Week 4 Story: Husband and Mermaid

http://myths.e2bn.org/mythsandlegends/origins532-a-mermaid-and-a-magic-comb.html

Authors Note: For this weeks story, I have chosen to put my spin on a mythological story called "The Mermaid Wife", written by W. W. Gibbings. I have taken the story of a man and a mermaid and added more detail, as well changing some of the original plot and storyline into my own story.


     Long ago, on an island, a young man walked along a beach at dusk. He was thinking about his life and how he had not yet found love. He was getting older and he was beginning to worry that he would never find the one with whom he was meant to spend eternity with. As he walked, he looked up and noticed a group of mermaids in the water, swimming and chanting to the full moon. He slowly crept closer, but the sound of his footsteps on the sand caught the mermaids attention and they quickly fled. He decided to tell himself that everything he had just seen was his imagination playing tricks on him. He continued to walk along the shore when he noticed a a woman laying half in the water and half in the sand. He called to her, and she didn't pay him any attention. He got closer to her and noticed that she, too, was a mermaid. He asked her if she was okay, and she explained that she had been exiled from the other mermaids and was forced to live mostly on land, close to the shore. After talking for a while, the man offered the mermaid shelter in his house, but only if she would agree to become his wife. She hesitantly agreed, and used her magic to turn her fin into legs.
     A few years had passed and the husband and wife were living a quiet, but satisfying life. They had had two children, a boy and a girl, and neither of them knew of their mothers true form. One day, when the children were older, they found an old chest hidden in a secret compartment in the house. They opened the chest and found what looked to be a single fish scale. It glowed and sparkled and had a certain magic to it. The children did not know what it was, so they brought it to their mother. "Look!" the children said, as they showed her the scale. The mother was taken aback and had to walk away for a moment to gather her thoughts. That scale is what had once given her the power to turn from mermaid to human. She sat down and thought about her life, her house, her husband, her children. She let her mind wander to the life she once had, in the ocean, in her true form. She took a deep breath, stood up, hugged both of her children tightly and told them she loved them more than anything. She took the scale and headed toward the ocean where she met her now husband all those years ago. Right as she turned back into a mermaid, she heard her husband calling her, begging her to return home to the life she currently has. She apologized and explained that she is meant to be in the ocean, she is meant to be a mermaid. As she began to swim away, she yelled back to her husband one last time, "I love you, but I love this life more. This is who I am. I belong here." and she was never seen again.