“Good. You're awake,” said a girl's voice.

“Huh? Whah?” I burbled groggily at the pretty fish-girl I saw hovering in front of me. She looked about sixteen and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid.

I was in a beach chair in the seashell castle's courtyard. My legs felt weird and fat and there was something sitting on my chest. She said, “Please don't panic, but in order to save your life we had to-”

Of course when she said don't panic like that it's exactly what I did do, but only for a second. I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. Beneath these two rather impressive breasts my waist narrowed and then flared out into girlish hips that were covered in beautiful jade green scales, which continued down the long sleek shiny tail I now had for legs. I wagged it back + forth experimentally. And this stuff floating around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like gold.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God,” was all I could say. “Oh my God! My God! My God!”

This summer vacation was turning out to be the strangest week of my life. Or maybe of anyone's...

OFF THE DEEP END
Chapter 2 ~ FUN WITH YOUR NEW TAIL
Laika Pupkino 2016

.
LATE SUNDAY NIGHT OR EARLY IN THE MORNING OF MONDAY 8/25/2014:

Drowning isn't fun.

They say that you just go to sleep, and you do sort of, but it's heller scary and awful before then. You do a lot of treading water, and whimpering, and praying, and getting sick from swallowing seawater, and you think about everything you'll never get a chance to do when you're dead, which when you're fifteen is a whole lot of things. At least this was my experience, thrashing around in the middle of the Atlantic in the dead of night all by myself, paddling and paddling because the ocean's choppiness and these big rolling waves that were lifting me way up and then dropping me wouldn't let me just lay there and float.

I hadn't noticed it at the time, but at some point when that ape-thing was chasing me through the pirate ship's rigging I'd picked up a huge nasty splinter in the sole of my left foot. It was probably the absolute least of my problems right now, but it hurt like hell and it was driving me nuts that every time I stopped treading water long enough to bring my foot up and maybe yank it out I sank below the surface. It was aggravating that this was a thing I might have easily taken care of at home with a tweezers or an x-acto knife, but all I could do now was favor my right foot as I kicked to stay afloat.

And because the water was warm I didn't get all dopey from that hypothermia they talk about, but got to experience all of this with a clear and terrified mind.

This vacation wasn't turning out anything like I'd expected it would. I had figured the worst thing I'd have to deal with was how my dad was acting since I came out to him and my mom back in June. The way he kept looking at me like I gave him a bad case of heartburn, and how he would say things that really hurt.

Not being intentionally malicious, but totally failing to take anything I was saying seriously. Like there was NO WAY I could actually mean any of this, but must of been telling them I was a girl to get attention, or just to upset them for some messed up reason. And then he would burn rubber out of the driveway in his Beemer and go back to the plant to yell at the foremen about those damn #7's that got installed wrong or whatever...

Not like my mom, who seemed to believe me pretty quick. After getting over the shock of it, and after we talked about it for a long time with her looking me straight in the eye, she finally decided I wasn't mistaken about what my issue was; That it wasn't just that I was gay, or that I got all turned on by bras and panties and stuff (like Robert Downey Jr. wearing satin undies and a camisole under his boy clothes in that crazy spy comedy Debriefings...)

But after listening to me pouring my heart out, and seeing the tears that I'd held back for years come pouring out---and then hearing what Dr. Blokenfrock had to say about girls like me---that light bulb went off over her head: This was something real.

And by the second week after I came out she started calling me Suzie, and being very cool about this. And she was kind of digging the idea that now she had someone she could hang out and do girl stuff with---mom and daughter stuff---which I don't think she ever thought about or missed before, when she assumed she had a son for a child and felt like that was just as good in a different way. While my father wasn't having any of this weird nonsense, even after we started on our trip.

And it wasn't like he was deliberately trying to hurt my feelings. I knew he loved me even when he was being a jerk, but my saying I had to be the real me was totally hard on him. Like I was betraying all the things I was suppose to be, and he was less because of it.

But I knew for sure he was going through hell since I disappeared. Probably thinking I ran away, and blaming himself for it. And I was afraid that after my disgusting fish-eaten remains washed up on shore he would never be the same. I wished I could tell him that I wasn't drowning myself out here on purpose. Not for being transgender, or because of him. I wished I could tell him I loved him and that I knew he loved me.

I wished a lot of useless things that night, until I finally couldn't kick my feet anymore.
.

.
)))========> THAT SINKING FEELING
.

And now I was spiraling down through the inky water, still thinking I better not breathe this stuff; But at some point I couldn't hold my breath any longer and the water poured into my lungs.

This is one of the most horribly wrong and terrifying sensations a human body can experience, but what was so weird about it was how oddly familiar being suffocated in this way felt...

I had almost drowned in the bathtub when I was six; an accident with an enormous stuffed animal---a black and white orca nearly as big as I was---that I'd decided needed to take a bath with me. I was so young when it happened that I'd never been able recall much about the incident, only the groggy aftermath. The totally drenched tile floor, the paramedics, and Mom yelling at me and hugging me and crying all at the same time.

But suddenly now the my memories of my near-drowning itself were clear and vivid in my mind; the helplessness and terror of being held under water by this creature I had thought was my friend, the confusion and weakness and then the calm and resignation as my consciousness faded. I had cheated death by drowning that time; but now it seemed as if it had always been intended for me to meet my end this way, like one of those Final Destiny movies...

My heart was still beating, kicking loudly in my chest while that toothpick-sized splinter in my foot throbbed in time to it, but I knew I was dying and my brain was crapping out on me when I saw the mermaid.
.

.
)))=============> THE LITTLE HALLUCINATION
.

She didn't have any clothes on, except for that belt with a knife hanging from it and the fist-sized seashell bobbing along at the end of a twine around her neck. Her eyes didn't exactly glow but being somewhat bigger than a human's they stood out in the murky dimness; beautiful, soulful. The lush long straight hair that went clear down her back was golden- not blonde but actually looking like it was made out of polished gold.

'God! I wish I had tits like hers,' I thought, and then tried to laugh when I realized this was probably going to be my last thought. Transgender to the end...

I was amazed at how real this creature from out of my imagination looked; and that she also felt real, when she got behind me and worked her powerful tail, trying to pull me toward the surface with her hands hooked under my armpits. She might have done it too, but it would've taken her maybe ten minutes when I was pretty sure I had only seconds left.

“Oh, poor human!” she sang, her voice high and sweet but blurry, like somebody making bubbles in their soda with a straw. “Hang on, let's get you some help!”

She grabbed the sea shell hanging around her neck and blew on it, producing a very deep note that would probably carry for miles.

But whoever she was calling for didn't seem to be coming, so then she started pulling me downward, which was easier, and I assumed it was some kind of mercy killing...
.

.
)))========> MY DISNEY DELIRIUM
.

