Note: I'M NOT DEAD (just floating) I SWEAR. Look, here's proof I'm not dead! CHAPTER! And before you say anything, yes, I know there's a lot of repetition in this. That's the style I chose for this story. Flowing and repetitive and vaguely poetic.

I began to study two things with single minded focus. I absorbed every speck of knowledge in the royal library on magic, learning all I could about the strange hands I saw nearly every time I cast a spell. I learned that magic would conform to the personality of the user, and because mine had become one of consumption and intake, the magic to me appeared as a pair of hands that took, stole, changed things. I learned that it would take a source of magic more powerful than anything I could comprehend to change Talen's fate, to keep his body from being ravaged by its own magic. And I learned that the only nearby source of such power was the Trident, handed down through generations of Merman kings controlling the sea and all its inhabitants.

So I began studying the Trident. I learned where it was kept, when Neptune took it from its stand and when he put it back before he went to sleep. I learned the pattern of the guards roaming back and forth and around the stand. I learned everything there was to know about the Trident, except the most important thing.

Two months after Talen's birth, I decided I was ready. I would seize the Trident and give my son the chance to live. Not only that, I decided, but I would be the new ruler. And why shouldn't I be? Because I was born with tentacles instead of fins? Because my skin was purple and my kind cast aside? Not good enough. I could feel it now, the resentment. The hot, writhing resentment buried deep in my heart the very first time I was called a "pet". I'd turned away from it for so long, kept it at a distance as long as it was just me. But it was no longer just me, it was Talen too. His future was at stake, so I embraced the poison I'd kept simmering for so long. Embraced it, and let it burn hotter, preparing me that night for my destiny.

Everything worked perfectly. I watched from the shadows, cloaking myself in a spell that cost me the color of my eyes as Neptune set his Trident in its stand. The three guards stood at attention until he left, then began their patrol, swimming in a precise circle around it. As they passed around and around it, never taking their eyes off, I lay myself down on the ground and crawled forward. It was easy to crawl and roll with all my flesh, and I had kept to the ground most of my life. The guards, I had noted, swam several feet off the floor of the palace, leaving me plenty of room to wriggle underneath.

I had just passed beneath one of them, when I heard a faint mewling noise. My innards clenched as the circle of shadows halted, and the guards turned toward the disturbance. In the archway, barely inching forward, was my son. My mind raced. How had he gotten there? Was he old enough to have moved himself? I reached back in my memory, searching for clues. He had been more restless lately, been stirring his weak tentacles and tail in an effort to move. He was almost of age to begin swimming… he could have made it this far.

One of the guards broke the circle and began swimming toward Talen, drawing a sword. In that moment, I saw a choice. I could swoop up my son under the cover of my spell and hide him away, or I could seize the Trident. If I went after my son, I would reach him before the guard did, but I would lose my chance to save him from a horrible death. If I grabbed the Trident, the guard might reach my son first.

For a moment, I lay within the circle, staring up at the trident. The gold of it gleamed brilliant, almost blinding, but all I saw was my son's salvation. I stretched out my hand to take it.

When I woke, my wrists were bound behind my back and my tentacles were wound with thick strands of kelp. I lay on my back, staring up into the face of Neptune. I had never seen an expression more terrifying on the face of any creature in my entire life. Beside him, Triton hovered, staring a little to my left, a mortified and disgusted look on his face. I turned my head to see what he was looking at, and saw the most pitiful sight in my life. Talen, already barely able to crawl, had been wrapped in seaweed so tightly he could do nothing but cry. They had bound him so tightly that the strands cut his fragile skin, and blue blood stained the water.

"My son has told me everything," Neptune thundered, "How you mated with the teacher who left this place in disgrace, and birthed this abomination in secret. I cannot expect one so low as you to know the laws of our kind, so your punishment would be less had you not laid hands on the Trident. Your attempt to defile such a holy relic cannot be overlooked, and you will be executed. Only those in the royal lineage of merfolk can hold or hand over the power of the Trident, and you are of neither the lineage nor the honored species. You will be beheaded at first light. This thing, however, will be taken to the shark wastes and left there."

Soldiers' hands reached for my son, seizing him by the hair and lifting him up. I could see his neck straining, the fragile bones clinging to each other. I could barely hear Neptune handing down my punishment, because I could feel the magic and the rage rising together within me, twining to pour out of my mouth in a horrible, terrible curse.

The hands came, then, the hands that reached into the chest of that guard and pulled from him his beating heart, leaving no trace of a wound. He released Talen, floating limply. My heart surged for my son, and one of the hands reached out to catch him as he fell, carrying him gently to me. Another word from my lips dissolved the seaweed binding us both as I took him from the hand, cradling him close to my chest. The magic, satisfied with the price of the merman's heart, dissipated with the hands.

