King Enji had four children, but the youngest was the prettiest of them all. His skin was clear and delicate, and his eye as blue as the deepest sea. Like all his siblings, he had no legs, and his body ended in a fish's tail. He spent all his time in the castle, where fish swam in and out of the large amber windows. Outside the castle there was a beautiful garden, in which grew bright red flowers like flames of fire. Each child had a plot of ground in the garden, where they may dig and plant as they pleased. One arranged his flower-bed into the shape of a whale; another made hers the figure of a mermaid; but that of the youngest was round like the sun, and contained flowers as white as fresh snow. He was a strange child, quiet and thoughtful. While his siblings would be delighted with the things they obtained from shipwrecks, he cared for nothing but pretty white flowers. Nothing gave him so much pleasure as to hear about the world above the sea. He made his mother tell him all she knew of the towns, of the people and animals. To him it seemed wonderful that all the flowers of the land had fragrance. That the trees of forest were green, and that the fish of the sky could sing and fly.
"When you have turned fifteen," said his mother, "you will have permission to rise up out of the sea, and explore the land above."
Since Shouto was the youngest, he would have to wait the longest to leave the depths of the ocean. However, each promised to tell the others what they saw on their first visit, for their mother could not tell them enough. None of them longed so much for their turn to come as the youngest, he who had the longest to wait, and who was so quiet and thoughtful. Many nights he stood by the open window, looking up through the dark blue water, and watching the fish as they splashed about. He could see the moon and stars shining faintly; but through the water they looked larger than they do on land.
As soon as the eldest child was fifteen, they were allowed to rise to the surface of the ocean. When they came back, they had hundreds of things to talk about. The most beautiful, they said, was to lie in the moonlight, on a sandbank, in the quiet sea, near the coast, and to gaze on a large town nearby, where the lights were twinkling like hundreds of stars; to listen to the sounds of music, the noise of carriages, and the voices of human beings. Oh how eagerly the young prince listened. When he stood at the open window, he thought of the great city with all its bustle and noise. He longed for it.
The next sibling received permission to rise to the surface of the water, and to swim about where they pleased. They rose just as the sun was setting, and this, they said, was the most beautiful sight of all. The whole sky looked like gold, white violet and rose-coloured clouds, which they could not describe, floated over them; and, still more rapidly than the clouds, flew a large flock of wild towards the setting sun, looking like a long white veil across the sea. They also swam towards the sun; but it sunk into the waves, and the rosy tints faded from the clouds and from the sea.
The last child was more timid; they remained in the midst of the sea, but they said it was quite as beautiful there as nearer the land. They could see for so many miles around them, and the sky above looked like glass. They had seen the ships, but at such a great distance they looked like seagulls. The dolphins splashed in the waves, and the whales spotted water from their nostrils till it seemed as if there were fountains playing in every direction.
When the siblings first had permission to rise to the surface, they were each delighted with the new and beautiful sights they saw; but now, as adults, they could go when the pleased, and they had become indifferent about it. They wished themselves back again in the water, and after a month had passed they said it was much more beautiful down below, and pleasanter to be at home. Yet often, in the evening hours, the three siblings would twine their arms round each other, and rose to the surface in a row. They had more beautiful voices than any human being could have; and before the approach of the storm, when they expected a ship would be lost, they swam before it, and sang sweetly the delights to be found in the depths of the ocean. But the sailors could not understand the song, and took it for howling in the wind. And these things were never to be beautiful for them; for if the ship sank, the men were drowned, and their carcasses alone reached the palace of King Enji.
When the siblings rose, arm-in-arm, through the water in this way, their youngest brother would stand all alone, looking after them, ready to cry. Only that merpeople have no tears, and therefore they suffer more. "If only i were fifteen years old," mourned Shouto.
I hope this suffices as a chapter because I kinda gave up on putting it all into one so