And now I could see the ocean floor below us, a dark plain where this incredible castle sat, its hundreds of round porthole windows shining bright. It stood seven stories tall, higher if you counted the domes and things on top, which like the rest of it were made from impossibly huge sea shells, the long spirally ones rising up like castle towers. It looked like someone had taken Australia's Sydney Opera House, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and this weird melty-looking apartment house in Barcelona called Casa Mila and mooshed them all together into something even crazier looking.

Surrounding this outrageous thing of a castle was a vast garden, the kind you'd see around some old palace in Europe, except that half the plants here were actually the kind of stationary animals you get on the sea floor; with coral formation and hedges of neatly trimmed kelp shaped into geometric patterns, sea anemones the size of elephants in coral planter boxes; and a row of twenty foot tall statues of important looking mermen and merwomen leading up to the imposing parabolic archway of the castle's big front doors.

The mermaid parked me in an old beat up aluminum beach chair on the shale patio, blowing her shell horn and looking around for help one last time, then torpedoed off toward the castle, calling back, “Don't go anywhere!”

I gazed up at the strings of weird bubble lanterns that hung over this garden on lines slung between tall spiraling auger-shell posts, trying to figure out what the bubbles were made out of and what could make them glow like that, before I decided that what they were made out of was nothing. They weren't even there.

I was hallucinating all this as I drowned, probably nowhere near the sea floor and certainly in no place that looked like this. This was a scene that could've come from my favorite childhood movie: The Little Mermaid.

As I said in the first chapter I was totally nuts over that film when I was six and seven. Ariel the Mermaid was everything I wanted to be. So spunky, totally alive and adventurous; yet sweet and caring and loyal to her friends. And she was all girl- from her incredible red hair down to her shiny green fluke. She was my favorite Disney princess.

My parent had bought me a whole lot of Little Mermaid stuff---my room was starting to look like the Disney Store---before they got alarmed and tried to wean me off of this obsession, my Mom grabbing away the red towel I had hanging over my head as I was watching it for the third time that day, singing along with all the songs I knew by heart. Telling me: “Sweetheart, don't you think maybe you'd want to see something else? Oh look! There's a movie called Reservoir Dogs coming on in a few minutes. You like doggies, don't you? Let's watch that...”

So I guessed this was like what you always hear about, how your life flashes before your eyes when you die. Only I had spent so much of my life in fantasies and if-onlys that I was getting these instead of the real stuff...
.

.
)))========> 1000 KAZOOS
.

And now my beautiful imaginary friend was coming back, carrying something in a white polyethylene grocery bag. She blew the sea shell again, took my pulse and shook her head. Then she pulled a big fancy jeweled brass bottle out of the bag, making me think: 'Oh no! More elixir!'

But when she rubbed on the bottle with her hand there was a sound like a bubble popping and a large person in an old fashioned canvas diving suit appeared, his heavy brass helmet's air hose leading into the mouth of the bottle. From where I lay I couldn't see the face behind the helmet's little window, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it was blue with a humungous chin and a weird little curly beard. So now I guess we were doing another old favorite cartoon of mine...

The genie said, “So you've decided on your third wish, Mistress Anee?”

She pointed at me and shouted desperately, “Save him!”

“You really need to be more specific with your wishes," said the helmeted genie, "C'mon Girlfrien', we discussed this!”

I noticed his voice was a little different than the one from Aladdin.

[Which makes sense,' I thought, 'Because the comical genius Robin Williams who did that genie's voice had killed himself a few weeks ago, so they had to get someone else to do the voice here...']

“Put him back on land!” cried the mermaid.

['No wait- that DOESN'T make sense! Hallucinations don't need voice actors!']

The genie shrugged, “Sure, I can do that. But it wouldn't save him. He's pretty much finished. A goner. Kaput. Moribund. Down for the count. Deep sixed. In extremis...”

“Then... then...” the mermaid waved her arms in frustration,“Then put him back on land and make him better!”

“Sorry Princess, that's two wishes. One more than you have!” said the Genie [who I was starting to think might be Jim Carrey...]

“No it's NOT!” she burbled. Whatever they were going to do I hoped they'd do it quick. My sight and hearing were fading fast. Now I really was dying.

['And what is that gonna be like?' I wondered. 'Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Or none of the above?' I guessed I was about to find out...]

The genie spread his big gloved hands, “Listen, Bubeleh... if it was up to me you know I'd give you all the wishes in the world. But I didn't make up the rules of this genie business. You got one left, and you need to word it like one wish. It's just too bad he can't survive under water...”

[Unless this already was the Afterlife. Cartoons for the rest of eternity...]

And this show was also getting hard to follow. From far away I heard the mermaid say excitedly, “Then do that! Make him so he can.”

“Hmmmmm... I suppose I could turn him into a sponge.”

“No!” shouted the mermaid, “Like me! Make him like I am!”

“Your wish is my command,” said the genie. Then he cheered: “Oh, finally!! That's three---count 'em---THREE wishes! So long folks, you've been a truly fabulous audience; And I.... am...... OUTTAHERE!!!! Black Rock Desert, here I come!!!”

And to the sound of a thousand kazoos playing The Stars and Stripes Forever I lost consciousness.
.

.
)))========> JUST ADD WATER
.

“Oh good. You're awake!” said a girl's voice.

“Huh? Whah?” I burbled groggily, and spread my barely cracked eyelids all the way open.

The pretty fishgirl from my hallucination was hovering in front of me.

Somehow I could see a lot better underwater now, like she'd found a diving mask for me. She looked to be around my age, and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid, and that includes Aquamarine and Bella from H2O: Just Add Water...

I was still under water. Still in the beach chair. But for some reason no longer still drowning.

My legs felt real funny---super thick, and like I couldn't tell where the one ended and the other began---and there was something sitting on my chest.

Her voice no longer sounded so burbly to me. And I noticed she sounded kind of British, that posh sort of accent that makes you think of fancy schools and riding lessons. She said, “Now please don't panic; but when the genie changed you, he-”

Of course when she said “don't panic” like that it's exactly what I did do; But only for a second...

I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. A nice pair of breasts that felt full and soft and like a real living part of me when my hands went up to them. Beneath them my midriff narrowed like the inhumanly narrow waist of a Barbie doll---it was rather alarming to look at but since the other mermaid had a stomach like this too I guessed it wouldn't kill me---then flared out into womanly hips that were covered in pretty jade green scales; scales that continued down a beautiful sleek shiny tail. And this stuff floating all around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like polished gold, but soft and downy between my fingers.

My tail flipped itself up in front of me so I could take a better look at it when I thought about this happening. I wagged it forth experimentally; noticing that it didn't bend only at hips, knees and ankles the way my legs had, but rippled, with all the flexibility of a snake, thanks to a whole lot of strange new muscles.

When I'd first seen her swimming toward me I'd written the mermaid off as some ridiculous final dream of my oxygen starved brain. But she was still here, and even more amazingly I was too. I was breathing the thick salty seawater like this was a normal thing to do. Somehow I had joined this impossible being in being impossible.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” was all I could say. “Oh my God! Oh my God... Oh my God!”

