AN: As I've written on other chapters and/or other fanfics that for my own peace of mind I'm trying to do one large update at the end of each month but I have a problem with being patient so sometimes I might break it like today. I have a master list of chapters that I'm going to be updating based on information collected on an Excel document and updated at the end of each month. So therefore the number of unique views for each of the latest chapters of my fics determines which fics I write and what order (with a few exceptions). Anyway. I hope you enjoy either way.

Chapter Eleven – Birds Can Do What?

Eric stood on the shore with his ankles in the water as he watched another sunset. He looked out at the horizon, there were no ships, no masts, nothing that would tell of there being other people or even other beings out there. He knew that he had been selfish in the beginning. He was a man who was in love with a mermaid but he had tried to bring her into his world. He hadn't been able to go down to be with her and instead he had tried to bring her to him and hadn't figured out how dangerous that would be for her.

He sucked. At least he knew that he had done something that could be considered terrible. Still, he had never meant any of the bad things which had happened. If he really never loved Ariel or never cared about the merfolk then why would he have put himself into unnecessary danger when it came to the sea witch or human octopus or whatever she had been.

He sighed as he looked out onto the water and sank down to a squat in the water. He turned back to Lana. "Do you want to go back?" he asked her and she shook her head. "I'm sorry, Lana," he apologized to her.

Lana walked over to him and smiled as she wrapped her arms around him. "It's okay. I'm okay." She told him and Eric sighed. He let his fingers curl under her cheek as he tilted her face up and kissed her passionately before pulling back.

"I'll keep trying," he said not knowing if just hoping for this to happen was good enough. He held her protectively, "Ariel," he whispered as he kissed her forehead. "I love you, so much." He said and she smiled as she heard him whisper her name. "I know that this is all such a rush, it might sound magical but this just…I don't want you to think this is too much of a change."

"Too much of a change?" Lana asked as she looked at him knowing what role she had to play in the public eyes but that didn't seem to be what she had to do when it was just her and Eric. She looked back at the puppy version of Flounder, maybe if he was a fish then he would have been able to have him pass a message onto her father.

"You're human, you're in a different body, you're with me, you're not with your fathers and sisters, you're on land," Eric said before laughing weakly. "Even one of those things would be too much of a change for most people. I can promise to take care of you but that doesn't just make those other problems go away."

Lana took his hand in hers before she thought things over and dropped his hand. "Can you make a bird call?" she asked and Eric tilted his head to the side.

"I can try," he said curiously. There was a lot to merfolk that he didn't understand yet but he wasn't really sure what making the sound of a bird would achieve however it definitely seemed as if Ariel felt it would do something. He put his hands up and made the sound of a seagull like a child would.

"Scuttle!" Lana called out into the ocean, "Scuttle!?"

"Scuttle?" Eric asked her and Lana nodded.

"Can you keep making that sound?" she asked as she kept calling out the bird's name and shortly she could hear a noise echoing back to them. She froze as she saw Scuttle fly around them but of course with her looking the way she did now, he probably wouldn't be able to recognize her. He perched a short distance from them and Eric turned his head to watch the two interact. He wasn't clear on what was happening but it definitely seemed like a plan that a mermaid might have.

"Scuttle, I know it doesn't look like it, but it's -"

"It's the prince," Scuttle said to himself as he put a wing out in Eric's direction and Eric's eyes widened as he looked at the bird. Was he imagining things? He had never thought that birds could speak…well they could repeat words which they had been taught or had heard recently but seagulls didn't seem to belong to that category of bird and they had just seemed to point at him and call him 'the prince'. Okay. This was like an alien world.

"Did that bird…Scuttle or…or did he just speak?" Eric asked as he saw Max come to his knee.

"Yes, I'll try to mediate between the two of you," Lana said but Eric still nodded in a very shaky manner. He approached Scuttle closer and then knelt down in the sand.

