Author’s Note: All characters involved are eighteen and above. There is no underage sex going on. The terms ‘merboy’ and ‘mergirl’ are for merpeople who have yet graduated from their school, which they study at until twenty-one years old, just like our university. The terms do not refer to their physical age at all. Adeline’s exact age is of no consequence to the story but she is eighteen and above.
—
“Hey, Adeline! Want to come along with us? We’re heading topside to catch the waves!”
The small frame of a young mergirl trembled slightly, the fins of her slim turquoise tail flicking nervously as she looked up from the weeds where she was hiding. Her pale gold hair swirled around her like a glowing halo, its unusual color had brought much attention to her when she was initially brought to the sea. Deep in the ocean where the merpeople lived, they seldom have much beautiful things. Adeline was one of the exception — her large grey eyes and coral red lips often drew attention from mermen and merboys. Her ivory skin made her appear younger than she was, for the merpeople swam up to the surface of the water as soon as their tails were strong enough to handle the long trip, spending hours basking under the sun. Adeline lived in the depths of the ocean, unlike the others who were able to walk on land and feel the warmth of the sand beneath their feet.
The merboy who called to her had caught sight of her peeking out at them. He remembered catching a glimpse of Adeline when he was still attending school, but it had been a long time ago. He knew of her, for Adeline, despite her attempts to blend into the surroundings all the time, was a name everyone in the merworld knew very well.
Not in a good way, however.
A mergirl broke off from the school of merteens a short distance away and zipped towards the merboy. She grabbed his arm and pressed up against him. “Why did you invite her? You know she can’t come with us. We’re going dancing on the beach later.”
The merboy nodded and shrugged his shoulders apologetically at Adeline. A flash of sympathy came over him but it was gone in an instant. With a forceful swish of his tail, he swam off with the mergirl to catch up with the rest of the school, their joy as distant to Adeline as their freedom was.
Adeline slowly emerged from the weeds. She had caught the spiteful glare the mergirl cast in her direction before they left. She would have told the mergirl she wouldn’t have joined them anyway but she had been so taken aback at being spoken to that she was rendered momentarily speechless. More than anything, she was aware of her own disability.
Unlike other merpeople, Adeline could not transform her tail into legs.
“Why, you look disappointed, Adeline. Upset that you couldn’t join them?”
The moment Adeline heard that voice she turned and dove towards the tall weeds which grew outrageously lush across the seafloor here. She was drawn to a sharp stop when her tail was caught by a firm hand. With a single tug, she was pulled back in place.
A huge merman grinned lazily at her, as though her attempt to run away from him amused him more than anything else. “Where do you think you’re going? I am talking to you. It’s rude to walk away from a conversation”
Lashes fluttering from fear, she kept her head low. Her voice was almost a squeak. “I-I know. I just r-remembered I h-have somewhere to g-go.”
He didn’t let go of her tail. Instead, he toyed with it, enjoying the touch of her fins. Adeline had really pretty ones, long and translucent in shades of green, blue and gold, trailing behind her when she swam. He could count on one hand the number of tails prettier than hers.
There was one important reason why he had his eyes set on Adeline instead of the others. Adeline spent most of her time alone and wasn’t part of any school. While merpeople weren’t large on kinship, they still maintain a degree of familial ties, partly because merchildren grew up with their parents until they came of age. Adeline was different. Her father had all but left her alone when they determined she was flawed. Her inability to transform her tail into legs made it impossible to her to have any offspring, since merpeople conceived through sex with humans.
But he didn’t come to Adeline so she could carry his young. He wanted her to satisfy his urges. Even without legs, she was still beautiful. The innocence in her eyes made him want to tarnish and besmirch, to teach her things a lover should. It wasn’t unusual for merpeople to get together for no other reasons than casual pleasure. With Adeline, he could push boundaries and nobody would stop him. Adeline was too weak to put up a fight and her father didn’t care. She had no other friends, preferring to keep to herself.
“Where?” He snickered. “Nobody welcomes you.”