“Look,” she said, “it saved your life. There wasn't time, and that genie kept wanting to argue-”

“Oh my God! Oh my God- I'M A MERMAID!!”

“I know, I'm sorry! Okay? But it really won't be so bad, you'll see.”

“Bad?” I laughed, and like I'd been doing it all my life I swam up out of the chair and grabbed her in a hug, “I think it's wonderful! Oh thank you! Thank you!”

“Whoahhh, easy there!” she said as I danced her around in a circle, “It is? I thought you'd be mad at me. Or screaming in horror over being turned into a 'freak'.”

“No! I always dreamed about being a mermaid when I was a kid,“ I said, running my hands over the smooth green scales on my hips, “And now I mean... I mean... WOW!”

“Hmmmm, that seems kind of weird. But I guess if I was stuck being a human I might want to change too. But I think you mean a merman. That's a boy mermaid.”

“Oh hell no!” I laughed, in a voice that was musical and bubbly sounding like hers was; and female without having to try and raise the pitch or even think about it. I was smiling like an idiot at the sound of it, at everything I had gained (and the things I'd lost) with this new body; So grateful that I might have been crying, but being underwater it was hard to tell if I actually was.

She sounded very relieved. “If you're happy being a girl then I guess my crazy genie knew what he was doing after all. Which is good, because he's not here anymore.”

I looked around. Both the genie and the weird bottle were gone. “What happened to him?”

“Changing you was my last wish. Genie only belongs to someone between the time they find his bottle---for me that was five years ago---and the minute they make their third wish. We got along great, and he loved that we treated him like a person and not just some wish-granting machine. But in between owners he gets a two week vacation, so he was all crazy-happy about that; saying the timing was perfect for this event he wants to go to,” she grinned; but then shuddered in revulsion, “But it didn't sound like the sort thing he'd be interested in at all! A big human-sacrifice the Americans have every year out in their western drylands called The Man-Burning Festival!”

“Um... They don't actually burn anybody at Burning Man. It's mostly about bad art and running around for a few days under the hot sun in weird costumes banging tambourines and acting silly.”

She giggled, sounding relieved. “Well that makes a lot more sense. He'll love that!”

“And it's the one place where a big blue guy in a Hawaiian shirt won't stand out.”

“Blue? He's not blue, he's-” she stopped and peered off into the dark water. “Oh tail rot! Wouldn't you know it?!”

And now I saw it too. Something streamlined and a bit larger than us was swimming towards us fast. I really hope that isn't a shark!
.

.
)))=========> JASPER 5
.

But it wasn't. It was a dolphin. A common bottlenose, like Flipper. My mom's favorite animal.

He had an aluminum cask hanging around his neck (well he didn't have a neck, but somewhere behind his face...) like those St. Bernard rescue dogs in the cartoons wear. So maybe I was in some kind of Cartoon Afterlife after all...

The cask had a hose with a mouthpiece dangling from it. It was one of those diver's emergency reserve tanks that are good for maybe fifteen minutes, and just to make sure there wasn't any doubt about what was in it someone had scribbled AIR on it with a grease pencil or something.

The dolphin spoke in kind of a snooty voice: “Please state the nature of the marine emergency.”

She glared at him. “The emergency is over Jasper Five, it's fixed! And no thanks to you.”

He dipped his head in sort of a bow, “My apologies, your Royal Highness. I got here as quickly as I could, but I had to settle a war between the starfish clans.”

“Those stars are always fighting! They probably started again the minute you left. This human was drowning, she would have died if I had left it up to you! I used up my last wish because of you, you stupid fluking fish!”

“I won't take that sort of abuse even from you, Princess,” the dolphin warned her.

It seemed that calling a dolphin a fish was the worst insult you could give him. The mermaid hung her head and said, “I'm sorry Jasper, really! I didn't mean that.”

“Apology accepted,” said the dolphin. “And by 'this human', I'm assuming you mean your second self here?”

“Well she was human.”

“I see,” said Jasper Five. “And so your genie, he's no longer with us?”

“Nope. And he said to give you and mom his regards. Then he sang some 'Shuffle off to Buffalo' song and disappeared---POOF!---in an explosion of rainbow colored silt. A buffalo... that's like a cow, right?”

I said, “Sort of, but hairier.”

“She speaks!” cried Jasper in mock suprise. “And how are you this morning, Dear?”

This was a good question. I was a mermaid. I was breathing water and talking to a dolphin. And the way it looked like we were all hanging ten feet in the “air” above this vast French or Italian gridwork garden just added to the unrealness of it all...

“Well I'm kind of doubting my own sanity at the moment, but I'm alive. Which is more than I expected to be about now.”

“She was in really bad shape when I found her,” said the mermaid.

I looked down at my chest and grinned, “My shape has definitely improved.”

“Optimism, that's the ticket!” beamed the dolphin.

“She barely had a pulse,” said the mermaid gravely. Trying to rescue me had been a scary ordeal for her too, watching my chances for survival dwindle away in front of her while she tried one futile thing after another...

I angled my tail out in front of me to show Jasper the wide blade of a fin at the end, which was just like a fish's except that it ran horizontally like a marine mammal's fluke. “And I had a big nasty splinter in my foot that was driving me nuts. I'm sure glad that's gone!”

“There's a bright side to most of the things life throws at us,” Jasper philosophized. “Around here you'll find your glass is never half empty!”

The mermaid said, “And now that I have time to think about it, I doubt that we could have saved her even if you had got to us on time. She'd already been underwater a long time...”

The dolphin nodded his big head, “Then you did the right thing.”

“I know. But now I have no idea what I'm going to tell Mummy now! She made me promise I would save that last wish for when I got older.”

Jasper Five thought a bit, and said, “The Queen knows that you always wanted a sibling. Tell her you just couldn't stand being alone anymore. She knows it's been hard for you, with nearly everyone you know being either an adult or much younger than you. You really do need someone your own age for company.”

“But I'm not alone. I have Fluke.”

“But since he's been working at his father's shop you only get to see your boyfriend a few times a week, and you spend most of your time alone. Queen Atlantea will believe this as a reason, and I'm sure she'll come to love having a second child.”

“If she accepts her at all. Some stranger, whipped up by magic, who looks like me.”

“She will. Hadn't she and King Uyehtah always wanted to have another baby? Bringing in healers from all over the Nine Queendoms; Trying and hoping, right up until... well whatever has happened to him.”

“Some humans got Daddy, that's what happened! They've probably got him stuffed and in one of those horrible freakshow museums up there.”

The dolphin nuzzled her face with his snout, and said softly, “We don't know that for certain, do we? He could still be alive.”

“I don't even think Mom believes that any more...”

“Well I do. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling he'll come swimming home some day, with a story that will rival The Odyssey.”

“You're sweet for lying to me Jasper.”

“I don't lie,” huffed the dolphin. “And Her Majesty might be angry at you for using up all your wishes at first, but she'll understand why you broke down and had the genie make you a twin.”

I startled,”A twin?”