I lifted my head, eyes narrowed at Triton. For Neptune I did not even spare a glance. I held Talen up, and hissed, "Behold, Triton. Your firstborn child. Descendant of the line of Neptune, he will be a greater ruler than any of you." With that, I tucked him close to my chest and fled the palace.

I could not return to the caves of my mother and sister. That was where they would first search. I could not seek shelter with anyone, who would harbor me? So I turned to the one place they would not look for me. The Shark Wastes.

For a while, I sheltered in an abandoned shipwreck, nesting in the deepest part of the belly of the ship. That was where I found the first one. A small, cloth thing with little strands sprouting off its head. Merchildren had toys, and plenty of dolls, but this one was of human origin, with legs. Its hair must have been red once, but it had dimmed to a dingy brown, sodden with the rich saltwater. It had a funny little stitched mouth and a triangle nose with two black button eyes. It looked so friendly, lying in the corner. I scooped it up in a tentacle, inspecting it for a moment, before deciding it was a better toy than my son had ever had. I pushed it into his outstretched arms, and his fussing stilled. That night was the first time he slept without crying.

There was nothing to eat, everything in the shipwreck had been stripped, licked, gnawed and polished clean. I had ample flesh to keep myself alive, but my innards railed at the lack of food. Talen barely consumed enough of my milk to live. I had to find somewhere else.

I left Talen with his playmate twice a day for five days as I swam out, searching for a new place. I lost a tentacle to a shark, and another to the hands in payment for saving me a second time. It hurt, but it was all I had to give.

On the sixth day I found it. A series of caves riddling a reef near the southern border of the Shark Wastes. Coral and kelp and seaweed were bountiful there. I lost no time bringing Talen and his friend, and making up a small bed of sponges I plucked myself.

For a brief span, I was content. I was with my son, I was no longer a pet, and I was beyond the reach of the merfolk.

Then the sores appeared. They were small at first, but they spread like barnacles across his skin. He would scratch weakly, and he cried constantly. He stopped eating altogether, and I knew this was only the beginning. The magic was beginning to rend him.

What could I do? I had to get the Trident, but that would require planning. So much planning, and time I did not have. I could not take care of my son and claim the source of all the merpeoples' power at the same time. I glanced at the doll he kept with him constantly. "You're no help at all, you know. You could at least look after him for me."

If I could take those words back now, I would. I would forget them, and treasure what little time I had with Talen in his short life. I would saturate him every second with all the love I never had in my life up to his dying moments. Because that was the moment it struck me, the doll could look after Talen. And not just while I left for a bit, but until I returned victorious.

I set about making the cavern as comfortable as possible, lining his bed with fresh sponges and placing colorful shells on the wall for him to look at. Then I turned to the doll, and summoned the hands. Pointing at the doll, I willed for it to multiply. To populate the cave with an army of itself. I watched as the cavern filled with replicas of the doll, all laying limply about. Then I gave them purpose.

"You will not sleep, you will not rest. Your every waking moment is devoted to Talen. You will feed him, clean him, entertain him. You will ward off danger and confound any search for him. You will draw, as your source of magic, the forces tearing him apart, so that he may live."

As I spoke, the sores on my son's body closed. The magic warring inside of him began spilling into the dolls, propping them up as they struggled to their feet. The first one, the original, turned its head to me, its stitched-mouth smile suddenly eerie and frightening. Its black button eyes shone as it stepped awkwardly toward me.

"Nooooooot. E...nough."

I was startled. It could speak? Its mouth did not move, but I suppose it would have to in order to entertain Talen as I commanded, what did it mean not enough?

"Noooooooooot. E….nough."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "What more is there?"

It stretched out a ragged cloth hand toward me, and to my horror, the silt hands turned toward me as well. I realized my error. I had not paid a price for this magic, I had not given anything for it. I had chosen a power source, my son's magic, but I had not paid for the spell.

"I have nothing!" I cried, despairing.

"You…. Haaaaaaaave…." It crooned.

The silt hands plunged into my chest, reaching deep. I wailed in terror, sure they would pull out my beating heart and leave me dead on the cavern floor. Instead, I felt something else slipping away. I turned my head toward Talen, and suddenly I did not remember why it was so important that I bring the Trident back. What was I thinking? I would never sacrifice so much to get the Trident for some worthless, helpless leech. I stared at him in contempt. How could I have ever thought him beautiful? He was disgusting, with his limp, stripling tentacles sprouting off a bony tail. The hands receded, clutching a small red orb of light. In passing, I wondered what it was they had taken from me.

The spar of the ship thrusts deeper, tearing through the gap in my soul where the love for my son once dictated my every move.

Note: See, not dead, and I will finish this, probably next chapter will be the last in this story.