His ugly words made her drew her shoulders in, as though by doing that, she could hide from him. She moved her tail, trying to free her fins. His touch felt odd. Even though no one had told her so, she knew instinctively she shouldn’t let anyone touch her this way. She recognized the merman. He had always watched her, his eyes able to seek her out from wherever she was hiding.
“Let go please. I really need to go.” Adeline whispered.
She looked up at him at the end of her plea, her grey eyes pinning him to the spot. For a second, it felt as though his dark desires were stripped bare and exposed to the light. He brushed aside any shame that rose in him easily. If it wasn’t him, it would be someone else. He had heard whispers from the deepest caverns that she was a pearl perfect for the taking. She had come of age recently, perfect for an introduction to sex. They spoke of using her as a tool to satisfy their lust and share her among themselves. All the time he eavesdropped on their conversation, his body responded. He wanted to be her first, to be the one to do all the things they had talked about.
“If you’re curious about what they do topside, why don’t I show you?” He asked. His hand slid up the length of her tail, watched her irises enlarge significantly. His own heartbeat pounded a steady beat at his ears.
Her coral lips parted. A light sparked in her eyes. “I-I can’t transform.”
Adeline was curious. All merchildren were told stories of what the other merpeople did when they swam to the shallows and walked on land. She never had the courage to swim up but it didn’t mean the yearning didn’t burned in her. Swimming up to the top was written in the blood of the merpeople.
He knew he had her. She wouldn’t be able to resist the bait he presented to her. It wasn’t surprising. Most of their young ones had ventured up even before they came of age. He had brought more than one mergirl topside in his time too. Being isolated and timid in nature, he knew she would leap at the chance to explore if someone offered it to her. The merboy just now obviously didn’t lay the right bait. Adeline only needed to be told that her deficit wouldn’t be a hindrance.
“Don’t worry.” His eyes wandered from her soft lips down south to her lush roundness of her breasts. “There’re things we can do that don’t require legs.”
She still wore plaited seaweed around her chest as all mergirls did, not making the change over to seashells. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. Pretty seashells cost gold coins, and she wouldn’t have any. Most of the gold coins were earned through exploring shipwrecks and trading with the people on land, both of which she didn’t do.. He was glad she had yet made the switch. Those seashells provided more coverage than the seaweed she had on now. It molded the shape of her breasts quite nicely, the strap thick enough to hide her nipples from view but not enough to conceal her plump flesh. The pale skin seemed to beg for his touch. He wanted to dig his fingers into her breasts, to squeeze and pinch and tug at them until the skin turn red.
Adeline didn’t like how he was looking at her now. He had the same look in his eyes as that of a shark circling and watching its prey before striking. It made her uncomfortable and she wanted to dive into rock crevices to hide from him. But she did not. The allure of going up to the surface, to take a peek at a world beyond what she knew, was simply too great.
It was a world she could only dream about.
Coupled with titillating stories of exploration on land, were tales of caution aimed at the young ones. Adeline grew up listening to how the people on land hunted down merpeople, torturing them with something called ‘fire’, slaughtering them for delicacies. The other merpeople could disguise themselves as humans when they transformed their tails but Adeline wouldn’t be able to blend in with them.
“We’ll stay away from land?” Adeline uttered softly.
“Of course. I know somewhere we can watch the ships.” He encouraged her. “It’ll be far away from the humans and no one can spot us there, I promise.”
Adeline found herself nodding. She couldn’t resist it. It was as though someone had presented a large luminous pearl in an open clam to her and told her she mustn’t touch it. The merpeople had a weakness for beautiful and shiny objects too.
So, at least for this trip, she found herself conceding to a merman she had only met when she wandered out of the cave which was her home in search of food.
“Shall we go then?” He asked after glancing around them to see if anyone had noticed them together. He didn’t want anyone to connect their departure together because he did not intend to bring her back. After today, she would simply disappear from the bottom of the ocean. He had a perfect grotto in mind to hide her in, which he could easily cut off from the ocean. Fortunately for him, both of them had left the main stream where everyone usually cross and there was seldom anyone at this time.
Anxiety rose within her again. “Do I need to prepare anything?” She asked.
“No, no need.” Just your delicious beautiful self.
