Ariel had never really had the opportunity to explore the castle before now, having spent all her previous time as a human trying to break the Sea Witch's spell, and so she continued exploring late into the night. Eric accompanied her, explaining the functions of various objects that took Ariel's interest. Some of them she recognised, though most of them were not used in the way she originally thought.

She already knew that what Scuttle had once told her was a Snarfblat was actually a pipe, and was not used for playing music at all, but for smoking tobacco. Ariel had experienced this first hand during their wedding and she didn't care to experience it again. The cloud of smoke it produced was stifling and smelled of burning, and it reminded her of the fire on Eric's ship the night she had rescued him from drowning.

She learned that her dinglehopper was actually called a fork, a utensil used for eating, and also that the golden stand she had used to display it back in Atlantica was actually a candelabra. This, she learned, was used to hold candles, which were tall, thin sticks of wax that used tiny fires to light the room. It brought Eric such joy, explaining all this to her and watching her stare at everything in complete wonderment.

In Eric's study, Ariel was immediately drawn to a huge blue ball on a golden stand in the corner. She hurried over and crouched down to have a closer look at it, and was fascinated to find it covered in patches of colour with words printed across them. Eric watched as she reached out slowly and touched it. She pulled her hand back sharply as the ball moved slightly, startled. Then, tentatively, she reached out again and spun it. Her eyes lit up in amazement and she grinned as it turned and turned, the colour and the words upon it blurring into one.

"What is it?" she asked as it slowed to a stop, turning to face Eric with great interest. This was by far the most fascinating object she had yet come across, and she was eager to know more. Eric strode over to her and crouched beside her, also inspecting the globe as well as her curious, child-like face.

"We call it a globe, a map of the world," he spun the globe once and stopped it with his hand. "It shows us every part of the earth man has ever discovered. All of the islands," he pointed to one of the coloured sections, "all of the seven seas," he swiped a finger across a large section of the blue, "everything."

Ariel clung on to every word. There was something so magical about this object, something amazing about being able to see every part of the world from this one room. The depths of the ocean were all Ariel had ever known, and now she had every inch of the planet right in front of her. It made her feel empowered, somehow. She could not bring herself to tear her eyes away from it.

"Many men believe the world is flat," Eric continued, "and that you would fall right off the edge if you sailed too far. But they're wrong. No man has ever fallen off the edge of the earth. Or at least, that's what I believe."

They sat together that way for what felt like a lifetime, their eyes never straying from the globe. The world had always seemed enormous and lonely to Eric, but looking at it from this perspective, with a wife beside him, it looked much smaller. To Ariel, however, the world had never really stretched beyond the bottom of the ocean, never reached much further than Atlantica. It had felt suffocating before, but now it was large and full of life and adventure.

Dawn was almost breaking by the time they retired back to Eric's chamber. With the help of a handmaiden, Ariel struggled out of her magnificent wedding gown and into nightwear that had been laid out for her - a long, white cotton gown that covered her down to her ankles. Eric gave her privacy while she did so. Ariel had so many questions about her new body, but as Eric re-entered the room in his own nightwear - a gown of his own not dissimilar to Ariel's but somehow still different, she decided that they were best saved for another time.

Eric pulled back the covers on the bed and climbed underneath them, gently inviting Ariel to do the same. She hesitated for a while before she joined him, having been under the impression that she would be sleeping alone in another chamber.

After a while, Ariel called out Eric's name quietly into the darkness. He hummed in response, an indication for her to go on. There was a moment of tense silence before Ariel asked, "What happens on a human wedding night?"

She had heard so many utterings of the wedding night from guests on the ship, as though there was some sort of big event she did not know about. Eric hesitated for quite some time before he replied. Ariel had been human for such a short time - she barely knew what silverware was used for - Eric doubted she would be ready to hear what humans usually did on their wedding night. Much like Ariel's questions about her human form, Eric thought this was best saved for later.

"It's not important," he reassured her, placing a feather light kiss on her lips. It was the truth. To him it was not important - it would come, in time, and for now he was just happy that Ariel was human again, that they were both alive and that they were together. "For now, we should sleep."

And they both encased themselves within the covers, keeping a safe distance from each other for now.

"Goodnight, Ariel."