Once Upon a Tail

The Rule I Shouldn't Have Broken

A Short Chapter, I know, but I hope it's enough to keep people happy!

Let me know what you think!

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"You dream about going up there
But that is a big mistake
Just look at the world around you
Right here on the ocean floor
Such wonderful things surround you
What more is you lookin' for?"

-Under the Sea

So now that you know about me a little more, I can tell you about the law.

There was a law made generations before remembering that banned merpeople and humans from making contact. It was made based on history but I thought it was legend. For years, all my father would say was this: Ariel, those rotten humans are incapable of love or compassion. Don't go near them.

I never believed him – til now.

Whenever I found shipwrecks with Flounder, I came across paintings that somehow preserved themselves well enough for me to look at the various strokes that miraculously made a picture.

There were always these portraits of families with the male figure holding the woman like he didn't want to let go. I found paintings of people dancing one time and they looked so happy. I wanted that happiness.

Humans were so mysterious to me and it was so seducing to learn more about a race I was supposed to hate. All I would hear was how awful humans were but no one ever explained why except that they "couldn't show love". I could not help but wonder if my father was wrong and if the law held no viable reason.

I felt this need to find out what the truth was. I always needed to know what was going on – that's why I went to find all these shipwrecks after hearing a rumor of them. My mind needed to know. Or was it my heart? Both were hard to separate and figure out.

My father was wrong, but so was I. Not everyone is nice, like it always seemed to be in the merpeople world. Humans are complicated – they fight and have all this greed along with this anger. Not everyone is like that, but the most powerful ones seemed to be.

Those types of greedy people were the reason the law was in place. Ain't it funny how the assholes ruin it for everyone else? It still would have been helpful, though, if they taught all the reasons for the law in school instead of letting me figure it out on my own and being a complete, utter idiot. I mean, don't people know that if you keep someone sheltered like a clam their whole life that they won't ever follow the rules? I blame my upbringing.

But, maybe I still would want love. Love that was raw and wrong, but right for me all at the same time. That is what I always wanted, I guess. And that's why Prince Eric was so alluring. He was a mystery I wanted desperately to figure out and understand. But, I was wrong.

Love was always a tricky concept for me. My friends around me in school got crushes but I never felt that oomf. It didn't help that I didn't see the point in dating someone unless I wanted to be with them for a while. If there was no oomf, there were no more dates. There was always a part of me that wondered if I was meant to fall in love with someone that wasn't a merperson, but was a human. I thought I could find the oomf there, up where the sun shined on their beautiful legs.

When I mentioned the thought of finding love out of the water to Flounder, he thought I was crazy. He said I must have had "Sun Poisoning" because I was beginning to be as crazy as a human.

All my life I was breaking the rules that my parents and previous monarchs had set. It wasn't until I broke the most important one that I realized some are meant to be broken, and some are made for a reason that cannot be shrugged off.

If I was born like my sisters and followed the rules, maybe I would have never did what I did. But I had to know – my curiously overcame me. I broke the rule as carelessly as all the others and got myself into more trouble than one could dream of.

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Thanks for reading :)

-fishingforsouls