When the prince received an anonymous letter informing him that the little mermaid was not a human woman, he summoned her, doing his best to hide his disgust.

“It’s just that, well, I can’t have a wife who is a,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “you know, a fish.” He took a deep breath and tried to regain his composure. “Of course, you look like a human, but that doesn’t mean you are one. Inside, where it counts, you still have a fishy nature, no? Looking like something and being that thing are not the same thing. You can never be a real woman. Let’s be honest.”

The little mermaid, having given up her voice for the privilege of having legs and feet that stabbed her like knives, could say nothing. She had done everything she could think of to become human, and that still was not enough. “Of course,” the prince went on, gaining confidence as he went, “we can have our best physicians take care of this, this aberration of yours. I mean wouldn’t you rather be your true best self, swimming in the ocean? Surgeons could unmodify your legs back into fins, or whatever they really are.”

It was hard for her to keep the two ideas in her mind, the one of the prince that she had adored so much that she had been willing to make these sacrifices for, and the prince who seemed so unwilling to even consider her a person. She looked at the man in front of her and understood that the man she thought she had been in love with did not exist.

She existed, though. She existed as herself, a person who was living on land and would continue to live on land, feeling breezes, hearing thunderstorms, seeing so many stars. 

She stood there frozen, unable to make herself leave the room. Something soft twined around her ankles. She looked down at a tabby cat that lived in the palace.

 Her belly, and then her heart resonated with its purring. The vibration grew until it reached her throat.

“No,” she growled at the prince as she left forever.