Note: Those of you who know my writing style know that this is probably my longest chapter to date, running a little over 3000 words. I meant it to be a oneshot, but it was impossible. As it is, this chapter covers one half of the story, and the next will cover the rest.

I live in a moment where a lifetime passes by. Amid the slashing pain thrust between my ribs, I see it all in a moment. And I weep.

It was always merpeople that ruled the seas. Most of them were not even aware of the fact. They just flipped their tails and swam their merry way through clean, clear waters and the sparkling currents of Atlantis. Their children casually plucked anemones for their hair or exchanged shells gathered from the ground, giggling with delight.

I would watch them from the shadows. I was small enough then to hide in the shadows. My arms were thin as twigs, and my tentacles barely held me up. I watched families lay out picnics on the sands of the ocean floor and gorge themselves until they lay back, patting their rounded bellies in satisfaction. My own bloated with hunger, I clutched it, begging the pain to stop. When I could bear it no more, I turned and slipped off through the cracks and shadows to the murky waters of the cave-riddled depths, where my sister and mother waited.

We lived off of the scraps and refuse left behind, the leftovers of the lavish palace feasts when we were lucky. Ours was a kind not even granted the dignity of a name by the merpeople. They would name the crab, the oyster, and the bottom-feeder before they would name us. On seeing us, they would say, "It's one of those things," before turning away in disgust.

I remember the day I met a merperson for the first time. It was a young boy, following a lionfish and tweaking its fins. I watched him, curious. Didn't he know the poison that ran in a lionfish's fins? He laughed, tugging and twisting on them as the fist flicked its fins irritably. The boy's laughter slowed, and I could see faint trails of red around his hands. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of something. His swimming pattern faltered, and he started to drop lower. He drifted to the bottom, raising a small cloud of mud, and curled up, shivering and hugging his tail like a newborn.

Cautiously, I drifted toward him. His eyes were screwed shut, probably from the nausea. It would pass within the hour, but given the way he'd been playing with the fish he probably didn't know that. Glancing around, I checked to see if anyone was watching. No one was, so I pulled the boy into one of our caves, and laid him out on a rock shelf.

For the next hour I watched over him as he moaned, shivered, and cried. I studied the smooth scales of his tail and the supple fins sprouting from the end, so different from my own rubbery, suckered tentacles. I could not count his ribs as I could my own, nor could I make out his collarbone, but I was sure he had one.

When he finally opened his eyes, he looked straight at me. His mouth curled fearfully as he said, "Oh you're one of those things… are you going to eat me?"

I wanted to strike him, but I didn't have the strength. Instead, I said simply, "No, you were sick. I let you rest in my cave."

"I don't get sick, I never get sick." The boy boasted.

"You did and you will again if you play with lionfish," I returned.

"What do you know about fish? You're just a thing. I'm gonna be king someday." He grinned.

In spite of myself, I laughed. "You're the prince? Yeah right."

"I am!" He said defensively. "I just don't have my crown right now."

"A prince wouldn't be swimming out here, he would stay in Atlantis."

"I'm bored in Atlantis," he whined. "I know every current and cove there, I wanted to find a new place. Besides, nobody plays with me there." He lit up. "Will you play with me?"

"Me? Play with you?" I sank a little. What little energy I had was giving out. I needed to rest, my vision was spinning. "I don't play. I watch people play."

"Please?" He begged. "It's just me in the castle and I'm tired of being alone. I'll bring you home with me, and you can be my pet."

I felt something then, stirring in the pit of my stomach that wasn't hunger. "Your pet?"

"Yeah, I'll take care of you and feed you and make sure you're clean."

I opened my mouth to tell him I would eat him right then and there if he didn't leave, when I heard it. He would feed me. I cannot express to you, if you have never felt starvation, what it reduces you to. When you are beyond hunger, when you are beyond want and your every moment is haunted by a dull throbbing in your stomach that spreads to every corner of your body in a constant symphony of need, perhaps you will understand. But until then, believe the word of an old witch when I say that when you starve, the first thing to die is your pride.

I was dragged to the palace by my arm so fast I thought my bones would snap. Everywhere I looked I saw flashes of gold, schools of fish, and a mass of horrified faces. I began to wonder, had I really fallen in with the prince? The way the merpeople fled out of his way as he careened toward the citadel began to melt my doubt.

When he pulled me into the palace and the guards parted for him, I knew he had been telling the truth.

He led me into the banquet hall, and loudly announced to his parents that he'd found a pet. I think I heard one or two fins swishing as all talk ceased, and every eye fixed on me. I ducked my head, mortified. I had never been seen by so many eyes before, and it made me horribly aware of myself, of my stripling tentacles and my violet skin, my bony frame and my foam-white hair. Every part of me screamed "Other" and "Strange" to these gods of the sea, and I knew it.