“Oh yes,” said Jasper, “A perfect duplicate. If it weren't for her belt and calling conch I wouldn't be able to tell you apart.”

“When I told the genie to make you like me I was just talking about making you amphibious,” said the mermaid princess, “But he took it literally.”

“Genies do that, don't they? Seem to think it's funny,” said Jasper.

“Wow!” I said, “If I look like you that's great! You're really pretty, Princess.”

“You think so? Thank you Princess, so are you,” she said and we both laughed at how vain this sounded.

Jasper Five laughed along with us, a dolphin-y sound not at all like the voice he'd been talking to us in (or whatever he was doing, since he wasn't moving his mouth). He said, “It's good to hear you laugh again, Anee. I can tell already you two are going to be great friends. And as the human philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote: 'There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship!'”

"That's pretty basic," I said. "I would've expected something more complicated from a famous philosopher, but I think you'd have to be a real scrooge to disagree with that.”

“But even Mr. Scrooge came around in the end,” Jasper reminded me.

“Do you mind if I ask how a dolphin knows about Dickens and Homer's Odyssey and Thomas Aquinas?”

“The castle does have a library,” he said, “It's one of the perks of being ambassador to your queendom. Although I wish had more twenty first or even twentieth century human novels. And more that aren't necessarily great literature but are just for fun. The castle's selection of human books tends to be fairly dry.”

“Because we keep them in the Dry Room!” joked the mermaid.

“Oh Anemone... That was terrible,” Jasper groaned.

“Your name's Anemone?” I asked, and when she nodded I told her, “That's a great name!”

“Thank you,” she said, “What's yours?”

“Susan,“ I told her, happy that I now had a right to this name that all the crazy uptight gender-nazis in the world couldn't say I didn't have.

She made a face.

“Or Suzie...”

“Oh, that's even worse!”

“What's wrong with it?”

“Nothing; and I kind of like Suzie. But I'm thinking about Mom. They're both such land dweller's names, and as bad as Mom hates humans we can't let her find out you used to be one. Would you mind something else?”

“I guess not...”

“How does Enomena sound to you? Princess Enomena. That's Anemone backward.”

I thought it sounded a bit too much like 'enema', but if no one down here knew what one of those was I figured it would be okay (In fact I wasn't sure if we even had an anus, since the back of my scale-covered pelvis was as smooth and featureless as the front, without even a dent to show where a butt crack would go...).

"E-noooo-me-na..." I pronounced faintly, trying it out. It was definitely exotic, and I thought it was neat how it was my twin's name in reverse. I nodded and grinned, “It's cute, I love it! And you say I'm a princess too?”

“Yep.... of the Queendom of Hatteria.”

“That's kind of cool,” I said. I was a few years past the age when I really wanted to be a princess, but if it came with the tail I wouldn't turn it down. Although the whole notion of hereditary rulers struck me as absurd somehow. I asked, “Are you sure though? I mean wouldn't I have to have royal blood, or at least have been born here?”

“Your blood is as much like me as all the rest of you. And you were born here. Just now, when the genie's magic created you. Or at least that's what we're gonna tell- Uh Oh!”

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Genie used to tell me there were certain wishes his magic wasn't powerful enough to grant; so don't even bother asking. Like 'World Peace'. So could a genie just make a person? I mean right out of thin water?”

“That does seem rather godlike," said Jasper, "And I really have no idea...”

“But Mom might know. Which could bring up the whole where-did-she-come-from?/used-to-be-human thing.”

“Perhaps there's something about genies in the Arcania Scrolls,” suggested Jasper.

“I'm sure there is. But even if I could find where she hid them, my tail's still sore from the last time she caught me reading them. I'm trying to stay out of trouble here, Jasper!”

“So then let's work with what we do know. Obviously the genie can create a mermaid from another life form, since he just did. So what if he created your sister from some local-”

“A dolphin!!!” cried Anemone.

Jasper didn't sound too keen on this notion. “Well I don't know...”

But Anemone loved the idea. “How about that, Sis? You were a dolphin!”

“EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!!”I chattered.

She burst out laughing and started dolphin-chattering with me. “EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE-”

“No. Don't do that,” said Jasper.

We turned toward him: “EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!!”

“No really. Don't,” he sighed, like we were doing it so wrong he was embarrassed for us. “And I don't think claiming she was a dolphin is the answer. What if Her Majesty asks her something about her former pod? She knows nothing about being a dolphin.”

“I might be able to fake it. I do know a few things about dolphins, porpoises and whales. My mom is a marine biologist, you know,” I said, which was a bit of a stretch. She was a tour guide at a public aquarium and maritime museum about eight miles from our house.

“Maybe you do,” he said, “But you haven't lived with us. Any four year old mermaid knows things about dolphins that your human scientists have no clue about. No, I think you girls should go farther afield to explain Enomena's origins. Something not so common and well known here.”

“Then how about a Florida manatee?” asked Anemone, “They never come out this far.”

“That could work,” nodded Jasper, “Was Florida was within range of your genie's powers?”

“It sure was. He was always popping over there for his key lime pie. I used to joke that if he kept doing that he wouldn't be able to fit in his bottle...”

“I doubt if he could ever get that fat. That small bottle of his seems to have some curious dimensional properties to it. But if he could teleport to Florida then a manatee seems like an excellent choice for your deception.”

“And you'll go along with that story? I mean it's, you know...” I said to this dolphin who had just told us he never lied.

“I said your deception. If Queen Atlantea asks me anything about this I'll say I wasn't here when the genie granted your final wish. And I can tell her that I've known the Princess to be generally honest, which is also true, and hope she doesn't press it any further. But I would like to be able to say that about you in the future, so I suggest you come clean about this eventually.”

“And we will, as soon as Mom gets to know her a little. But until then it look like you're a sea cow, Enomena,” giggled my sister.

“Moooooooooooooo!”

“Sea cows don't moo!” harrumphed Jasper, which started us both mooing at him and giggling.

And our laughing together felt sooooo good! Because from the moment those pirates grabbed me---and especially after I jumped overboard and got left to drown---it was seeming more and more certain that I would never laugh like this again.

Plus the dolphin ambassador had a stiff, serious and rather preachy way about him (which I would learn is not typical of dolphins at all...) that made acting childish and silly around him even funnier.

But Jasper was also decent and kind, and not totally humorless. He said, “Sea Gods and little fishes! The Queen is going to have her hands full now that there's two of you. You'd better be careful or she'll wind up banishing you both.”

“She would not!” snapped Anemone, suddenly cross.

“No of course not; I was kidding. But she does seem a little banishment happy these days. Nearly half of her household staff!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Pescanova were spies, Jasper. Don't start on that again!”

“Alleged spies.”

“They could have had a trial. And they accepted Mom's summary banishment instead of going in front of the magistrates on charges of treason. What does that tell you?”

“That they were afraid they might be convicted simply for being from Amazonia.”

“What are you guys talking about?” I asked. “Banishment?”

