A Lesson

Within the next second, Ariel was down on earth in the royal palace. She was dressed as a servant girl and appeared as a girl of seventeen. She tried to teleport herself back to her room, but found that she couldn't.

She tried to use her other powers, but nothing was working. Suddenly she heard Aaron's voice in her ear.

"Now," he said, "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to live as a human servant girl for as long as you need to in order to learn your lesson. You can't just do things like this to people who don't deserve it. Oh, and don't try to convince anybody that you're actually a goddess. They won't believe you. Have a good time!"

She sighed and looked around at the room she was in. It appeared to be a bedroom of some sort. There were two beds, a desk, and two closets. The room was very small and had one window. The walls were painted blue and there was a green carpet that stretched across the room.

She was wearing a simple black dress and had a small white apron. She had black tights and shoes.

She looked like a seventeen year old girl with black hair and brown eyes. Her skin was olive colored and more dry than it should have been.

She looked out and saw that it was the early evening. A young blonde girl walked into the room and sat down on one of the beds.

"Hey, Olivia," she said, "How was your day?"

"Oh, um, fine?" Ariel said.

"That's good. I can't talk too much tonight. I'm dead tired, and I've got a tough day tomorrow. They want you and me to go out and deal with that weird girl who's been talking funny for the last few weeks. They want us to take care of her for a while since we're not doing too much right now. Anyway, I don't want to stay up any later," she changed quickly into a pretty nightgown and got into her bed, "Goodnight."

She put out the lantern on her side of the room and shut her eyes. After a few minutes, she seemed to go to sleep. Ariel looked around at their small room for a few more minutes. She didn't want to try to escape here. As long as she was a human, it wouldn't do her any good. If anything, it would probably just give her more trouble to do something like that.

She looked in her closet and pulled out a nightdress like the blonde girl had been wearing. She changed quickly and got into the remaining bed. She turned her lantern out and went to sleep. She didn't know what to expect for the next morning, but she didn't think it could be too bad. She just had to wait this out until Aaron decided to bring her back to being a goddess.

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Meanwhile, Damien and Aaron were at the palace thinking this over. They hadn't told the others what had happened, but it didn't matter much. There were more than twenty of them, and most of the gods would come and go as they pleased. No one would probably care too much if they didn't see Ariel for a few days. If they asked either one of them, they would explain it, but they didn't think they needed to announce what was going on. Besides, once one person knew, it would spread like wildfire anyways. It wasn't worth the effort of rounding up all of them just for that.

"So, how long are you going to keep her there?" Damien asked.

"Until she learns a lesson," Aaron said, "I think she'll end up going to one of our temples and asking for us to do it. You know it's bad when she of all people gives up and has to ask us for help."

"That was a good idea for how to deal with this. I really didn't want to send her back into hell again. It doesn't seem to have affected her too much the first time, but I still feel guilty about doing it even once. Do you think this will actually work?"

"I hope so. I sent a little message down to the royal family to send a couple of servants out to the girl who she's been punishing for no reason. She's going to be working with the girl she cursed, so it should show her how bad this is."

"Do you think the curse will still work if Ariel is down on earth as a human and can't change the language every day?"

"I don't know. I hope it does. At the very least I think she'll keep talking in the language she was today."

"Hmph, it's strange for you to be the one giving punishments now. Usually I'm the one who does stuff like that."

"No, you just lose your temper sometimes and end up doing things that you regret doing later."

"You're just a lot more level headed than me. You would honestly make a better leader."

"Hey," Aaron said, "Don't start on that again. I could never be the main leader. You and I are a team, a dynamic duo. You're just more charismatic and end up doing more of the talking. As long as we have each other, we can be leaders together. Besides, even if it was just one of us, you would be better than me. Just accept it and move on."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Well, lucky for you, you don't have to try to survive without me."

"Do you think she'll be okay down there?" Damien said.

"Of course she will. We both know she's been through so much worse."

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Ariel went to work for the girl the next morning. Luckily, she knew the language that Courtney was speaking and could do whatever she needed her to. The problem was that Ariel was the only one who could understand her.

The whole day it was clear that Courtney didn't like having others do so much work for her. She would try to do things for herself, but the servants would stop her. She couldn't even explain to them when something wasn't right. Ariel could see the sadness and frustration in her eyes. They were filled with sorrow, anger, fear, all she wanted was to go back to how she was before.

Ariel didn't mind the work so much. It wasn't any worse than any of the other jobs she had done throughout her eternal life. At least Courtney was pretty kind. She allowed Courtney to help with the tasks and spoke to her in the same tongue that Courtney was forced to speak in.

Ariel realized quickly that the girl wasn't so bad of a person and was deeply sorry for what she had done. Every part of this punishment was worse than the girl deserved. She knew she had overreacted.

Ariel went to one of Aaron's temples when she was finished working for the day. She said she knew what she had done wrong and promised to fix it. She was sorry, and all she wanted was to fix the girl she had wronged.

Ariel was reinstated as a goddess and immediately fixed Courtney so she could speak normally again. She made the girl promise to stop her impressions, but that was all.

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