From the Island in the Sea to the Stars in the Sky

The sky was dark with only stars to shine light on the island and the sea, and there was no sign of the dawn, for it had been weeks and still no sun appeared. The island - and the people called it Hidden; it was not more than a myth in their eyes - had solely a tower made of stone on it. The myth was that there was a princess in the tower, made of gold and light, and only a prince could save her. Over the many years of generations dating to the beginning of the myth, princes from kingdoms everywhere had attempted to save who they thought was their true love.

  And none succeeded.

  There were no more princes who had not tried, and the myth did not allow a prince to try twice.

  The princes did not succeed, because there was more to the myth than they had heard.

  The water, which lapped quietly at the sand of Hidden’s beach, shimmered and glinted, and though it was dark outside, the water was bright. Aequorea jellyfish glowed under the water, like stars.

  In the tower, the princess could see the spectacular sight through a small, barred window. She had grown bored of it, and busied herself with counting the jellyfish, but even that grew tiring. She had nothing in the tower but a white dress. There was no dirt to dirty it, and there was the sea to clean it, and she never needed to do that. Many times she had tried to swim to the mainland, but she could never do it and always ended up returning to Hidden.

  The sea, and even though it was the walls on her cage, provided everything for her. She had the ability to take the salt out of it and clean it for drinkable water, and she used the salt to flavor the fish she caught.

   It was not enough. She longed to walk somewhere other than the grounds of Hidden. To walk on dirt, on wood, on carpet.

   But those were chances she would never get. Once she was saved, she only had a day to live, and it would surely take more than a day to arrive on the mainland. That broke her heart. Only a day before she would go to the sky to be the sun. She would shine the light, light the path, and the path she would be for all the people who had not seen the sun in weeks.

***

Hours, perhaps even days later, no one knew the time, the still water rippled. It had never done that since the forever-night had begun. Not a creature would dare disturb the surface, for the princess had begun to grow hungrier despite nature trying to keep her fed and alive. It did its job well, but food was not what the princess wanted. She was hungry for the sun, for the warmth she knew so well and so horribly at the same time. She would kill for it, testing nature to see if killing all the animals would make it finally break. Nature’s ecosystem was it’s veins, the things that kept it alive. It would not risk that, it would need to give her the sun.

  She gazed into the water through her window lazily. Her vision blurred, and she almost drifted to sleep, but jerked her head before she could. There was something emerging from the sea, backlit by the glow of the jellyfish. She would need to get closer.

  As the princess emerged from her tower, she saw that the thing had come onto the island.

  The thing in front of her looked human, but some things were off about him. He had blue skin, for one, with scales here and there, and his muscular abdomen was shining with water. His face was light brown, one of the natural colors for a human’s face, but everything else was blue - except for his hair, just a darker color than his face. Around his waist was a cloth, like a skirt, and tied to a knot at the hip. It went down to below his knees. His eyes were the same color as his body, and in his hand he carried a metal staff with a seashell on the end. His ears, which were fin-like and also blue and scaled, lifted when she came closer.

  “Where is the princess?” He called to her, his voice like honey.

  “I am the princess,” She told him. The myth was not new to her, but she was shocked because she never thought someone would come so quickly.

  “You are a tiger.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. No. He didn’t think I would be like this? But he knows of the legend - and the legend goes that I am a tiger princess.

  She growled at him. “I am.”

  “Where is she?” He demanded again. “Where is the princess?”

  “I am the princess,” said the princess, her voice shaking. “If you refuse to believe it, I will be forced to eat you.”

  His mouth opened, and so did hers. She was fully prepared to eat him, she had never tasted anything like him, and she was always open to new things.

  He closed his mouth, looking afraid. Then he sighed. “Alright, princess. I have come to rescue you.”

  Those...those are the words that must be said for the spell to be broken. she waited. Nothing happened. Her mouth opened again, mouthing words no one but her could hear. Why isn’t it working?

  “Princess,” the man asked, seeming to be thinking the same thing. “Where I come from, you are a mermaid. What...what is your true form?”

***

The princess’s eyes were filled with grief when the man asked his question.

  “That is something I, too, have been wondering all my life.”

  She doesn’t know, he thought, curious as to why. But he would be left that way forever. The princess had not interacted with anyone in her whole life, and didn’t know to elaborate.

  “Perhaps it is of the sea,” he suggested, motioning to where the jellyfish floated in the shallow waters.

  She looked doubtful. “I have been here all my life. Not once have I felt a connection to the ocean. Not once have I felt a pull - or anything else.”

  “Try.”

***

The princess stepped into the water. The feeling was familiar, but so strange. She waded deeper in, the jellyfish parting for her like a red carpet. She was a princess, after all. The deeper she got, the more nervous she became. Nothing was happening. But when her head submerged and she was forced to float on the surface, she changed. She watched as the man’s eyes widened, and soon she couldn’t see anything at all, for she was an Aequorea sea jelly, it was her true form, and it was not what she saw that made her know the sun had come, but what she felt. She felt it warming the water and she felt it in her heart, her heart which had never felt anything before except loneliness and sorrow. The princess had returned to her kingdom, and swam with the man - who was a prince, a mermaid - on the last day of her life.

  When it was over, she swam to the sky and watched over him, never longing to be back on Hidden or the sea or the mainland, because the sky was where she belonged. Soon the mermaid would belong there too, and after that all the mermaids and people on the mainland. Her name was Aequorea, she learned, and she would forever remain a princess at heart, as well as a tiger.