The Sea Prince's Love

Chapter 5

Etrela got up from the sand and went to get her shoes and basket. "I need to get home now," she grumbled. "Dinner won't cook itself." She picked up one of her shoes and started shaking the sand out of it. She looked for her other one and gasped as her eyes fell on the basket. There in her basket, on a pillow made of seaweed, lay the largest pearl she had ever seen. She picked it up and admired its perfection. "How did this get here?" She noticed a tiny carving of a mermaid on it. She looked around in the sand for anything that might give her a clue. A bit of disturbed sand made her lean closer to look. She had always been an excellent tracker. She traced the shallow pattern with her finger. It was a handprint. She puzzled over this. No footprints were to be seen. The sand in the handprint was wet, while the sand around it was dry, as if someone had crawled from the ocean just to give her the pearl. Maybe someone had. Maybe it was a mermaid. She laughed and picked up the pearl, thinking that she would give something back. "What could I give them?" She wondered aloud. She didn't know anything about them, except that they liked mermaids, apparently.

Vowing to find something suitable and take it tomorrow to the same place she had found the pearl, she walked quickly back to her home in the forest. As she stepped inside her front door, she placed the basket with the pearl in it down on the table. Again she admired its beauty. What could she give in return? She let her gaze travel across her clean three-room cabin. She didn't have many valuable things.

Her gaze stopped at a wreath she had made the other day out of flowers and small branches. It wasn't valuable, but it was pretty. She placed the pearl in her dresser drawer and took the wreath in her hands. It looked big enough for someone to wear on their head, like a crown. She placed it in her basket and promised herself she would go back to the beach tomorrow.