“It's what we do with criminals,” said Princess Anemone. “Kick them out. It's better than being tossed into the dungeon like they used to do in the old days. A mer-person can survive okay outside the borders. There's plenty of fish out there.”

“There's also more predators,” said Jasper.

“Well that's what they get for breaking the law; let them go doss it out in the seaweed! And what choices do you think the Amazonians would give to anyone they suspected of being a spy?! You know what they'd do!”

“It's easy to look good when you compare yourself to a dictatorship. But it's not my place to tell you how to run your country.”

“Which never seems to stop you,” Anemone said. Then she asked, “What is it, Jasper?”

The dolphin hung there, perfectly still, and seemed to be listening to something far away. Then he said, “It seems I'm needed. There's some emergency out in Coral Park. A hero's life and all that!”

“Go be a hero!” Anemone urged him, “And thanks for coming anyway, Jass.”

“Sorry I wasn't more help. Say, before I go could you give me a shot?”

“Of course,” she said. She grabbed the hose of the air tank hanging from him and after he exhaled a great blast of bubbles, pressed the end of it to his blowhole.

”Easy,” he said as she turned the handle, “I don't want to blow up like a balloon!”

“I know how to do it...”

It wasn't like filling a tire, or like a camel storing up water. Cetaceans don't hold their breath or store oxygen in some special compartment; it gets diffused throughout their fatty tissue. He took five long deep breaths and after blowing the last one out, said, “Thank you! That hit the spot.”

“Any time,” said Anemone. She shut the air off and tucked the end of the hose through his collar.

“It was a pleasure meeting you Enomena,” Jasper Five said, nodding one last time, then took off like a shot into the black water, calling back, “Safe swimming, you two!“

“Safe swimming,” the mermaid princess shouted after him. Which I would learn is a common farewell among the creatures that live down here. A half superstitious polite-ism; which everyone knows means 'I hope you don't get eaten!', but nobody wants to come right out and say it like that.
.

.
)))====> WE SHALL FIGHT THEM UNDER THE SEAS & OCEANS...
.

“So that air tank is for him?” I asked.

“He found it last week and had me rig it up where he could wear it like that. He's been on this 'rescue dolphin' kick ever since, and is convinced he's supposed to save some human with it. But we're sort of out of the way from all the human places and don't get a lot of drowning victims. I think you're the first in my whole lifetime. So he blew his big chance when he stopped to settle that starfish feud...”

“Which is probably just as well. Even if you and him got me fixed up and pushed me up to the surface I'd still be stranded out in the middle of the ocean.”

“The castle does have a couple of dry rooms you'd be able to survive in, but I would've had to sneak you in. I doubt if mom would let a human in the front door.”

“Even if I was drowning?”

“She might give you some salvaged styrofoam to float on, and maybe a stick for a paddle. But after that you'd be on your own,” she said, and mimicked a rolling contalto voice: 'Let the hew-monns worry about the hew-monns...'”

“Well, that's better than just leaving me out there with nothing,” I said. (Stupid asshole pirates!)

“I don't think Mom could bring herself to do that, not even to a 'crawler'. Although once she did enough to be able to tell her conscience 'See? I gave him a chance!' she'd probably be wishing you would drown.”

“She must really hate us!”

“She does, but that's not why she'd wish that. Every time a land dweller even gets a glimpse of one of us she worries for months that they'll be coming back with boats packed full of sonar equipment and underwater cameras, and a whole army of divers out looking for mermaids.”

“Okay. I can see how that would be something to worry about. And what about you, do you hate humans?”

Anemone didn't say anything for a while. I'd already noticed how unusually big her eyes were, but here under the garden's strings of bubble lights I could see they were a dazzling shade of blue that I don't think any land person's eyes ever had. Looking into them was intense. Finally she said, “No, I don't hate humans. But they frighten me too, in a different way than Mom. I'm more worried about their pollution, and overfishing, and how they might blow up the planet some day!”

“They scare me with that stuff too,” I said.

“But from the human books I've read I know there's some wonderful things about your race. And Daddy, who broke our most important rule and got to know some humans said they're just like anybody. There's nice ones and not-so-nice ones. He was a submarine scout, helping protect the Atlantic convoys for the good guys in your second World War.”

“How old is he?” I asked. My own parents hadn't been born until about the Vietnam War.

“He's only ninety-two,” she said, “So he was still a teenager when he went to war. He did some spying with a waterproof camera in the enemy's naval harbors and shipyards, and this rocket-place called Peenemunde; and helped save the crew of the submarine Lady Guinevere when it got sunk in the North Sea.”

Which answered my question about which side she considered the good guys. With a name like Lady Guinevere it probably wasn't a German boat. I said, “That's awesome!”

“George Six thought so too.”

“George Six is a dolphin?”

“No he's a king. A human king. He sent his First Minister to give Daddy a cross on a pretty blue ribbon,” she said, beaming with pride. “It says 'FOR GALLANTRY' on it.”

“Oh that George Six! Was his First Minister a big fat guy named Churchill?”

“Yeah! How did you know?”

“He was kind of famous. And that cross he gave your daddy is a pretty big deal over there.”

“I know. But they had to give it to him in secret, which was fine with Daddy. The last thing he wanted was to get famous in the human world. But Mr. Churchill shook his hand and said he hoped this was the beginning of a great partnership. Because some day 'the children of this island Earth'---he meant humans and mermaids---might have to fight together against a threat even bigger than Crazy Moustache Guy.”

“You mean the Russians?”

“I don't think so. He called them 'creatures of infinite malice, who would exterrrrrrminate us all...'. Daddy thinks he was talking about people from Venus or someplace.”

“Venus?!!” I asked, and burst out laughing.

“Or some place...”

“What was in those cigars he was smoking?!!” I whooped. (It's embarrassing to remember how little I knew about the universe then...)

“And Daddy told Mr. Churchill we would be ready to help, but when he went to Grandma about it she was dead set against it, and almost banished him for helping the humans with their 'silly war'. So there never was a real partnership. But a few months later he did help them steal that Coke machine off an enemy submarine that was sinking.”

“A Coke machine?!!”

“I think that's what he said.”

“Why would they need to steal a Coke machine off a German sub?”

“I have no idea. It's an enigma to me...”
.

.
)))========> THE TWINS THING
.

It was only later that I figured out she meant a code machine. And so obviously Anemone's understanding of the human world was sketchy in places, but she knew way more about us than I ever would about mermaids. I said, “It sounds like your daddy has had some real adventures.”

“He has. And he's your daddy too, now. I hope you can meet him some day...”

“I hope so too. A World War Two hero! I'd like to shake his hand myself.”

“Oh you wouldn't get away with that. He's a real hugger!”

“But you say he's gone missing?” I asked.

She sighed. Sighs sound different underwater but they carry the same emotions. “Just disappeared one day when I was eight...”

“That's awful!”

“It is, but it happens like that a lot down here a lot. You get eaten, or hauled away in a fishing net, and all anyone knows is you're gone.”

