could not recall the exact note following the few she'd already hummed from the night she surfaced. Adella was distressed. It hadn't occurred that this might happen. Arista had become more easily annoyed in the last couple of days. She had double takes where she thought she noticed someone at the gates or a shadow passed from a whale overhead, only for there to be nothing. Adella nearly lost it when a little brunette boy accidentally kicked a clam into the garden and Arista wound up ripping up a particularly looked after patch of seagrass, disturbing some fish who had been hiding between the fronds. The castle was always the same. Everything under the sea was the same day after day, so constant in fact that it set Arista's teeth on edge and made her skin prickly to even be there. Wanderlust touched the corners of her nerves. Everything in her was telling her to swim and swim fast until she left everything in a rush of bubbles, until she found what she was missing.

Something was wrong.

Adella picked at her fins nervously before building the courage to take her sister by the arm, demanding to know what had her so on edge.

"I can't!" Arista threw her hands up. "Oh it's hopeless." And she began to wail over the railing, which lined the inside of the corridor and looked out over the courtyard. Her outburst drew the attention of a few mermen come to seek the King.

"What is?" Adella hushed her, patting her shoulder affectionately.

Arista just shrugged her off and swam a pace away. When she spoke again it was resolved, yet her sister detected how forlorn she sounded. "I shall never see him again."

"Him?" Her eyebrows knit under the bun of hair on her forehead. She didn't know what to say at all. Arista was a bit dramatic sometimes, but she never acted like this. She had liked a few boys without giving any of them this kind of time of day.

"Yes, yes. The boy from the boat. Adella. I must see him again!"

Adella was at a loss. She didn't know what to do or say at all. Arista had been topside many a time since those weeks ago when she'd first surfaced, without much luck, and the younger sister had never known why. She couldn't go look for herself. So she did all she could, and promised that on her 15th birthday when she took her journey topside, she would look for the boat and this mystery boy she'd heard nothing of. Arista thanked her profusely and, seeming to have remembered the missing note, swam on down to the gardens to practice the song again. She wanted to get it perfect, if she ever had the chance to sing it to the world above the waves. Adella was left perturbed and feeling remorse for Arista, only hoping her sister might forget the ship altogether and go back to being her normal self.