“Captain—dad, forgot I’m not supposed to call you that. What the fuck did we hit?” His daughter asked, peering through the glass, eyes of wonder, no fear laced in her wild brown eyes.

“What did I tell you about cursing?” He asks, instead.

“To do it quietly?” She replies, face still smushed against the clear window, “Dad, what if we hit a rock? Remember what happened to the titanic?”

“Our boat is a lot smaller than the titanic.”

“Exactly!” She replies, pushing her body off the window and turning toward him, she notices how he’s reaching for the doorknob and she sputters out, “WAIT! Let me go with you!”

“Last time—“

“Last time, I just wanted to swim! But I don’t want to swim right now, come on! Give me a chance! I just want to see. I can warn the others if we’re about to sink and—!”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“What? Why?”

“We don’t need mass hysteria,” he casually replies, then opens the door and motions for her to follow him down the hallway. “We didn’t actually hit anything,” he adds. “Maybe a graze, maybe not anything at all. I really don’t know what you’re on about, or how you could have felt something like that.”

“Dad, you birthed and raised me on a boat. Remember? You trained me.”

When they made it outside onto the dock, a wicked stench filled their noses. Salt water, dead fish in bins but—something else that they couldn’t quite see. Yet.

“I know that smell.” He says under his breath. “Is that..blood?” He asks, then turns to the few passengers playing cards on the ground. “Hey, everyone up! I need a head count right now!”

“Dad, what are you—what happened?” She asks, “Dad, is someone hurt?”

“Jessie, calm yourself.” He warns, “Mass hysteria, remember?”

Jessie closes her mouth, but the question still lingers in the air unanswered, right next to that smell—that fucking smell, strong but not unfamiliar. People got hurt all the time at sea, but it never mixed with the water like this.

“Listen to the waves,” Her father orders, “Remember when I taught you that—“

“We can hear gaps in the water, a wave being blocked from passing?”

“Exactly.”

So Jessie held her chin up high, and listened as best as she could, dismissing the distant whispers from the bunks—questions of, “what is the captain doing?”

A wave, a pause, another, that smell—then, a whimper. A whimper..? Wait, “Dad, do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” He asks, but Jessie’s beat him to it, and she’s racing toward the edge of the boat just as he yells out, “Jessie! Don’t you fall in that water again!”

“I won’t—!” She yells back, over her shoulder and not paying attention as her stomach hits the railing, “Ow! God! Fuck!” She mutters, grimacing and looking down, and—holy shit there’s something in the water reaching out to her. “Holy fuck, Jessie whispers.

Her dads footsteps are heading toward her, but

Jessie’s not listening to her surroundings like she’s been trained to because, that’s not something, that’s someone! That’s that smell! Salt water and blood, and it’s so much more of an experience to see where it came from. Wait—she’s hurt, Jessie tells herself, check on her and..

Wow, her eyes are beautiful, and, she’s crying, and, that’s..not a human?

“Please help me.” The girl in the water pleads, “I wouldn’t ask if I could untangle myself,”

Jessie stares at her, unmoving for a moment, brown hair, light brown eyes, bloody skin and a tale. She never knew these things actually existed!

“You’re a mermaid,” Jessie sputters out, grasping the girls hand, and her heart stutters a little. She knows in the back of her mind that her fathers behind her now.

“You’re a human,” The mermaid weakly replies, “And I’m stuck, and hurt.”

Jessie smiles, then, “Oh, fuck, right. Let me help you! I’m so sorry!”

Blood smears her dark skin, and that smell hits her nose at full force, and it’s a mixture of so many different things, a life she hasn’t lived but has read about in stories that aren’t supposed to actually be real.

Salt water, blood, sand, seashells, scales, skin, and right now?

Jessie really wanted to save it.