Ariel dreamt of her grotto, and of Eric; of human artefacts towering high above her further than the eye could see: candles and lanterns, cutlery and broken plates, fountain pens and inkwells, shelves upon shelves upon shelves of them, and she and Eric at their center. He was teaching her and she was happy; happy that she was being taught and that he was the one teaching her. And there was fire—ripples of orange dancing and flitting through the water around them. An object—she'd forgotten its name—fell from a high shelf to the sand beside them. Another, again unknown, followed suit. Then another. One by one, then two by two, then faster and faster did these objects fall, and although she tried to flee she found it impossible. Eric called out to her and she to him. They struggled to reach one another amidst this down-pouring of human items; burying them, suffocating them, crushing them.

'Ariel!'

She awoke with a start, Eric's name upon her lips.

It was not Eric beside her though, but Attina, her eyes startled and her face ashen.

'What did you say?' she asked, voice trembling.

'Eric.' Another voice; Aquata's. 'She said Eric.'

Confused, and with wakefulness yet to come in full, Ariel took in the scene around her. Six pairs of eyes were upon her, her sisters sitting, laying or floating at various points within their shard bedroom.

Arista, propped up on one elbow in bed, looked pensive. 'Didn't we used to know an Eric?' she wondered.

Aquata's positive met head-on with Attina's negative, the latter shooting her sister a withering stare.

A sudden tension filled the room, each sister pausing to consider this name. Attina and Aquata remembered; Arista found within her memory a shadow of a face which may have belonged to this boy; the minds of Alana, Adella and Andrina were blank; and Ariel, thoroughly bewildered by the effect that her unconscious slip of the tongue had had, knew only of the Eric she had recently befriended.

'I don't remember anyone called Eric,' proclaimed Andrina, as though that settled the matter entirely, 'and what does it matter anyway? Adella knows square-lipped Stevie, doesn't mean we all do.' With this light-hearted quip at her sister's expense, Andrina slipped innocently through the purple seaweed across the arch and disappeared in the hallway.

Alana whipped around from her position at the dressing table, aghast, her eyes finding the sister in question. 'You didn't!'

Irritated and blushing furiously, Adella quickly pursued her younger sister. 'Andrina,' she groaned, her voice fading as she too left the room, 'that was meant to be a secret.'

Alana, never one to forego the opportunity of obtaining gossip, was quick to follow.

The room was thus thrown into overbearing silence, which Arista was swift to quit, muttering some excuse about not wanting to keep father waiting any longer—for they were already late to breakfast at it was.

Rightly supposing her remaining sisters to be distracted in their silent quarrelling, Ariel took the opportunity to dart from the room under the pretence of following the others, only to slip once again unseen from the palace for a familiar destination. She had possessed half a mind to remain hidden within earshot of her sisters with the intention of learning the source of their crossness, but left instead with a wholly dissatisfied curiosity and an insatiable perplexity. She was certain that her Eric would have mentioned it had he once known her sisters, but decided that it might be well to ask.

Alone now, their sisters deterred by the brewing storm, Attina and Aquata clashed over a subject which had torn an irreparable rift between them thirteen years ago.

'You were told to forget about him, to never again mention his name. Why do you find that so difficult?' berated Attina, though not without feelings of hypocrisy given that she herself had failed to forget the human-turn-merboy.

'How can I? How can you? Mother said—'

'Mother's not here; and why is that? Because of him!'

'You don't believe that! You only say it because that's what father told you, but he was only a child,' argued Aquata, her voice wavering similarly to her sister's. She sighed, weighed down by suppressed memories. 'I loved him Tina, he was our little brother.'

Attina shook her head, holding Aquata's tearful gaze. 'No he wasn't.'

She watched the effect of this truth with more than a little regret, for she recalled what Eric had meant to her sister, the maternal role she had adopted from his very first night with them, so too the effect that his sudden disappearance had had upon her: how she had exhausted herself in searching for him, how she had cried for him, how she had withdrawn herself from the rest of the family upon realising that none shared in her sorrow, else were too young to remember. She had pleaded with their father to disclose the boy's fate, but he had stubbornly refused to speak of him and, over time, her fruitless pleas lessened. She had presumed him dead, but hearing his name after so long would undoubtedly raise her dormant hopes, despite the likelihood that Ariel's dream had been just that.

Aquata's anger succumbed to grief and she sank down to the edge of her bed.

'Do you know what father did to him?' she asked meekly.

'No,' replied Attina truthfully, turning her back and making for the arch. 'What does it matter anyway Aquata? You need to move on.'

The eldest daughter of Triton left the room then and sought to compose herself as she swam dejectedly down the hallway, her sister's heartbroken sobs haunting her all the while.

'Have you ever met any of my sisters?'

Eric paused, a little surprised by this question.

He and Ariel were seated once again at the center of her grotto, matching human objects and snacking on kelp-twists, which he had brought from home.

'Not that I remember,' he replied. 'Why?'

Ariel explained that there had been some disagreement that morning as to whether they had known somebody by the same name from their childhood, sheepishly admitting that in sleep she must have mentioned him.

