QT: Gilded Waters

2: Unrest

Clang!

No, I can't eat this! The girl, now named Dierdre, cried out, throwing the golden bowl on the ground. The food inside the bowl falls out, revealing a man's arm.

A severed human arm.

Now, Dierdre, you must eat.

Her mother, the beautiful woman who had first welcomed her into this strange new world, scolds her. They spoke to each other mentally, conveying their thoughts through sharing emotions and pictures.

You cannot live on eating seaweed and sea grapes forever. The green fronds cannot sustain you like the meat can.

Shaking her head, her mother swims over to pick up the golden bowl, putting the human arm inside again.

An adult you have become, and soon, it will be mating season. If you do not have the strength then, how will you find a good mate?

Dierdre buries her head in her hands, her own fish tail, silver-white, with shots of gold, red, and light flecks of black running through, wrapping around herself for comfort.

In a week, when the full moon rose, would mark the beginning of mating season. It was a time when both mermaid and merman went into heat, their bodies instinctively responding to the magnetic call of the silver moon to give in to their desires.

Dierdre dreaded each day as it drew closer to that date, grinding her sharp canines as she protested.
I don't want to mate! Her heart cries out, unwilling. Mother doesn't understand. To Mother, it was onlyanother fact of life, to reproduce and continue their species.

The ocean around us is so wide and vast! Why must I stay here!?

Pure white pearls roll out of her large golden eyes, floating down to rest on the ocean floor of their home. It was a beautiful home, where Dierdre and her mother were surrounded by pink, red, orange, and white coral of differing hues, with various treasures strategically placed around it.
Mermaids loved beautiful things, there was no exception. After every shipwreck, every mermaid would go out to gather what they could find, gold, silver, precious gems and jewelry.

It was Dierdre who had organized the jumble of treasures, setting a golden candle holder here, bejeweled necklaces draped over the coral there. It was Deidre that laid colorful jewels and stones into the white sand, creating a mosaic of swirling shapes across the sea floor of their home.

Mother swims over and strokes Dierdre's pitch black hair.

You must, Dierdre. Remember why I named you.
Mother plucks out one white pearl quivering on Dierdre's thick lashes.

It was the great sorrow of their people, the merfolk. First hunted to near-extinction by the humans above, for preying upon their ships. Then the ocean had changed. It had become inhospitable, with hot swells of burning heat bellowing through the water, followed by ice-cold blasts that made the very bones of the mermaids shiver.

The repeated hot and cold spells had destroyed their birthing nests.. and the eggs laid there.

At this moment, Dierdre was the last young mermaid with the ability to lay eggs.

Her mother had become unable to birth any more eggs after laying Dierdre and her lost siblings. If she didn't mate with one of the many mermen who looked at her with anticipation.....Shivering, she rubs her arms with her webbed fingers.

It will be your first mating of many... Mother smiles as she strokes her shining black hair.

Eat, so you will have the strength to bear many strong younglings.

Ripping off a piece of flesh from the human arm with her sharp but dainty claws, blood floats up in the water, like smoke, as Mother brings the meat to her daughter's lips.

Dierdre shakes her head. No!

She was a mermaid, but she'd also been a human. One who'd dreamed of the possibility of meeting a nice young doctor one day, falling in love, having children...

To think in her next life she would be bound as a baby-making machine.

That was it. Dierdre decided, in that moment. Her fear of the unknown had lost to the unease of losing her choice not to mate.

She would run away. Explore the world, like she'd always wanted.

Knitting her plump lips together so Mother couldn't get the flesh into her mouth, Dierdre shakes her head, shining black hair swirling slowly in the water around her, adamant.

Mother was used to her rejection. She tolerated it, because Deidre was the youngest of her children, the only one who'd survived the deathly temperature changes. And she would never allow the other merfolk to say her daughter's strange habits were because of the heat blasts addling her brain. A large bubble escapes from her light pink lips as she sighs, and eats it the chunk herself instead.

You will come to enjoy it, in time...

Dierdre swims away from her mother as the words resound in her ears, and unties the kelp that she'd tied together to the coral to keep it from floating away. She was sick of the strong, salty flavor, but it was better than the human flesh her mother and all the other merfolk ate.

If she was really careful, she could go up to the surface, maybe gather some fruits or something to eat.

She missed her human Mom, the comfort of being with someone that cared for you. Though she didn't miss the ever-present pain of her old life on anyone. Her Mother loved her too, but things were so strange, so different here in the azure ocean.

The powerful shimmering silver-white tails twirls as she propels herself forward. Her arms beat the water to lift herself up and over, swimming in high speed loops out in the open water.

Spinning in loops made her dizzy, but it also distracted her from the worries for the future. The strong flipping motion made her feel powerful, alive. Like she was flying through the air like she'd always dreamed, in that grey hospital room alone by herself.

Bubbles froth behind her, trailing behind Deidre who pushes forward at a high-speed velocity. Here and there, small pearls drop into the sand of the ocean floor after she was long gone.

.

.

.

Apples. Dierdre was craving apples.