His father, Neptune, chuckled as his mother shot a worried glance at him. He saw nothing wrong with it, he said. The boy needed a companion, why shouldn't he have a pet? Again, I felt my insides recoil at the word, but my traitorous eyes took in the food. So much food. And my lips lay silent.

His name was Triton, he said, named for the weapon he would one day inherit to rule the seas. My name would be Ursula, because he liked the sound of it, he said. He sat me down and put food on my plate. For a moment, I stared at it, not sure that it was really there, and if it was, that it was really for me. Then the smell hit me and I could not contain myself. I was devouring it, mouthful after mouthful, fist over fist, more and more.

I had my own little shelf in his room to sleep on. It was padded, and swaddled with warm spongesheets. He slept in his own royal oyster shell, but I didn't mind. My shelf was warm and soft, nicer than anything I had ever slept on. Every day he would wake me and bring me to classes with him. I was to sit in the corner and keep my hands to myself, so I did. I sat and watched and listened. Triton was a nightmare to the teacher, drawing seamonsters in the books, making faces behind his back, wriggling his squeaky seat back and forth during the lectures. I giggled at a few of his antics, but my attention was mainly on the teacher. I couldn't understand why Triton didn't want to be there, this merperson was handing him knowledge.

If Triton didn't want it, I did. I lapped it up, storing the information away in my mind. I didn't understand all of it, but it didn't matter. Even the parts I didn't understand I stored away, to be examined later and pulled apart for answers.

I spent so long in that room, I forgot that I was supposed to keep myself to myself, and one day I found myself answering a question the teacher had put to Triton. The teacher stared at me, as if I were a slug that had suddenly sprouted gills and fins. I shrank back, mortified that I had forgotten my place, but the teacher merely turned back to Triton and continued the lesson. The next day, however, a second seat had been pulled out, and a book brought out for me. From that day forward, I was a part of the now two-person class.

If I had lapped up information from this teacher before, I drank it in great, unending draughts once I learned to read. And when I found the royal library, it was my second great delight. The books on magic, especially, drew me, and I pored over every volume on it I could find. Occasionally, when no one was looking, I attempted it. My first time I attempted to conjure up a plate of kelp for myself, and ended up with a dancing shrimp. I laughed, delighted, until I looked down, and found the book in my hands had vanished. I searched for it everywhere, but was unable to find it. I learned the first rule of magic that day, that any spell always came at a cost, whether small or great.

My first great delight, of course, was the food. And it was as unending as the knowledge there. I was fed three times a day as much as I could eat, and I ate as much as I could. I vowed I would never go hungry again. I watched as my form filled out, and began pooling around me, and I was pleased. I squished when I swam and sat and lay down, and I was thrilled. I couldn't see my ribs anymore, they were hidden under folds of skin and fat, lovely wonderful fat that kept me warm and let me know that no, I was not going to fade away into nothing one day, or die in my sleep with my belly clawing at my spine. I was going to live, and live well.

Life was not completely wonderful. Triton still referred to me as his pet, and kept me as such. I could not leave the palace without him, I could not play without him, and I was expected to sit quietly and read or sleep when he went out without me. Like a good pet, he explained, without really explaining anything.

Neptune treated me as even less. If I ever got too close to him, he would send me flying head over tentacles with a flip of his powerful tail. If I ever spoke in his presence, he would sternly tell Triton to contain his pet. His mother, I think, looked on me as one looks on a wounded animal by the side of the road. With pity, but with a certain amount of disgust she could not hide.

Years passed as such. My tentacles spread and my form filled out more, to the point where I began to sleep on the floor so as not to break my creaking shelf. I did not care, I was beginning to lose the fear that I would revert back to the skinny starveling I had been. She was hidden deep within folds of fat, drowning, never to return. Triton's form grew too, but differently. Where I grew out, he grew up. He learned how to wield weapons, and race the giant seahorses, and control the flow of magic through the triton he would one day claim with his ascendancy to the throne.

One evening I lay in my spongesheets, I heard Triton enter the room as he always did. I heard the swish of his tail and the motion of his body, but it didn't stop at his bed as it always did.

I felt arms shaking me. I looked up, and saw a strange expression on his face. He looked down at me and said that he wanted to try something. Something he had been just taught about in a private lesson by his teacher. I was tired, and said so. I didn't want to do anything. He planted his hands on his fists, still such a child, and said that as his pet I had to do what he wanted or I wouldn't be fed. My chest tied itself in a cold knot. I had to be fed, I couldn't go back to what I was before, I would die having known this security. So I rose from my spongesheets and waited as he explained, in halting words, what exactly he was going to do.

