Lavender swims into the shipwreck ruins, flips open her clamshell and logs on to the Driftwood app.
She never meant to get so occupied with the dating app. She joined because she was bored, and she likes flirting for fun, with no intent behind it. And she likes screwing with people, and people on Driftwood are so easy to screw with.
Most of her fellow mermaids live in the depths of the ocean, or in seas far away, and she doesn't see them often. She lives in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean sea, shallower and warmer. The others on Driftwood are far enough away that most of them she will never meet.
Her clan is small and lonely.
She flicks her tail as she looks through Driftwood.
Not much has changed since the last time she looked. She scrolls through the pictures and profiles somewhat aimlessly.
She finds a new one, a beautiful brown haired mermaid who lives in the Mediterranean. Her tail scales shimmer a gorgeous dark red.
Lavender opens up the messenger feature.
She ponders her opening message. Today she is feeling like being a bit of a shit, so she carefully types out, "Are you a fisherman? Because it looks like you should be reeling in the ladies."
She smirks as she sends the message bubbling through the tides.
She flicks her tail again, letting her light purple fin brush lightly against the rotting wood of the old shipwreck. It's the kind of haunting abandoned beautiful where it's obvious that it was once grand, and is now forgotten. The floor of the ship is littered with bits and bobs, a spoon, a bobby pin, a shoe, a snowglobe. She loves this place, because no one else ever comes here.
Lavender is well known and well loved in her family and her small clan, but some days she just… doesn't quite feel like she fits.
She wasn't born here. She was born in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, just off the coast of Cyprus. But her parents came to visit her grandmother in the Caribbean and they left Lavender with her grandmother as they supposedly went on a short jog through the Panama Canal to the other side.
They never came back.
Lavender was left alone with the grandmother she'd only just met. She was ten years old.
She's never been very lucky.
So while she loves the bright blue Caribbean waters, it's never felt like home to her.
Her clamshell dings. She pops it open to find a message from the blonde with the blood red tail. Parvati, her profile says. '
Actually, yes. I am a Fisherman. How did you see through my excellent disguise?
Lavender grins.
It was too good, she throws back. You were clearly too beautiful to be real.
The reply comes rapid-fire. Ah, that is because in truth I am a sixty year old grey haired man.
You're quite tech savvy for a sixty year old.
Ah, no, my grandchild is typing this for me. I'm just the witty one in charge of the words.
Okay. So if you're a human fisherman, explain something. You humans, you call it surfing the net. It's not surfing. It's typing in your bedroom. What's that all about? If anyone is surfing it's us.
In reply, she gets a smiley face, the crying while laughing emoji.
After a moment, her shell pings with a follow-up message. Okay, you win. That's the first time someone on this stupid site has made me laugh out loud.
Lavender smiles. She thinks this may be the beginning of something beautiful.
…
Over the next few months, she keeps messaging Parvati. Parvati makes her smile, makes her laugh, makes her feel alive in a way that she hasn't in about a decade.
Her grandmother notices the change, but not in the way Lavender hoped.
"You're always on that damn clamshell lately. Why don't you go outside, swim some tides, make some friends?"
Lavender rolls her eyes. "I have friends, Gran."
"Real ones?"
Lavender scowls. "Just because they're on the waternet doesn't mean they aren't real, Gran."
Her grandmother frowns. "You don't really know who that girl is, Lavender."
And Lavender doesn't know how to explain that she does. She knows Parvati, just as Parvati knows her better than anyone else, because sometimes it's so much easier to bare her soul when she doesn't have to look Parvati in the eye. She's told Parvati everything. She suspects Parvati has done the same.
After all, she knows all about Parvati's twin Padma. About how Padma gets better grades and her parents fawn over Padma and Parvati loves her sister but sometimes she just wants to strangle her a little bit.
She knows all about how Parvati found out she was into mermaids and not mermen, about her first kiss at age 8, her first boyfriend at 14, her first girlfriend at 16.
She knows how Parvati was bullied for her dark skin, for not matching the rest of the Mediterranean mermaids, for her romantic interests. Lavender had spent a full day after that conversation raging around the shipwreck, tossing things around and just generally wishing for an asshole to punch.
They'd long since exchanged real numbers, sending each other pictures and encouragements.
Parvati had closed her Driftwood account. Lavender left hers open only to screw with people.
"I do know her, Gran. I know her better than I know you."
Her grandmother looks as though she's been slapped. "How dare you?"
"What? It's the truth!"
"Lavender Brown, how dare you disrespect me?"
"Oh, because you respect me so much. When's the last time you even asked me what I wanted, Gran? About anything. I don't even know the last time you asked what I wanted for dinner."
With a sniff, her grandmother says, "As if you care."
"I do! Thanks for fucking asking."
"Don't use that word in my house." Her grandmother's face is turning increasingly purple.
"I'll fucking say what I fucking please."
"Get out! Get out!" She's flapping her hands as though to shoo Lavender away. Lavender half wants to laugh and half wants to cry.
"Gladly." Lavender swims up to her room, rounds up a few things, and takes off.
She's not sure how long her grandmother means for her to leave. Lavender doesn't care.
The Caribbean has never been home.
She knows where home is. It's the warm Mediterranean near Cyprus, where her parents met and fell in love. It's where her childhood was. It's where Parvati is.
Lavender is going home.
…
The Atlantic Ocean is rather larger than it felt when she was ten and never alone.
Now, she is always alone.
She clutches her clamshell tightly and keeps Parvati chatting. She doesn't tell Parvati that she's on her way.
Maybe that's stupid. Maybe all of this is naive. Maybe her grandmother was right — maybe Parvati is a lie, a fiction carefully constructed. Maybe she's crossing the ocean hopelessly chasing a phantom, a dream.
Or maybe it's not.
…
She is exhausted and ragged by the time she crosses from deep ocean water to shallower Mediterranean sand. By the time she sees the lights of the city she once calls home, she just wants to sleep for a week. Instead, she takes a deep lungful of salt water.
She made it.
It only took two months and three wrong turns.
She takes another deep breath.
She swims toward home.
The streets feel so familiar and so foreign, all at once. She sees the School of Fish, where she learned to read. Next to it is the seaweed field where they used to play tag.
She swims past her old house. A weird ache goes through her at the sight — it's been colored over, and is now a bright blue where it used to be a pale pink.
Home has changed.
But that doesn't matter when she knocks on the door of Parvati's house and sees a smile spread across her face as she realizes.
"Lavender? But… how?"
Lavender beams. "It was time to come home."
And Parvati smiles so wide that Lavender has to kiss her.
She tastes like home.
Task #4: "No Place Like London" (Sweeney Todd): Write about someone returning home.
Meet Cute Marathon 21: I joined this stupid dating website to troll people and then I met you, who also joined this site to troll people. The more we talk about how stupid some of these people are the more I'm starting to like you
(Lyric Alley 22. I've never been that lucky) (Liza's Loves 19. The Flirt - Write about a flirt) (JJQ 21: "They call it 'surfing' the net. It's not surfing. It's typing in your bedroom." - Jack Dee) (Snek 68. Water moccasin- (object) spoon) (365. 30. AU - Online Dating!AU) (Insane House: Item: snowglobe.) (Cards 9. Hearts - write a meet cute) (Fairytale: Little Mermaid: AU: Mermaid; Word: Scales; Word: Shipwreck - (bonus 5 points); Restriction: Set entire story underwater) (Lent: No 10. No human characters) (Scavenger Hunt: In or on water)