Mermaid 38

Mountain water sounded so strange in his way of speaking. So much that she thought he might never have used it. That wouldn’t surprise Cordelia. Most of the merfolk she knew didn’t pay the mountain water any mind. There were even a few misguided folk that thought there was nothing but the ocean. They had never seen the shore.
“Mountain water,” he said again.
“Yes. I came from the ocean, saltwater.”
Dylan’s blue eyes widened and his tail twitched. “Saltwater? I thought that was just a story. My mother told me that if I let the stream claim me, I would die in the saltwater.”
Cordelia chuckled. “We have stories about mountain water too. Not that it will kill us, but that there was mountain water long ago, before the creator salted it all.”
“You are lying,” Dylan accused. “There are salty lakes and they do kill.”