A Mermaid's Treasure

art by DollDivine.com

A Mermaid's Treasure
by Rebecca Fyfe

Sandy loved exploring those old, sunken ships. She swished her tail, giving herself a burst of speed that pushed her through the water to the stern of the ship. She couldn't help wondering what it would have been like to have been a sailor and sailed over the water on a ship that cut through the waves, to feel the wind on her face. As a mermaid, she had no choice but to live in the sea. She could breathe out of water, but her fins and the scales of her tail would dry out if she didn't keep them immersed in sea water. She might be okay for a little while out of water, but not for long.

Sandy had done enough imagining; it always made her sad to think of what she couldn't do. She loved adventures and to spend time on land, to her, sounded like the greatest adventure of all. She swam below the deck on the ship to do some more exploring. After looking through some of the rooms in the lower decks, she became a little depressed. Many had died on this ship, their bones the only testament to the fact that not many had escaped a watery death when this ship had gone down.

The signs of death did not keep her from her explorations, and she soon found herself up on the first class level of the ship. She knew about these things because she had seen the difference between the two, from bare rooms with thin mattresses to lavish furnishing in abundantly sized rooms, it was obvious that some people were treated better than others on these ships than others.

In one of the first class rooms, Sandy found a funny metal box. It was medium sized and had a lock on the outside holding it closed, but the lock was rusted through. Sandy pulled the lock off the metal box. A combination of the rust and her mermaid strength made it an easy task.

Inside, she found a beautiful purple and blue bracelet. The beads were slightly transparent and sparked in the water. She slipped it on her wrist and immediately felt the magic it contained spread through her body. As soon as the magic spread through her, like a warm blanket being spread over her, she felt an urgent need to rise to the surface and swim towards the nearest shore.

Once at the shore, she kept swimming until she was laying on the beach with only the gentle waves lapping against her fluke. She still felt the magic and as a new surge of it spread through her, it was as if it washed away her scales and tail and turned them into legs. She had a human body. She knew instinctively that it was not a permanent change; once she took the magic bracelet off, she'd be a mermaid again.

Sandy looked back at the ocean. It called to her; it was where she belonged.

But adventures awaited her. She stood on shaky legs and walked away from the sea and towards the adventures she had always dreamed of having.