His dark moss-green tail swished eagerly at the thought of taking her. He felt a prickling sensation in his tail, a bone-deep ache which always preempt the transformation. He knew what it meant. His desires were getting the better of him. He wanted to fuck her and his body was preparing for that by changing into legs.
There was nothing more he wanted right now than to drive his cock into her, but he knew they would be unable to fornicate that way without her transforming into legs as well. His eyes roamed her body, sizing her up as a tool and decided there were plenty of delightful possibilities. He grasped her wrist, earning a gasp from her when his grip was too tight.
“Come. Let us leave now.” He told her.
The pair of them caught a flow which brought them to the surface. It was a long swim, the furthest which Adeline had ever embarked on. She was so exhausted he had to complete the last part of the journey with her in tow, even though the flow had saved them plenty of energy.
Adeline was far too busy looking at everything. The ocean in the shallows were very different than the deep. Everything was brighter and more colorful up here. Vibrant schools of fishes she had never seen before swam around them. The sand was a mix of light grey, white and pale yellow. Plants grew in more shades than she could count. The water was clearer and she could see so far away.
She now knew why the merpeople always spoke of the topside with so much longing in their voices. It was a wonder any of them ever return to the depths.
“Come on.” He said to her when she paused again to look at a dark red weed. This must be the hundredth time she had stopped. The tide of impatience surged ever higher within him. “Don’t you want to break out of the water? At this rate, it’ll be too late for us to catch the sunset.” He threw another bait at her.
“Sunset?” Adeline echoed the unfamiliar word. She ransacked her mind and realized what it was. This time, she placed her hand in his, much to his surprise. “Yes, I want to see the sunset.”
Her childlike curiosity and wonder suffused him with guilt for his own ugly desires. He was taking advantage of her, he knew. She trusted him and he aimed to use that trust to trap her. It was all for her own good. He was shielding her from the other mermen. Adeline was far too precious to stay below and fall into the hands of others. He was only asking for a bit of remuneration, only requesting her to satiate his lust. It was a fair deal. The other men would treat her far worse.
“Stay with me.” He said. Although merpeople could see well in the dark, he realized that up here in the shallows, her eyes weren’t exactly grey. There were flakes of green and blue amidst the grey, the colors changing each time the light hit them. They reminded him of the stony cliffs where the merbabies were left by their human mothers, where their young would start the next part of their life.
“Don’t worry. I’ll try to keep up.” Adeline didn’t catch the meaning behind his words, her mind focused on the idea of being able to see a sunset.
He caught another flow with her, this time leading to the surface. She had to hold on to him tightly because the waves were much rowdier up here. When they broke out of the water, it was to a mesmerizing world of colors. There was a large orb slowly descending across what she knew was sky, its blue a slightly different shade to that of the sea. As the sun disappeared, its colors spilled across sky and sea, staining everything bright orange and pink. The glorious sight stunned her into silence.
“Remember to breathe, little fry.”
Her long lashes came down over her eyes before they rose again, turning to look at him. The palpable delight shining from her was almost as brilliant as the sun. He had to admit that the sunset was one of those sights everyone must see when they come topside. This time, however, something else had his attention.
They had just broken out of the water and her hair was plastered to her skin, her skin still wet. She should have looked pathetic, like the seagull he once rescued which had fallen into the sea after attempting to catch a fish heavier than it could carry. Instead, she only reminded him of the painting he once saw at a shop during one of his trips to land — a human bathing in the sea, the sky a sunset as beautiful as the one before them now. He had almost been tempted to purchase the painting himself, even though he knew he had no place to display it.
There was a similar breathtaking quality to Adeline; something about her which caught the eye and made it difficult to look away. It wasn’t pervasive, merely a subtle softness to her which called to one’s need to claim, to possess, to mark.
She sniffed twice, her nose twitching as she did so. He patted her back when she coughed, the first few lungfuls of air heady to the merpeople. It was something the sea-born have go through, and the land-born must remember.
Adeline stayed as long as she could, until the sun turned a dark inky black, and a pale silvery orb rose high into the sky. Light dotted the sky in the form of stars, some of them winking at her. She asked so many questions about the world up here until he snapped at her.
