Mermaid - Writing Challenge Piece

A trail of bubbles exploded behind me.  I wore a tiny conch shell around my neck on a string.  I fastened a pair of coral spirals onto my forehead like horns.  Holding the net, I set out to find the angel fish.

She was magical, and she had healing powers.  She lived in the shipwrecks.  My daddy told me stories about seeing her, two glowing eyes through holes in the rust under the water.  He said that she fixed the bend in his spine; she healed his scoliosis.  "You have to seek her with the heart of a sea creature," he told me.  "You have to become a citizen of Atlantis."

I spent all my life working on my clothing.  The necklace and horns were finishing touches.  I weaved a length of fabric from strands of seaweed dried in the sun.  Down at the dock, after the fishermen had gone home for the day, I sifted through their garbage with my fingers, carefully selecting the scales and bits of skeleton that glittered the best.  I sculpted tailbones from branches of driftwood.  I painted my head with algae, smearing handfuls of it against my hair, so that it glowed blue and green and fell around my throat like wet sea grass.  I would find her, and she would know me for what I was.

A girl with the heart of a serpent.  A mermaid and a princess from the city under the sea.  She had to know me.  My mother was dying.

photo by kai schreiber

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This post is an entry at Trifecta Writing Challenge. The deal is that you have to write a piece using the third definition of a given word in 33 -333 words. You should give it a try, too and link up here. This week's word is trail.

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