At first there was just more sand and sky, together. That’s how I knew I was close. As I neared the shore, I started swimming upside down to look up at the clouds. The light was pouring down through the water and soon sleeping on just the sand wasn’t enough to keep my safe. My skin ached, burns I learned later. The sun taking its tole on me. My first trial on the voyage.
The creatures, too, changed. Frilled sharks, spider crabs, vampire squids, kraken. These had been my friends, my foes growing up. As I continued on, day in and day out, I was faced with creatures I’d seen much more rarely. Transparent bodies shifted to color… blue becoming the most common. Jelly fish, turtles, brightly colored coral. I nearly lost myself more than once, distracted by them and their tales.
Still I carried on, finding shade by day to sleep and swimming on at night, even if it meant curling most of my body under the sand itself. Until finally, one fateful day, the sounds of land became prominent. I knew them, human voices, mostly from the occasional ship I’d seen venturing to the surface. I’d spoken to a few even, as they were tucked away in air pocketed caverns under the sea by my own people… but that’s another story for another day.
For a few moons I stayed only in the water, watching them in their daily lives. Watching as they played, as they built fires on the shore, as they laughed and joked and ran and… and did all these things I could only imagine. Soon my curiosity wouldn’t let me be cautious anymore.
I knew the tales as only that. I’d never seen any Syreni change to human, but I knew it could be done. My sources wouldn’t lie to me, even if they couldn’t give me enough detail for comfort. I’d laid my hands on every piece of information I could find, every carving, every stone, every supposed artifact brought back from land. I’d spoken to those who claimed to have done it, baring their scars and warnings.
The theory of how was there in my head. There was no better time to put it into practice than the present, I thought. When night fell and the shore was clean of everyone, I pulled myself up into the sand. Even in the darkness, I could see that my body was already starting to change. My skin, once as pale and nearly translucent as the other creatures in the midnight depth, now seemed to nearly match the sands beneath me.
That wasn’t important though, not now. What was important was what I’d come to find as the second most painful experience of my life. It took a great deal of effort to figure out how to get the water from my lungs. It had been there so long it seemed reluctant to come. Down inside of them, the housed gills seemed to struggle to retain it lest they have nothing to filter air from.
Finally, with a retch that tried to remove my lungs from inside my body, the last of the water left me. At first the sensation was strange, like a tingling that started from the tips of my tail and rushed up to where it met my waist.
My eyebrows furrowed as I saw the ends of my tail curl up without my command, nearly rolling itself, but any sensation from that was completely lost as the first of my scales began to recede. The prick was sharp, a needle jamming beneath one scale, then the next, the next… I groaned first, digging my hands into the shore as my breathing picked up.
Something was prying my scales from my body, those needles wedged beneath each and pushing them in and up as if to gain traction for the movement. As more and more disappeared to a place still unknown to me, I began to thrash from the pain. The water! I had to make it back to the water, replenish my lungs and be free from this agony!
But I was beached on the coastline and weakened by misery. Though I dragged myself toward it on my belly, the ocean only teased me with waves brushing my fingers and no more.
My skin grew tight rapidly, dropping me a few inches until my face met the earth. I turned in there and screamed as something began to pry my tail in two… I blacked out there, lost from the pain.
When I woke the sun was high and I lay naked on the shore. The tide, having come in, had pushed me further up onto the beach. The waves now ran up and down my sore body almost lovingly, a plea for forgiveness from a previously stern scold at my foolishness.
I groaned, but truth me told I felt no pain upon waking. Only the strangeness of a new body. I lay still a moment more, feeling it out without sight. Individual digits moved with my prompting, wiggling in the water. Then a twist of each foot, like my fin had been split right down the middle. It felt like the same muscles being moved, but… how? My legs shifted, collapsing at the knee and then stretching out again. A new appendage, unknown to me, lay between my legs against the sand almost painfully sensitive against the rough sand.
I managed to sit up, turning my body toward the ocean, my home, now seeming like an entirely distant memory. Slowly I looked down at this body, my body, which which I had little name or knowledge of use. The skin was nearly painfully tight and I missed the softness that had been there before. Though the water washed up over my hips, I still felt dry and uncomfortable. A sensation I would learn to be terrible thirst.
I felt sick, but I felt much more than that…
That day I didn’t try to do much. I didn’t stand, didn’t walk, didn’t run. Those would come another day. Overwhelmed at my success, I sat on the beach quietly and cried. In happiness, in fear, in sheer and incredible shock… The salty tears rolled down my face, dropped off, and I felt… at peace. The ocean was still a part of me, if merely in my eyes.
The sun set back into darkness and when I finally grew too tired to remain, I let the tide carry me back out and curled up between the rocks above the surface. I was afraid, you see. I was afraid to change back, afraid of that pain, afraid I wouldn’t have the courage to do this again. So, in my human form, I found shade and safety for the morning, and lost myself to sleep…
I wouldn’t learn how much courage I actually had inside of me until much later. The truth of it was, the pain of change was something I could choose… and I’d soon learn that the people of land were entirely out my control.
