Substack Exclusive: Taken Under The Moon - Part 1

Zara couldn’t help staring at the vessels that passed by her cove. Each one containing a different story and a different set of sailors. Her father had warned her that the humans were an addiction. One she would soon have to learn to overcome. Each mermaid was presented with the same challenge on their twenty-second birthday. Do they stay in the waters and live with their families or do they join their original species and give up their scales for love?

For over thousands of years, the mer-people have joined the two-legged humans inside their culture, going undetected. And it wasn’t that the mermaid could never go into the waters again. Each full moon, they had the opportunity to dive into the salty water and join their fellow species under the moonlight. But each full moon that passed made that transition harder and harder for the mermaid to accomplish.

She knew that her decision was about to be due. She hadn’t told anyone what she was feeling; she didn’t want the added pressure from King Triton and his brother, Poseidon, her uncle. Humans always got the lineage wrong in the movies. So many of the gods were intertwined that they all ended up being related to one another in some way or another. But the rules for joining the human race were strict. You could only marry once, and it was only for love. Any other reason wouldn’t be approved. And you had to have King Triton’s blessing in order to make the final conversion into the homo-sapien world.

“What are you looking at, Zara?”

Her head whipped around to the side to look at her mother, who was swimming in the lagoon. “That ship out there. It comes by here every day around this time. Like they are just waiting.”

“They are predators. Always remember that.”

“You only say that because you don’t know them yet. Everyone is a shark to you.”