She felt the liquid go down; it was warm on her tongue. She sat and waited, nothing was happening. Great, this is just ever so wonderful. I cannot speak and that witch gave me a potion that did nothing. She was very sleepy and she began nodding her head down and then jerking it back up. She did not want to be caught on the beach. She was light-headed and the sky began spinning. I am going to die here. She could not breathe anymore. Her body was on fire. Water began running out from her gills and dribbling out of her mouth. My lungs must be getting ready to breathe out of the water now. Her gills were stretched wide open, she could feel them burning as they were closing themselves from the inside out. Each layer of skin was burning itself closed. The water was more forceful from her mouth now, causing her to cough and choke. Her eyes burned from trying to get the water out. When her gills were closing at the end of her skin, she held her arms close and cried silently. It was as though her neck and ribs, where her gills had been, were being sewn shut – but instead of a needle there was a great hot iron poker instead.
She sat there for a time, struggling to breathe. She could not understand how humans could breathe this way. She felt a sharp pain and pulled the dress up to see what it was. The air burned her fins. The top layers of skin had peeled away from them, leaving raw flesh exposed. Tears came to her eyes again. Her entire tail was dry and tight; it too was peeling away from her body. Her scales, once a vibrant glossy emerald, were now dull and gray. Each one drying up and crumbling away from her body; this too, left her raw flesh exposed. She could no longer move her tail on its own. She tried to move it with her hands, to get it out of the burning wind. Her tail bounced at her touch. It was swollen to nearly twice its size, and the raw flesh burned.
There was a light. It was faint at first, but pulsing brighter and brighter. Lila looked at her tail, the light coming from within. Her tail lit up a faint dusty rose; she could see something inside, so she leaned in to get a closer look. There was a storm. Much like any storm in the sky, like the storm her first night up, like the storm where she rescued the prince. But this storm was not in the sky. This storm was inside her swollen tail. Flashes of black and purple lighting danced along the inside of her thin pink flesh. She watched intently; every POP and BANG burning, her breath halted, her eyes filled with fear. The lightning inside her became faster, more intense. It consumed her insides and her flesh turned from pink to gray where the lightning was beginning to burn through. The light started strobing, and lit up the whole sky as her tail burst open, spilling warm liquid out all over. The pain was so intense, she let out a silent scream and everything went dark.