Once upon a time…

There was a mermaid. She was young and pretty, and loved playing in the waves.

One day, as she was playing along the shore, she saw the prince of the land. He was absolutely the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and she fell instantly in love. He didn’t see her, so he didn’t have a chance to fall in love with her. She followed him as he walked down the beach, amazed at how he was walking. Walking seemed super fun!

She went home and told her dad about this exciting walking trend, and how she wanted to try it.

He was like “HAH! Nope! No more seashore swims for you. Why not spend more time with your cousins?”

But the little mermaid didn’t want to spend time with her cousins. She wanted to spend time with the hunk of a man she’d seen on the beach.

So she did what any reasonable person would do. She found the local sea witch and asked to be turned into a human.

The witch was like “Sure, why not. But there’s something you need to know: humans have these things called ‘souls’. When they die, they get sent to this thing called an ‘afterlife’ instead of just turning into seafoam like we do. If you become human, you’ll have one year to get knocked up, or else you won’t get a soul, and at the end of the year you’ll die and turn into seafoam. Sound good?”

This sounded perfectly fine to the mermaid, who agreed without question.

“Another thing to consider,” the witch continued. “There’s this law in the universe that to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost. Getting legs is a big deal. For that to happen, you’ll have to give up your voice.”

The mermaid agreed to this, even if it would make things slightly difficult.

“And one last thing. You aren’t used to moving in air. You aren’t used to having four appendages. I can make you the best walker and dancer ever, but to do that, every time you put pressure on your feet it’ll feel like someone is stabbing them with a knife. Ok?”

The mermaid was like “Wait, how does that work with the law of equivalent exchange?”

The witch shrugged “It’s magic, that’s just how it works idk.”

The mermaid agreed, and they floated to the surface. The witch did her magic stuff, and the mermaid turned into a human. She went to the beach, and tried out her new legs.

They were pretty great. Walking was painful, but she was amazing at it. After a couple hours of wondering what toenails were for, the prince appeared. She waved happily to him, running over.

The prince was like “Oh wow, an underage naked girl is on my beach! This isn’t good!” So he ran back to the castle and sent some maids down to get the mermaid clothed.

An hour later, the mermaid was trying out this fancy new food called “soup”, and eating it with a “spoon”. All very new and exciting. The prince and king had tried to get her to speak, failed, decided she wasn’t deaf, and had given her a map. She’d never seen a map before, and had no clue what it was. It was very pretty though.

Eventually they decided she was a girl from a very poor family, who had been abandoned because she couldn’t speak. She seemed happy and curious, not afraid at all, which was slightly odd.

Suddenly the prince had a great idea! He said that he’d always wanted a little sister, so they should adopt her!

The king was like “Well, she’s pretty enough to be a princess. In three or four years I can marry her off as a political pawn! Great idea! I’ll announce that I’ve adopted her immediately!”

So he named the mermaid Ariel, and officially adopted her as a daughter.

Ariel spent the next couple months at the castle, learning how to be a proper princess. She was taught sign language so she could communicate. She loved exploring the kingdom, and made many friends. The king treated her like a daughter, and the prince treated her like a little sister.

Which… was kinda bad. If she’d been an abandoned peasant girl, like they presumed, this would have been the most wonderful thing to ever happen to her. But, well, she wasn’t. Her life depended on the prince falling in love with her; something he wasn’t doing. Failing that, presumably she could have found some other man to fall in love with her, but being the princess she wasn’t allowed to so much as hold a dude’s hand too long.

The prince got engaged to the princess of a neighboring kingdom. Their engagement party was going to be held on the one-year anniversary of Ariel’s adoption.

Ariel was kind of freaking out as they went to the neighboring kingdom. She knew she only had a couple days left, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation to the king. She’d tried to explain it to the prince, and all he’d done was gently but firmly explained she was like a sister to him. He was going to be no help whatsoever. Besides, he really, really didn’t believe the whole “mermaid” thing.

She tried flirting with the guards in the castle they were visiting, but was shut down hard. Nothing else she tried worked. She knew she was going to die.

On the night of the engagement party, her last night alive, there was a lot of dancing. Her feet hurt, because they always did, but that night they hurt super bad. She danced anyway, since it was expected of her and she was a beautiful dancer.

The prince asked her to dance. She accepted, even though each step was agony. They twirled around the dance floor, everyone watching.

The clock struck midnight.

Her heart, having worked extra hard all night due to the exercise and pain, gave out.

To everyone’s shock, Ariel collapsed, turning into seafoam that washed across the floor.

And then she was gone.