“I'm so sorry,“ I told her, “I never lost anybody like that.”

“But in a way you have. When I changed you it changed your whole life. You've just lost everyone and everything you ever knew.”

“I did, didn't I?” I suddenly realized. With all the strangeness of these past few hours and having been just about resurrected from the dead it hadn't sunk in yet, how different things were going to be for me now. My whole future.

“And I'm sorry for that,” she burbled.

“Don't be. You could of used your last wish for anything, and you used it to save me. Someone you didn't even know.”

“I know you would've done the same for me.”

I thought about it, and she was right. You would pretty much have to after you tried every other way to rescue someone. I said, “Well thank you! And there was this other problem I had, that maybe wasn't as bad as drowning but it felt like it a lot of the time. And you and your genie totally fixed that. And I might be even more grateful for that part of it. Because I don't just have life now, I have my life. Finally, the way it always should have been!”

“Really?! You wanted to be a mermaid that bad?”

“It was more about wanting to be a girl. Or it was like I already was one inside, and the male body and life I had just felt all wrong on me. So whether it's mermaid, or a human girl, or a... Well no, I guess that's it. I wouldn't want to be turned into a female bug. Or a dog... or even an ape-girl,” I said, thinking of poor Kiki.

“No, that would just be replacing one kind of wrongness with another.”

“So you do understand!”

“Kind of, but not really. Because I never felt like that about who I am. But I don't have to break my arm to know it hurts. And I sure wouldn't want to be stuck inside a boy's body. So I'm just happy for you, that you got unstuck. And I'm happy for me too; because like Jasper said, I got a sister out of this!” she said, smiling like Christmas morning. But then her smile wavered, “Or at least I hope you'll want to stick around...”

It hadn't even occurred to me that I might do anything else. I said, “of course I will! I'm not going to leave my only sister.”

Her smile blossomed again, bigger than ever. “Oh! That is... that is just so...”

Not finding the word she was searching for she kicked her tail once to close the few feet between us and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back every bit as eagerly.

I don't know if it was everything she'd done for me, or some family-loyalty instinct lodged in the brain I had now, or that fabled near-telepathic bond that twins are supposed to possess; but I loved this mermaid with my whole heart already. And from her nothing-held-back loving embrace I could tell she felt the same way.

We had each been an only child, and now we weren't. And we both had lost family---and me very recently---but now I'd found someone who was instantly and mysteriously and hugely important to me. I can't say I loved her any more than I did my human parents, but the suddenness of this made it seem so intense, and it was different. It seemed to go back a lot farther than the hour or so I'd known her, and had me wondering how I could have lived my whole life without ever realizing I'd been missing her.

We separated, and Anee said, “Are you ready to go wake up Mom and see what she says.”

“I guess so,” I said. I was afraid that this could end us being sisters before we even really started, but I knew we had to. I sighed. “The moment of truth...”

“Gods, no! Not the truth... You were a sea cow, remember?”

“Moooooooo!”

“Mooooooooooooo!!!” she echoed as we swam toward the impossible towering glob of seashells that would be my home now, or not...

“Hey, are you hungry?” she asked.

“Famished!”

“Me too. I'm so hungry I could eat a seahorse!"

"They're not very big," I said.

"No, but they taste so nasty you'd have to be starving to eat one. After we get you introduced to Mom I'll ask the maid to make us some breakfast. Maybe some nice bluefin. Do you like sashimi?”

“I love it!” I said, “I could eat sushi every day.”

Which turned out to be a good thing. They didn't do a lot of cooking down here since it was hard to keep a stove lit underwater...
.

.
I didn't learn all of the following during our short trip to the house but in bits and pieces over the next week. Here in a clamshell is:

)))========> MERMAID HISTORY 101

My new mother was Queen Atlantea of Hatteria; Hatteria being one of the “Nine Queendoms” in the half of the Atlantic that lie north of the equator. The name didn't have anything to do with hats or hatters but where this castle and the village next to it were located- the Hatteras Rise, a shallow region of the ocean right at the edge of the drop off to the deep dark Hatteras Basin. It seemed to me like our little rise had once been trying to turn itself into an island of five thousand square miles but just didn't have enough tectonic ooomph! to make it all the way to the surface. But it did have one or two tiny islands that had managed to poke themselves up into the air.

Our queendom was a monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, with the Queen having more power than an American president, and a whole lot more than the Kings and Queens of modern day Europe have, but less than they did in centuries past. She could veto any law but usually didn't, knowing that a popular vote could repeal any of her edicts, or even theoretically depose her in favor of the next person in line for the throne.

All of the world's mermaid civilizations lie in shallow waters, mostly along the continental shelves of the different landmasses. By human standards our underwater countries were tiny. What we called a kingdom wouldn't be much more than a town up on land. Even before its population began to dwindle Hatteria had contained no more than 300,000 citizens. And Anemone said she doubted if there were currently even a million merpeople in the whole North Atlantic Ocean. And even the most populated place in Earth's hydrosphere---the Great Yangtze Bank between Shanghai and Okinawa---couldn't boast much more than that. (But luckily our populations worldwide were on the rebound and merkind was no longer dwindling away toward extinction...)

We called ourselves the Nine Queendoms, even though little Vinlandia up in the chilly waters off of Greenland was actually a kingdom. And some of the queendoms currently had kings ruling them. What made a mermaid nation a kingdom or a queendom was which of the two would be the big boss monarch if that country had both a living king and a queen. But other than that these countries all enjoyed equality between the sexes, my sister said, as guaranteed by the Charter of Universal Rights that the nine NAUTILUS nations (North Atlantic United by Treaty Into a League of Undersea States) had all agreed to.

But from what I would see during my week here, Hatteria seemed to have more women holding important jobs than men- like our First Minister Aballonia Neptunelli. And the way we tended to use the word “mermaids” to include mermen as well (the way English-speaking humans will say “man” to mean both men and women) seemed like a sign that our society might have been seriously sexist against males in the past...

A huge chunk of the Southern Atlantic was under the rule of the Amazonian Empire; Amazonia not being some tribe of groovy lesbian warrior-supermodels but the far more pedestrian and very totalitarian regime off the coast of Brazil that was doing all the invading and conquering down there. For the past forty years they've seemed content to just hold on to the places they already conquered, and the ambassadors they send up here talk real sweet about their deep desire for “friendship” and “peaceful co-existence” with the North Atlantic. But this is the same thing they told each of their South Atlantic neighbors just before they gobbled them up.

It was partly out of mistrust of this empire that the queendoms and kingdoms of the north had formed into our commonwealth in the 1970's- all of them adopting that Charter of Rights and a single currency; doing away with trade tariffs and making sure all nine armies were ready to fight together in an organized way if mean old nasty Empress Ramora launched an invasion.

And the woman I was swimming to meet was not just our local Queen but also President-Director of the NAUTILUS alliance. She had just been elected to her second ten-year term doing that, so “Mummy” was a pretty big wheel in this hemisphere...
.