“You can ask me tomorrow,” he said shortly. “I know somewhere we can rest until the sun rises up again.”
She was instantly distracted. “We can stay up here? We don’t need to go back?”
“Yes. You can stay here for as long as you want.”
The grotto he took her to was a naturally formed cave near an uninhibited island far from land. They were able to swim into the cave because the tide now flooded the entry tunnel. During low tides, the grotto was cut off from the sea, the tunnel which they used as an entrance drained of water. It was this tunnel which he now blocked with a large rock behind them, ignoring the questioning look in her eyes.
“Here. Just a bit further.” He grabbed her hand and led her deeper into the tunnel. It was just large enough for both of them to maneuver through.
They came up again inside the grotto. This time, he gave into the transformation, his powerful tail splitting into a pair of legs. The process was both agonizing and pleasurable, but very much natural to the merpeople. It was what made Adeline the pariah among them.
He could feel Adeline staring at his legs when he got out of the water. The grotto was opened at the top, allowing some moonlight to light up the cave, not that he required it to move around. He walked over to the small wooden chest he had laid by the wall. He had kept some food here just so he had something to eat when he came here. He had traded it for a shiny pearl. Now, it would be bait.
He went to sit by the pool, dipping his legs into the water. “You can get out if you want. No one will see us here. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Adeline had been quiet since he transformed. She had never been so aware of her deficit now she had seen them. They were beautiful and strong, like arms, but better. He had leapt out of the water with a grace she admired and walked. With those feet. A pang gripped her heart. This was something she could never do. She would never have the same freedom on land as the others do.
“Don’t worry.” He sensed her trepidation. “You can dip your fins in the water and occasionally splash water over your tail. It’s easy enough.” He held up something brown and round. “Hungry? Do you want to try human food? I’ve got some bread, cheese and fruits.”
She drew closer, her curiosity a force which had her clumsily climbing to the spot beside him. She gazed at the strange assortment in the chest between them, not recognizing any of them. He took the brown bread, tore a smaller piece and handed it to her. It tasted hard and dry and bland. The cheese was soft and saltier. He explained that humans ate the bread together with the cheese, which Adeline figured made some sense. The fruits, on the other hand, were sweet and much more to her liking. Their juices burst in her mouth when she bit into it, spilling onto her palm and fingers and making them sticky. She licked them up, unwilling to waste a single drop of it.
His gaze darkened as he watched her. Her pink tongue darted out to catch the juices, not knowing the way she sucked her fingers and licked her lips had provoked the lust of the merman beside her. His blood flowed to his groin, where his cock began to engorge and lengthen, rearing up. He didn’t bother hiding it, finding no shame in his arousal. Only the humans like to cover themselves from head to toe, decorating with cloths and shiny stones and bits and bobs. The merpeople preferred to frolic under the sun, enjoying the warmth while they slake their desires, mixing the physical sensations of the natural world with the internal stimulation of sex.
Adeline had just finished a red strawberry when she caught sight of the strange appendage between his legs. It was the strangest of the many things she had seen today. It seemed to be part of the transformation, at least, she didn’t think it was a deformation of some kind. He certainly wasn’t embarrassed by it. Under her intent gaze, the appendage jerked and swelled even more.
“Do you want to touch it?” He asked.
Her cheeks flushed. She knew it was rude to stare. Still, she reached out a hand to graze it. It was soft and warm. When it jerked again, she withdrew her hand back out of fear.
“I’m sorry. Did that hurt? Did I do something wrong?”
“No. That’s the way it gets when it feels good.” He told her. He moved the food chest away and shifted closer to her. “Let me teach you how to touch it.”
She wanted to tell him she was more interested in eating more of the soft fruits but she didn’t want to appear ungrateful when he had been so nice. He took her hand and wrapped her fingers firmly around the length of him. It wasn’t just soft; the softness was a mere covering for a hard throbbing rod in the center. The knowledge surprised her that she tightened around it accidentally. The low moan escaped from him and she pulled back her hand out from under his. This time, she was so agitated she lost her balance and slipped back into the water, making a large splash as she did so. She felt so humiliated she hid below the surface of the water and stared out at him.