The Teacup Mermaid

This story was written on April 20th,2014 but back-dated to the April 11th post, as no story/post was written on that day.

The Teacup Mermaid
by Rebecca Fyfe

I browsed through the jewelry stand in the market. Some of the handcrafted pieces were even lovelier than anything I could find in one of the pricier jewelry shops. My gaze found an enchanting piece. It looked like a tiny mermaid captured inside a clear quartz. I couldn't imagine how much work it must have taken to create the piece, but I knew that I wanted it. I didn't even haggle with the woman who owned the stand; I paid full price.

I'd been collecting mermaid figurines, mermaid jewelry and mermaid art ever since I was child. I'd always found the concept of mermaids fascinating, and I'd even researched many of the legends and folklore surrounding mermaids and sirens, including sea nymphs and sea gods.

At home, I set the jewelry on my kitchen counter while I made cup of tea. I must have forgotten it there, because I went to bed without putting the necklace away in my jewelry box. In the morning, the piece was still on my kitchen counter, but something very important had changed. There was no mermaid within the rock's crystalline surface. I puzzled about this for a while, and even looked around to see if maybe part of the stone had been broken, but I found no evidence to suggest it had.

It wasn't until I grabbed the tea cup I had left on the counter by the sink the night before that I found out what had happened to the mermaid inside my jewelry. She was sitting inside the cup, splashing what was left of the tea over her tail to try and keep it moist.

I gasped. How could this be? Mermaids were just stories and legend. How could one be real? And here in my home? And so tiny?

She heard my gasp and as i stood there with question after question tumbling through my mind, she sighed and said, "The least you could do is help me! I need water."

I couldn't seem to find my voice in order to say anything to her, so I took the cup to the sink and filled it with water. I then took the salt shaker out of the cupboard and sprinkled some into the water in the cup. Mermaids needed salt water, right?

This situation was insane, and I had many questions for my teacup mermaid, but before I could answer them, she smiled at me, thanked me and she began to grow. As she grew her tail turned into legs. She was about halfway through her transformation before I realized that I was changing too. I was growing smaller.

Within a very short amount of time, I found myself trapped inside a quartz stone, the very same one she had been trapped in. Of course, now she was the human and I was the mermaid. How long was I going to be trapped? From the smug look on her face, I suspected I was going to be trapped in this necklace for a very long time.