Mer Socks

As I sit here nervously awaiting my cue, I know I should be going over my palm cards...yet all I can do is ponder over the particular events of my life so far that had led me to this moment. I had only been in the Mer Kingdom for less than a month...a month that had done wonders for my physical health thanks to my true nature yet had been bordlerine disastrous for me emotionally and mentally. 

Growing up on NSW's central coast, I had always had a passion for the water and the environment. In fact, I had spent most of my childhood in the ocean...a fact that now only seemed to be yet another obvious sign that I was Mer. It was only when I turned 18 and had grown gills and a tail for the first time during a pre dawn ocean swim did the signs finally become impossible to ignore. 

All the years of feeling ill when out of the water, of the intense neauseau when I couldn't get in my daily swims due to the trials and tribulations of the everyday life of a human teenager. I had been so scared that day...terrified really. I hadn't known what to do then...I certainly couldn't go back home, I couldn't walk with the lime green scaley appendage I had suddenly grown let alone imagine what my family would think or the infinite amount of medical and scientific tests that would be sprung upon me. 

If it wasn't for...and I know this sounds incredulous, but if it wasn't for a passing reef shark that I suddenly found I had the ability to communicate with...I would have never found my own kind, or perhaps I would have...but it would certainly have taken a lot longer. That day I had followed the reef shark after it's insistence that it could help...with a surprisingly posh sounding accent mind you. I had followed the creature out of the safety of the bay, out past the sand bank and into the deeper water near the shipping canals. 

To be honest, I hadn't been thinking clearly then...a young woman should never follow a stranger, no matter how friendly and helpful they seemed...even if they were a reef shark. I had been so distraught and riddled with shock and panic back then that I could have been talked into anything probably...even babysitting my younger sister and her bratty friends, well my human step sister that is.

Now sitting in the waiting room of the Mer's Royal Residence, nervously awaiting my turn to go out and address the people of Mer as a Mer child that had gone missing 18 years before...I couldn't calm my racing heart, well hearts. My true Mer parents were on the way back from their stint in the Mer Army as I sit here, making myself sick with nerves. I missed my home...well the place where I had grown up anyway. I missed my human family...even if they weren't my true family, we had experienced our differences...but so did all families, whether their kid was secretly a Mer or not.

I missed the tourist attracting scents of hot chips and fairy floss that dominated the coastal boulevards where I had grown up, I missed the intense sunlight even if it was drastically detrimental to my sensitive, underwater suited skin. I missed my home...which was ironic considering that I was for the first time in 18 years back to the place of my birth yet I had never felt so uncomfortable...not even when I was doing public speaking in school. 

I was happy to be 'home'...well deep down I think I was, I knew I was. My adoptive human family believed that I was studying overseas...as cliche as it was, in a prestegious program thanks to my stellar grades throughout high school. In reality, I would only be allowed to visit them when I had gone through enough training to be able to hide my Mer nature and to survive in the human world for short periods of time without making myself sick. Before I could go back though...I needed to make a speech to the Mer people, a sort of ' introductory/thanks for never giving up looking for me ' speech. I also needed to meet my real family, a family where I was the youngest for 6 siblings...a family that had been looking for me for 18 years and that had never given up on finding me.

Looking down at the speech I had carefully planned out with the reserved and overly polite yet incredibly caring Mer Queen, all I could think was that it was utter garbage. Maybe in writing I had all my thoughts and emotions together, but in reality...my emotional and mental states were as turbulent as the currents several hundred meters above the tranquil Mer Kingdom. 

Whatever happened out there, I knew I was going to be ok...as even if I didn't stick directly to script...they would be able to see that I was being genuine and the truth was always more important then being proper. Out beyond the pearly gates of the Royal residence's balcony, 3 million odd Mer civilians were anxiously awaiting their chance to lay eyes on the 'miraculous return' of the Mer child that had been missing for 18 years...I could go out there and talk about my favourite icecream flavours my words would be that useless. This event was simply only for the Mer Royal family to keep up appearences and to satisfy the blatant curiosity of their peoples.

I could do this...I knew I could, I had to do it for me...and for them. For my 5 siblings who had been so welcoming to me...almost an uncomfortable level of welcoming. I could tell they felt guilty about my years long disappearence...their constant doting upon me made this obvious let alone the fact that my two oldest brothers had actually said they they felt guilty about my disappearence as I had been washed away in a freak storm whilst they had taken baby me out for a small trip to watch my first sunrise...against my parents knowledge that was.

 Their teenage selves had originally though they were being too cautious and wanted to their sister an experience she would never forget. Whilst I have forgotte that experience, I definetly wouldn't forget the first 18 years of my life growing up in the human world...and I defintely wouldn't forget the speech that I was about to deliver...I was going to knock some Mer socks off.