I took in one last breath inside the water and lifted my head above the surface, my hair sticking to my face, like a bunch of sticky seaweeds. I was dripping wet.

Swiftly I climbed onto a piece of rock, jutting out of the sea, and looked at the distant ripples on the water. The white foam hit the rock and broke off into a million pieces.

I took out the two awkward things called ‘legs’ and dangled them from the sides of the rock. The legs moved in whatever way I wanted them to.

These were something new and I longed to try them out on land. I wanted to hear the crunch of my bare feet on the sand.

As I sat there looking at the clear water beneath me, dreaming of my home, Atlantis, the most beautiful city in the merworld. I could have stayed there but I was kind of tired with all the stinking mermen.

They smell like rotten fish and love to play in sticky algae. Yuck! I would never find anyone suitable in that stinking group.
I was ready to do anything to just get a glimpse of men who don’t smell like the muck on the seafloor. Anything, even going back to high school, of the human world though.

I looked up at the sun and ran a hand over the skin of my hand. It was dry, scaly. True, I had never been out of water. The world outside was something we were taught to dread in our myths.
The stories of the ‘little mermaid’ and her suffering were so famous once.

But now the world has changed. Modernization has chased away all fears.

Now you can exchange your tails for a pair of legs and jump out of the water to roam freely. Our scientists had invented ‘oxygen pills’ to help us breathe above water. Just one oxygen pill is enough to keep us going for a day.

But before coming here, we had been taught a few basic rules of this world.

The first was clothing. We never wore anything traditionally in the merworld. But people these days were trying to adopt the lingerie fashion of humans, just with the top half.

But the human world was very strict about clothing, so I heard, but I could see girls sitting on the beach with just some fishnet clothing. Everything was literally visible. Men gaped at them in a weird way.

I looked at the thing I was wearing now.

“It’s called a frock, Ianthe,” the woman at the store had informed me.

“And what are these damn things you wear under your dress,” I had asked.

“Those are lingerie,’ had come the reply.

I had gotten a book from the library the other day and had practically memorized everything about humans. What they eat, how they talk.

I had though taken cans of seafood with me. I couldn’t just afford to rely on human food.

And with my oxygen pills, a few dresses and a fluttering heart, I was finally going to the human world.

516 words....
TO be continued...

Thanks to all my friends who read it.