'It must have been someone else they were thinking of though,' concluded Ariel, 'I'll admit I thought it unlikely.9

A faint smile indicated Eric's agreement, but he suddenly found his mind assaulted by questions of 'What if?' He possessed no memory of his earliest years, though his mother had insisted that they held nothing of any particular significance; but given his recent suspiciousness of her honesty, Ariel's question ignited his imagination more than it ought. He kept theses musings to himself though, at length returning his attention to that which had previously occupied him; the concept of books, made ever more difficult by the fact that only the covers remained.

Ariel, ever infatuated, remained hooked on his every word. She watched as he slotted the many covers inside one another, explaining that, whilst this wasn't exactly what a book looked like, their togetherness demonstrated the concept well enough. Again she considered herself forever indebted to him, and for the first time—and she berated herself that it was the first time—wondered what he would be doing if not this, what he was foregoing to be here with her.

'What do you usually do in the day?' she asked, 'I hope I'm not keeping you from anything.'

Eric, though quick to reassure her that he would rather be here than anywhere else, was glad that the subject had been brought up. This was the third day consecutively that he had opted for the shipwrecks, and the third day consecutively that he would return home empty handed; and, whilst it was not uncommon to find nothing of use, he perceived that he would not avoid his mother's suspicion if this continued. Sooner or later he would have to search the shipwrecks as he was expected to, else switch places with her and spend the day collecting kelp—a chore he would be expected to take up eventually regardless. He explained the system they had to Ariel.

She paid him her undivided attention, as interested by his lifestyle as she was by his knowledge of human objects and the lessons he taught her.

'If you're needed then we could meet every other day,' she suggested, 'or I could help you collect kelp, and you know I'd happily search the shipwrecks with you.'

Eric smiled, grateful for her understanding and willingness to help.

They came to an agreement to meet here as often as they could—the only doubt being whether Ariel could escape her father's constraints—and set off together to complete the task Eric had that morning been appointed. Either way there would be ample opportunities for learning.

Admittedly Ariel was made to feel a little bad, in that Eric's desire to prove useful to his mother was a stark contrast to her own desires to escape her family. She marvelled that they had found one another despite leading such opposite lives.

'How is it that your mother knows so much about humans?' she queried, voicing a question that had been on her mind for some time now.

Eric paused, startled somewhat that she should ask the very question that he had so long pondered himself.

'I don't really know,' he answered truthfully, despite his suspicions and theories, and despite his mother's insistency that she had acquired her knowledge over time as a result of her many ventures to the shipwrecks—this he had believed until recently, now he was convinced that it was false, that it was merely another of many lies.

'And you never thought to ask?'

'Oh no, I asked, but...' Eric trailed off, searching for an explanation. 'She's always been quite private.'

Ariel perceived then that this was a subject her friend would rather avoid and, though she couldn't help but wonder why, she decided to bring it to a close, desperate that Eric shouldn't feel uncomfortable in her company.

'She sounds like an interesting woman,' she concluded.

'Yes,' responded Eric, staring into the middle-distance, 'I think she probably is.'

Whilst Eric harboured thoughts of his mother, she similarly reflected on him, or rather his recent behaviour, particularly over the past few days.

That he had opted for the shipwrecks again was of little surprise to her, so too his general quietness—for he had always been so—but there existed a new standoffishness in his conduct towards her that both saddened and concerned the exile, and raised her suspicion that he had heard something somewherethat she had intended to keep a secret.

Nastasya paused in her task of folding crabmeat into kelp parcels—the former of which she had procured that morning and cooked at the surface. She loved Eric with all her heart, or as much of it as was left to her, and the possibility that he should despise her was a painful thing to consider, no matter that she felt deserving of it.

She sank into a chair—an odd feature of an underwater home—and dropped her head into her hands. Since she had suggested his returning to the human village Eric had seemed wary of her, as though he didn't quite trust her. It wasn't often that his excursions to the shipwrecks took all day, most often he would be back home by mid-afternoon, but over the past few days he had barely been here, seeming to prolong his return or fail to check home at all, instead making straight for the caves. It was a product of circumstance that he spent less time at home than normal children did, but Nastasya still felt keenly his absence. Gone, it seemed, were the afternoons they would spend together.

A hard lump formed in her throat. Before Eric there had been years of loneliness, like a dark, heavy physical presence hanging over her. His arrival, though wholly unexpected, had saved her. It was unlikely to have been the King's intention, but he had bestowed upon her a blessing. Now, she feared, those dark days were looming once again, be it a result of her own secrecy or simply of Eric's growing up, and the prospect frightened her more than she could say.

Had she expected Eric to remain here all his life? No. At some point it was inevitable that he should seek something more, and deep down Nastasya wanted that for him. She wanted him to find his place in the world, be it this one or the world above. She wanted him to meet people, to find love, and she despaired that what should have come so naturally had been made so difficult for her boy. The more selfish part of her, the part she tried to suppress, couldn't face his leaving her, couldn't face being left alone again, couldn't bear the thought of an empty home.

She would talk to him then. When next she got the chance she would ensure he knew how much he meant to her, in an effort to keep him by her side a little longer, and to mend this rift that seemed to be slowly, almost imperceptibly—so much so that she half wondered whether she was jumping to inexistent conclusions—tearing them apart.