Mermaid 14

"Take all the time you like to decide."
Dallas and his friends dove through then, distracting both father and daughter.
"I'm going to Meri's," she shouted, fleeing the exuberant boys.
It took a long time and a good bit of courage to tell Meri what she had learned. They'd swum a long way, following a pod of whales and spinning in the debris stirred up by their passing. The tiny brush of plankton and other microscopic creatures tickled, making the girls giggle from time to time. It was after one ticklish pass that Cordelia told her friend about her mother. Cordelia was afraid Meri would be frightened of her, or worse, angry.
Neither was the case.

Mermaid 13

"Promise me, Cordelia?"
She blinked, looking at the dead fish floating away from her open hand. She let it go.
"I promise, though I'm not sure I want to go. I think I do." She was so confused, flooded with so much new information. She had gone from knowing nothing about her mother to considering seeking her upstream in just a few minutes.
"You don't have to go." Her father sunk to her side and squeezed her shoulder. "Never have to go. And take all the time you like to decide."

Mermaid 12

"I'll never see her."
"I don't know about that," her father said. "Although you needed salt water to thrive, unlike me, the river didn't hurt you. If you wanted to find your mother, I would help you as far as the delta. But you must promise, if it hurts you, turn around and come home."
Cordelia was still in shock from the prior statement, so she didn't answer her father.
"Promise me, Cordelia?"

Mermaid 11

"Why?" Cordelia asked in alarm. "She didn't want to see me again?"
Her father wrapped his strong arms around Cordelia, hugging her tightly. "She never said, but yes, I think she knew it would be terrible to see you and not take you home with her."
Cordelia blew out the aid she held, sinking to the broken deck boards of their home. "I'll never see her," Cordelia said, embarrassed at how close she was to tears.

Mermaid 10

"She just swam away?"
"Yes," her father said, and Cordelia could tell he missed the mermaid of mountain water.
"Then how did I get here?" she asked, very confused.
"Your egg was laid in her lake, and when the tide was high again, I went looking for your mother. She held you on her back, tiny and green. She told me that you had recently hatched but weren't growing the way you should. Based on your colour, we assumed you need saltwater. I had to say goodbye to your mother one more time. I wanted to see her again, meet her there every tide, but she said she wouldn't come again."
"Why?"

Mermaid 9

"No, they didn't catch me, but as I followed them I caught her. It was along the delta, where the mountain water flows out of the river into the ocean."
Cordelia knew she was gaping, but she had never been anywhere near mountain water. "Did it hurt?" she asked.
"Not really. In fact it made me a bit dizzy at first."
Cordelia tried to imagine it but couldn't come up with anything. Maybe it was like when she dove into deep pressures?
Next she tried to imagine her mother and father swimming together. That was much easier. "Then she came home with you."
"No. She wasn't able to come here and I couldn't follow her up the river.The water was wrong, burning. So we said goodbye."
That left Cordelia frowning. "I don't understand."

Mermaid 8

"The very best chance. The tide was high and I was as reckless as your brother."
Cordelia chuckled. Dallas was always getting in trouble that Father had to save him from.
"I was pushing the edge, swimming to the new flooded beach, watching the people on land."
Cordelia nodded. The surface people were fascinating if you could get past their tendency to use the ocean as a waste bin. Cordelia hadn't gotten past that yet, not really.
"Were they dumping?" she asked, voice hard.
Father laughed. "No. They were fishing though." That made Cordelia mad too, but less so. Big fish ate little fish and big shore people needed to eat too, she supposed.
"Did any catch you?" she asked, teasing.
"No, but someone else did."

Mermaid 7

"Can I go there?"
"You look like her," Father said, reaching out and touching her blue-green hair. Most of the other mermaids had green hair that resembled seaweed, but Cordelia's had always been a bit different, a sheen that made it sometimes green and sometimes blue. The scales of her tail were the same green as her father's, the same as Dallas and Meri and all the other merfolk she knew.
"How did you meet her?" Cordelia held the dead fish a little more tightly, something of her mother's.
"Chance. The very best chance."