.
)))========> SHE FOLLOWED ME HOME, CAN I KEEP HER?

EARLY MONDAY (AUGUST 25):
.

As we swam through the Castle's big arched cathedral doors and into the ornate entry hall Anemone put her finger across her lips, signaling me to be quiet. Just inside the door an elderly merman lay sprawled in a heavy wooden Adirondack chair, sound asleep and hugging a crossbow spear gun. He was totally naked except for his big tall furry black grenadier's hat and an armband with sergeant's stripes on it.

“One of your palace guard?” I whispered.

“That is the palace guard. Bassby's been with us since Grandma's reign.”

I could believe that. The green of his tail had faded to an olive drab color, and with that pewter-grey beard almost down to his navel he looked to be about a hundred years old. Sergeant Bassby was snoring loudly and blowing out bubbles.

“He's not a very good guard, is he?”

“Shhhhhhhh! Just let him sleep,” she said as we continued on down this golden hallway you could pilot a good size submarine through. She yawned and said, “I wish I was conked out like that. I've been up all night.”

“You and me both,” I said. And now I had to yawn too. But being regular tired like this felt amazingly good compared to that terrifying life-draining can't-move-a-mucle fatigue of my first eight or ten minutes underwater, which it seems should of caused some serious brain damage, but if there was any it was fixed during my transformation.

At an intersection in the hallways there was a large aerator-fountain in the form of a five foot tall replica of the castle we were in, Anemone told me to wait here where she could be sure to find me, then went to go wake up her mom.

I floated there watching the air bubbles churning out of all the miniature castle's porthole windows and the tops of its domes and spires. I always figured there must have been a pump room of some sort down in the bowels of the castle, that ran the aerators on each floor and kept the water circulating, a current moving through the whole place, barely perceptible in most of the rooms but stronger in the hallways. And while it was no doubt the least glamorous part of the whole building I'd wanted to check it out. But with so many other things to see---gaudy new marvels around every corner---it kept slipping my mind, and I never saw it or found out what powered its pumps. It could have been Oompa-Loompas running on treadmills for all I know.

She got back five minutes later and led me to door of the Throne Room, where I had to wait again...

From out in the corridor I could hear Queen Atlantea and her daughter arguing about me. It reminded me of the day I had tried to bring that dog home---who I had already named River Tam---except this time I was the dog. I was worried about what the queen would decide, and really hoped she wouldn't turn out to be allergic to me like my mom was to poor River, but when I saw my reflection in one of the great gold framed mirrors that lined the big hallway I pretty much forgot about everything else...

From the waist up I was a beautiful teenage girl. My face---with dimpled cheeks and nice full lips---was just gorgeous.

And maybe it's terribly vain to say “my face” and “gorgeous” in the same sentence. But while I wouldn't have called myself ugly---I was glad that I hadn't been cursed with glaringly masculine features---“gorgeous” sure wasn't how I would have described myself 24 hours earlier. And I knew this face and body weren't anything I could take credit for, even on a genetic level. It was a gift; A total makeover brought about by someone else's genes, someone else's magic. So just let me be happy about this for now. 'Kay?

I smiled at the mermaid in the mirror and she smiled back, revealing a dazzling white set of teeth that could have been used in a toothpaste ad except for her somewhat longer than human upper canines. Since I didn't feel any desire to bite anyone's neck I figured this had to do with our mostly-fish diet.

My long lashed eyes were human looking, but their irises were the same dazzling technicolor blue as Anemone's, and like hers they were big- about a third of theway between normal-sized and the gigantic ones that an anime character has (which seem okay on them because that's the style, but if you saw someone with eyes like that in real life you'd scream!). This might explain why I could see farther through the water at night as a mermaid than when I was male and human and drowning. And I could see even better now in this well-lit corridor.

My arms and hands were graceful and slender with naturally coral-tinted nails that extended about a half an inch past the tips of my fingers, their tips an oval shape that human women needed to file theirs into (which I thought was pretty but later would realize had evolved for catching fish, and was why they were also far sturdier than human nails...).

My breasts were a whole lot fuller than I'd ever hoped to someday get from taking hormones, since neither my mom or my Dad's sisters were real busty, and transsexuals usually end up a cup size or so smaller there than the other women in their family. As I've mentioned, my abdominal region would be way too narrow on a human, but I was already starting to get use to it (I rather liked my navel and the way it sat in there); and as I would find out this was totally normal for us, since our intestines and several major organs were down in our tails. And speaking of tails...

Waking up to discover that you're half fish is something that would make most people totally freak out. But that scared confused little kid I used to be---who wondered what the heck was wrong with him and why he couldn't jump into the ocean, grow fins and be a pretty mermaid (but after that incident in the bathtub was smart enough not to try it)---was still inside me somewhere. And he/she was real happy, not just about being a girl finally but also with being a mermaid and able to live underwater. She seemed to be telling me: 'See?! I TOLD ya they was real!!

My new tail was longer than my legs had been by two feet well over a half a meter. I'm not sure what would make one fish tail more beautiful than another, but I loved how mine was so streamlined. I loved the slick feel of my scales under my hand, and their rich emerald green color. And this tail wasn't just pretty, it was functional.

I started swimming around in front of the mirror, astonished by what I could do. I had known how to swim before, but compared to this you could hardly that kicking-your-feet-and-flapping-your-arms business swimming. Just over half my body was about nothing but swimming now! (Well it was also about going to the bathroom and laying eggs, but I wouldn't find these holes until later, way farther down my body than where I expected them to be...).

I performed all kinds of crazy maneuvers, twisting and spinning and doing loop-de-loops that you would think might make me dizzy but didn't at all. Swimming like this felt so good I was laughing, my golden hair flashing in the light from those weird chandeliers made of glowing bubbles.

“A-hem!” went a woman's voice.

It was an octopus, in what had to be an octopus version of a maid's apron and cap, the closest thing to clothes I had seen anyone wearing down here. She waved toward the doorway with her tentacle and said coldly, “Excuse me, Miss. If you're finished with your cavorting Her Majesty will see you now.”

“Sorry,” I said, “It's just I've never been a mermaid before.”

“I gather not.”

Being a mermaid meant I could talk to all the animals in the sea, but I would learn that you didn't want to get trapped in a conversation with the dumber ones, which was most of them down here. Although Octavia the octopus was anything but dumb, and would turn out to be pretty nice, but was only acting like this until she knew for sure how to treat me---like I was one of the gentries, or just common mertrash---depending on what Queen Atlantea decided.

“All right, let's have a look at you. Let's see what my daughter spent her last wish on,” said the Queen as I swam into the Throne Room.

She was sitting in a big fancy throne that was very tall so her long tail could hang down the front. Her human half strongly resembled Judy Dench, a younger (maybe about 50) Judy Dench, with hair that shone like actual silver in a fairly short shag cut. And I won't say she was real fat, but most human women as stout and chubby as her don't go around naked. On her head was a crown made out of pearls the size of ping pong balls all stuck together somehow.

