Sea Glass

Clarissa always knew the best seashells were in the deep waters, where one could swim for a day and still not reach the bottom. She prided herself on her ability to make affordable seashell jewelry for every Mer in Coral Deep. The warm water season was starting soon, and her merfriends were going to bang down her door begging for something new to wear.

With every swish of her tail, she was going to deliver.

The waters were peaceful this morning, schools of fish darting around her as she swam, scanning the sand for anything else she could use for her staple necklace of the season. A bit of light to raise the hopes of the merfolk. There has been a lingering cloud of despair on everyone after another coral bed was found destroyed by fishing nets from the Land Swimmers.

A green glimmer caught her eyes.

The mermaid nearly squealed with delight. That must have been the brightest green seashell she had ever seen!

She rushed over, wrapping her hand around it and pulling. Her palm burned at the motion, her blood immediately discoloring the water around the gash in her hand.

“What in the selkie!” She cursed, examining the cut across her hand. With a frown, she pulled the object up again, careful this time, to be greeted by a broken glass bottle. A relic from the Land Swimmers it seemed, since Merfolk bottles were modified shells with corks. Looking around, she noticed several more bottles, some broken and some not. Some poor small fish worked its way into one of the bottles before the sand shifted and trapped it, killing it.

Anger flared through her at the disrespect to the ocean life, at the wound on her hand. She looked up towards the surface, already suspecting what she would find there.

A ship drifted calmly above, the slight ripple of fishhooks in the current, glittering from the sunlight that filtered down.

This would not do. Merfolk generally leaves the Land Swimmers alone, let them fish in our oceans to feed themselves and their tribes, but the disrespect has started to go too far, and she was not having it. With a push from her dark blue tail, she approached the surface. The mermaid kept her head out of sight as she reached the boat, examining those on the vessel. 

The vessel itself wasn’t overly large, enough for a few thousand. It was out of place this far from shore, the waves in this area could get massive during the sudden storm that can come in unannounced. 

That was all Clarissa needed to know about the intelligence of the three men sitting on the deck of the ship, poles in hand. Bottles like the one that cut her hand littered the floor, falling into the water as the ship rose and fell on the gentle waves of midmorning.

One was wearing a black cap, the other a red shirt, and the last one had hair all over his face. Land Swimmers really were gross little creatures. The only hair on Clarissa was her seaweed hair used for camouflage more than anything else. Mermen were completely hairless, some sporting coral for hair instead. Mermen also respected the ocean.

Watching one of them purposefully throw a wrapper of some kind overboard, these males clearly did not.

“Have you snagged anything yet?” The one with the black cap asked the other two.

The red shirt male groaned, “Absolutely nothing. Are you sure your man knew the coordinates where he caught that giant fish?”

The hairy one crossed his arms, “Of course, I saw the fish myself! It was the largest swordfish I have ever seen!”

Clarissa bristled. Swordfish were the most noble of all the fish, she could not stand by and wait for one of them or many of the other fish to end up on the end of these hooks. She ducked back beneath the waves, grabbing the wrapper glinting in the water and chucking it at the back of the red male’s head. It hit him with a satisfying thwack! She dived back under just as he whipped around.

His muffled voice traveled to her just under the surface, “Did either of you see that?! Something threw this back at me!”

The mermaid peaked back up on the other side of the boat, watching all three males examine the water where she had just been.

“It’s not possible,” The black cap male insisted, “Maybe the wind picked it up and you didn’t realize it?”

Perfect. She dove down again, collecting all the bottles that had fallen off their boat. She peaked through the water on the surface, examining as the land swimmers returned to their chairs. She put a bottle on each of their lines and tugged. She held the lines taunt as the males jumped to their feet and started reigning in their lines, pulling them this way and that like they actually hooked something. All three were hollering, their excitement palpable. Just as excited as she was thinking she found a new seashell. She let them experience the same disappointment too as their prize ended up just being littered bottles.

Clarissa watched them swear and rub their heads in confusion. She couldn’t help it; she giggled at their faces. It was all it took for the hairy male to track her floating just behind them.

“Hey!” He yelled.

Uh oh, not good. She dove immediately, but it was too late.

“Guys, there was an honest to God mermaid over there!” 

“I saw it too!” The black cap male agreed. 

 Well, that is unfortunate. The mermaid supposed this was her own fault, even if these males had it coming to them anyway. It was time for her to go to extreme measures.

She swam deep, past the drop off she was hunting for shells by, into the deep darkness of the trench. The pressure pushed on all of her nerves and her gills worked overtime as she searched for a very specific cave.

A dark tentacle blending in with the rock almost fooled her, but she knew exactly what she was looking for. She pivoted into the cave, stopping before the giant creature.

She bows deeply in front of him, “I’m sorry to bother you, Rashek, but I came to cash in a favor.”

A large black eye opened up in front of her, bigger than her entire body. A deep voice rumbled all around her, “It has been a long while since you last summoned me.”

“I have been very busy with my shop, you know how demanding my work is.”

The kraken huffed a laugh before slowly rising, each of its long tentacles releasing from his rocky alcove, “Anything for my favorite mer. My wife still wears the bracelet you made for the birth of our first born you know.”

She bowed again, “It is my pleasure, tell Janine I said hello.”

“What do you need, my friend?”

“There is a vessel on the surface with Land Swimmers who not only disrespect our home, but I’m afraid I went too far in my antics and they saw me. They must not make it back to shore.”

Rashek grumbled in approval, “Understood. Let’s show them what the sea is capable of then.”

Her smile was positively wicked, “Do your worst.” With that, he launched himself towards the surface.

Their screams were drowned out by the sounds of their boat being ripped apart by the kraken’s strong arms, and as the glass bottles glinted in the light as it fell alongside the pieces of the ship, she had a fantastic idea. 

Taking her kelp purse, she started shoving the bottles and ship pieces into it. While most of the ship was doomed to rot on the seabed, these bottles could be reused, shaped and weathered by hand into sea glass. The random metal pieces small enough to fit in her bag were perfect Merfolk statement pieces, the sea glass beads around them glimmering on the necks and ears of her closest friends. She could see it already.

The sea gives and the sea takes away. As the fish feasted on the bodies of the men above, Clarissa finally started her journey back home to her shop.

This really would be her best launch yet.