I had never heard of such a thing. It was strange and bizarre, and a part of me screamed no, I would not. But that part was buried deep under warm layers of indulgence and gluttony that demanded sustenance, continuance of the life I had become accustomed to. And so, I submitted.

From that night on, at least twice a week, the future king practiced his newfound knowledge on me, his pet. Every time it passed left me a little more empty inside, like my insides had been scooped out and sent to the refuse piles. I did not understand it, so I filled it with more food.

I did not notice the changes for a long time. How could I, with my body growing greater every day anyway? I noticed I felt ill some days, and other days I could barely rise from my sheets. I felt sluggish and heavier in a way that I could not explain. When this continued for a few weeks, I sought out our teacher.

I spoke to him of how I had felt, and he asked if anything had happened recently that had made it so. Had I been kicked by Triton's seahorses, had I forgone food for a long time—he laughed at the thought—or had I merely overexerted myself. I mentioned what Triton had done, and the teacher's skin faded to pearl-white. He asked me to describe in more detail exactly what Triton had done, and I did so. His face frightened me badly.

I might be with child, he said, while he could not be sure it was a possibility and must be dealt with. Dealt with, I asked, what did he mean? Removed, he said, removed from my body and disposed of. Such a child was an abomination, a cross that should never happen.

As I heard these words, the small part of me that I had locked away screamed to life. If it had been just me, I would have done anything and given anything to keep things the way that they were. But if there was even a small possibility that a child lay cradled within my body, I would not allow it to be harmed.

Words flowed to my lips, almost unbidden, chanting a horrible curse. The teacher's eyes widened, recognizing the deep magic I was invoking. He opened his mouth to cry out when giant hands sprouted from the ground on either side of him. They were green and looked like silt drifts in the water, but held him fast. A third sprouted from the ground in front of him and reached into his mouth, plucking from his throat a glowing orb. It held it for a moment between a thumb and a forefinger, as if waiting for me to make a move or speak again. When I did not, it squeezed, shattering the orb. The strange hands vanished, leaving only bruises on the teacher's arms to mark that they had been there.

From that day forward, our teacher was mute. He left the palace shortly afterward, and I never heard of him again. At times I regret what I did, for he did whet my thirst for knowledge, but I would not have my child harmed.

I turned from my books on magic and began to read books on birthing. There were no books on my kind, so I only discovered how to birth a merchild. I prayed it would be enough when the time came.

And the time did come. When it came, I swam to an unused refuse cove in the palace, and there birthed my son in an agony of silent screaming.

He was tiny, with purple skin and white hair. He had a black merman's tail from which sprouted several tentacles at various intervals. He was the most precious thing I had ever seen. I named him Talen and I kissed his head, vowing that no one would harm him.

I kept him hidden in that abandoned refuse cove. His first toys were scraps from the kitchen and bones from the tables. I spent every second I could spare there, every second I could without arousing suspicion from Triton that is. Not that Triton paid me much attention. After a few months he had satisfied himself that he knew all that could be done with his newfound ability, and he began to ignore me. He was past the age of child's play, and I no longer had much of a purpose except to lie on the floor of his room and consume.

But I had my own purpose, and his name was Talen.

He was a sickly child from the start. He would cry and never stop. I had to learn silencing spells very quickly. They required of me some of my flesh, but I gave it to seal any passing ears from hearing his wails. When it came time to feed he would close his mouth against nourishment, allowing it to dribble over his face. By pressing his jaw I could make him open his mouth for a little while but he would only take a little, and his body rejected most of it shortly thereafter. I tried mixes of ground kelp and pearl, and he kept that down a little better.

I tried to search the books in the library for information. There had to be an answer somewhere, I could not be the first with a child only partly of the mer-race. It had to have happened before, and perhaps it would explain why my child was the abomination my teacher had proclaimed.

After a week of searching, I found it. It was nearly myth by this point, but it spoke of an octopus and a fishman having a child. It said from the start the child's body was doomed to be ravaged by conflict from within. It said that the child went mad with the double dose of magic inherited from both sides and destroyed both parents, then died in agony shortly thereafter. From that point on, the laws of the merfolk stated that no mate was to be taken outside of their race, no matter the reason, and that if such occurred, the child was to be disposed of as quickly as possible.

I refused to believe it. It would not happen, not to my Talen. He would live, he would thrive, and I would be there for him. I would find a way to counteract this strange conflict in his body, and then he would be accepted into the palace and treated well. I paused then, wondering, did I want this for him? The life of a pet of the palace? And the answer rose hot and angry within me. No. It was all well and good for me, but not him. He deserved so much more.