"I can hear him myself, can he hear me?" Eric asked as he looked at 'Lana' "Scuttle," he said as he looked around nervously. If there were any people who were watching his interactions right now they would have called him crazy. It was a good thing that there wasn't anyone making a record of this. "Can we talk. You…you knew that the sea witch, Ursula," he looked over at Lana who nodded to tell him he was correct. "Was using a disguise. Well, Ariel is now in disguise. You're good friends, ri-right."

"Ariel? Dame, that you?" Scuttle asked as he looked over at Lana and flew over to her. He stared at her before shaking his head. "You got taken by the wrong bait, your old body was a lot better than this one. I think this might be where the older model is actually better than the newer."

"Well, merfolk aren't as welcome on land as I'd like to believe and people saw me as a mermaid, they wouldn't be able to -"

"Yeah but didn't you spend like all that time as a girl as well," Scuttle commented. "When he was courting you."

"I don't know if I was exactly courting you at that time," Eric said and Scuttle rolled his eyes.

"Never can trust a human with things like love," he said before looking over Lana again. "Well, I will say that I am quite disappointed that you had to go and lose your looks 'cause darling you really looked good but now I can get a bit more information from you about the humans here. I don't think the prince could give me all the answers, I mean, take a look at him," Scuttle said as he put his wing out to Eric who was frozen as he watched this very talkative bird with a lot more character then he'd given him credit for.

"I…I didn't know that…that animals could….talk," he said.

"Who do you think was singing to you on that boat there? Those weren't some strange flowers you were listening to. Or did you eat them, I heard a lot about people eating exotic plants and thinking they were hearing singing," Scuttle said and Lana looked at him confused.

"I thought it was all in my head," Eric said as he remembered how he had had Ariel's name whispered to him. He had thought that he was just drowsy and then since the voices hadn't returned that it was a one-off occasion and he didn't need to see a medic or be leeched or anything like that. Instead it was a seagull.

"Nah, that crab's got one hell of a voice," Scuttle said and Eric's jaw dropped.

"A….crab was singing to me?" he asked and Lana stared at him. She had grown up with all of this. She had learned that there was a way to communicate with animals and that you only needed to listen to them and to get their trust. Animals were a lot more intelligent than people, or the majority of people, gave them credit for.

"Do you think you could find my father or someone to talk to my father?" Lana asked, "mine as in Ariel's although to not be hunted by those on land I have to go by Lana now," she told him and Scuttle sighed.

"The king's not likely to come to the surface and I don't know if I could remember long enough to find someone or whether that someone could get a message to him. I can try though." Scuttle offered and Lana hummed.

"Do you know where Sebastian likes to practice conducting?" she asked and Scuttle nodded.

"Yeah but I'm not going down that far. That's a bit too deep for me. Great in the sky and I can go into the water a bit but I'm not some fish bird," he said and Lana smiled softly.

"If I put a message in a bottle and bring it to you tomorrow, do you think that you could drop it into where he's practicing or where he likes to practice?" Lana asked and Scuttle flew around them again.

"For you, kid, yeah I'd be willing to do that," Scuttle said before landing down next to Eric who was half twitching as he watched him, all of this information about talking animals and intelligent animals was brand new to him and was making him question everything that he seemed so sure on before. "I like this one though, make sure he takes good care of you."

"I uh…will," Eric said before reaching out a hand and tapped Scuttle on the head. "Okay. You're not magic, right? That's not through magic that you're talking to me. Uh…is it?"

Lana shrugged and as Scuttle flew away and over the water she came down and knelt beside Eric, reaching out a hand to put on his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she asked and Eric nodded although he felt that his brain was whizzing around in circles inside of his head. There was just so much about the world that these landfolk like himself were so sure about but in just a few moments he had had all of those certainties disproven and he wasn't quite sure what he could believe in any longer.

End of Chapter Eleven

Thank you for reading

Thank you to those who left reviews on Chapter Ten

KathyMesser, marati2011