I didn't know how these people bowed to their queen so I went right down on the marble floor, as humble as I could, and though it was sort of awkward to kneel without knees I managed to (and found my egg-hole in the process, this tender hollow feeling place in me that I had pressed against the floor...); down on my elbows with my head hung way down.

“Now that isn't helping me look at you, is it? Up, dear! All this genuflection isn't necessary,” said the queen, sounding like she was trying not to laugh.

My sister had told me a few things about this woman, but not how to address her, “Sorry Your Highn- um, Madame Presi- er, Your Momness.”

As I looked up I saw her big silver-gray eyes go all soft and her jaw start to kind of tremble. She sighed as she held open her arms, “Oh! You look just like her. How could I not love that? Whatever you were before, you're my daughter now. Come here!”

I swam to her and she gave me a big old mom hug. After such a scary night---with that boatload of pirates threatening to make me their bitch, and crazy Kiki chasing me with that sword, and everything else---it was just what I needed. I hugged her back tight. Sometimes you just need a mom.

“You too,” she sang to Anemone, who was hovering meekly in the corner after being chewed out so intensely, and who swam over to be embraced by her mom too. She kissed us each on the forehead then said to Anemone, “I can't think of a finer use for your last wish, Sweetheart. You have a friend now, a sister. And I have another lovely daughter, to fill this big house with song and carry on the family name. I'm sure we shall all get along swimmingly! All we need now is to make this official, and as soon as Octavia gets here with the- Ah! Here she is!”
.

.
)))========> THE PRINCESS PROCESS
.

Octavia the maid had entered the room. She did an octopus version of a curtsy, and said. “Sorry it took me so long.... I couldn't remember the blessed combination!”

“No Octavia, your timing was perfect,” said Atlantea, releasing us from her grip. Anemone moved back away from her a few feet, so I did the same.

The maid was holding tiaras in two of her tentacles. They were nearly identical, delicate silver lacework with lots of pearls and gemstones in them. Except one had a large blue sapphire in the center of the big part in front and the other an almond-sized red ruby.

“This one's mine,” said Anemone, taking the sapphire one. Octavia handed Atlantea the other.

“Will that be all then, Mum?” asked Octavia.

“No we need you to serve as a witness for this. And I'll want your sucker print on the documents when I draw them up tomorrow,” the Queen told her. She looked at me, and with joy in her voice said, “I was afraid we would never be needing this little crown. Come forward, Daughter.”

Her throne was so tall that I didn't have to try the kneeling thing again but just hovered in front of it, a bit lower than her, as she held the tiara over my head with both hands and gave a speech making me promise to abide by and uphold the laws of the Queendom of Hatteria...

“I will,” I said.

And to defend our Queendom against all enemies---and against calamities both natural and human made---with my life if necessary...

“I will,” I promised, hoping I could be brave enough if it came to that but that I would never have to find out.

And to rule with wisdom, acting decisively when the course was clear, and seeking the counsel of wiser minds when it wasn't. To have the strength to make unpopular decisions for the long term good of the Queendom. And to remember that I was the people's servant as much as I was their ruler, and to always put their needs ahead of my own...

My rank as princess wouldn't be one that allowed me to do much ruling---I couldn't make up laws or have anyone's head cut off---which was fine by me. What she was talking about was the future; if something ever happened to both her and Anemone and I wound up sitting in the Big Chair. That day if it ever came it would be a grief-filled one for me, but I promised this too.

I promised to rule by example, and to comport myself in a manner befitting a Princess of the Realm, embodying the qualities of fairness, compassion, honesty, good hygiene-

Well you know, it was your standard you're-gonna-be-a-princess-now boilerplate. I said yes to all of it, knowing it would mean a lot of responsibility and doing stuff I didn't like. But this was the family I was adopted by, and I would try to pull my share of the load.

For me these promises were mostly about how I would get to be sisters with Anemone, which didn't seem like the most noble or selfless reason to pledge oneself to somebody's country. But I figured all the noble stuff---loving and being proud of and believing in my new homeland---would come after I'd actually seen the place...

“Then, in the presence of this court, in the name of the Queendom, and by all the gods past, present and yet to be born, I name you Enomena, Second Princess of Hatteria,” she said, and pushed the tiara down onto my head.

It was a profound moment. This was suddenly all real to me. Not a dream, a hallucination or a cartoon. Real.

I had long since decided this with my brain, as the evidence for this being real began to outweigh how impossible it all was; But everything had still felt very dreamlike---not quite solid somehow---right up until she'd put this thing on my head.

“Well that's done,” she smiled, and went to take the tiara back.

Maybe it wasn't the beautiful little crown itself that had made me feel suddenly grounded in this mermaid reality, but it somehow seemed like it, and as she reached out for it my hand went up to hold it right where it was. “Can't I wear it?”

“What do you mean, wear it?”

“I mean... you know, on my head. Just for a day or so...”

“Don't be silly!”

“Not even for an hour? Pleeeeease?!” I asked, in a whiny juvenile voice that surprised me.

Maybe it was that little wanna-be princess I had once been, who had never owned even a cheap plastic toy tiara (she had always been dragged past them in the toy store, toward more “gender appropriate” toys), and who really, really, really didn't want to let go of this one.

Atlantea took the crown off her own head and said. “All of these need to go back in the Treasure Room for safekeeping. These headpieces are for ceremonial purposes only. You don't think kings and queens go around wearing crowns all day, do you?”

“They do in the mo-” I was halfway through saying the word 'movies' when I realized that a sea cow wouldn't know what a movie was, and I covered for my blunder with the only thing I could think of; Bellowing: “MOOOOOOOOOO I'M A SEA COW!!!”

Queen Atlantea's mouth dropped open. This might have been the start of people thinking their new princess was simple-minded and weird.

And then I remembered that sea cows don't 'moo' either, so I said, “Sorry, force of habit! My herd lives down in Lake Okeedokee, which is right next to a big cow pasture. And we sort of picked up the mooing thing from the land cows.”

“I see...”

“Or maybe not, I'm still kind of confused,” I said when I saw the panic-stricken 'Shut the hell up!' look my sister was giving me.

“Yes, I imagine this is all very strange to you. But I'm sure you'll soon be fitting right in with our happy little herd,” Mom said. And this time when she tried to take my tiara I let her. “But for right now it's late, or rather it's early, and I know we could all use some sleep. We'll have to find a bed for you.”

“She can sleep in my bed,” said Anemone, “I've got my new hammock I still haven't hung up out in the garden.”

“Good, then we'll deal with beds and paperwork and such morning. I'll see you both then,” said the Queen, and kissed me on the cheek, “Welcome to your new home, Sweetheart.”
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My home... My sister... My mom... A pretty wonderful ending to a very horrible night.
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'Plus I'm a real genuine honest-to-God mermaid,' I thought, 'This is gonna be GREAT!'
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And it was, while it lasted.
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