Mer Tales: #minithology

By N.D. Gray, Heidi Moone, Karli Stites and 2 more

OF WHAT ARE MERMAIDS WARNED?

 

Stories shape and mold our lives. Lurk in the background of our minds, controlling our actions and our feelings.

In these five stories, a variety of merpeople struggle against the chains of story, which bind them to a certain path.

 

Are they strong enough to break free?

 

Dare to swim beyond...

 

Dive deep into these five fantasy short stories by Max Florence, N. D. Gray, Ian Madison Keller, Heidi Moone, and Karli Stites. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: 3 Feathers Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781947344198

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

STORY ONE–THE SHIFTING OF THE CURRENTS

STORY TWO—THE SHAPE OF LOVE

STORY THREE—IN THE DEEP WATERS

STORY FOUR—IT IS LIVING

STORY FIVE—BORN OF SEA AND STORM

COMING SOON

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

The story goes that one day a lady was cooking a ham. She cut off the end before putting it into the roaster. Her daughter asked her why. The mother explained that cutting the end off was part of the family secret for making good ham. But through conversations with other family members, they eventually learned that the mother’s grandmother cut the end off the ham because she had a small roaster.

The story about the family secret shaped the culinary experience of several generations. We are no less creations of the stories in our lives. From the intimate anecdotes of personal experiences to the sweeping stories of our politics, religion, and national history, our lives are veritable tapestries of stories woven together.

Stories lift us up. They teach us how to engage with life. Like Beauty learning there is more to the Beast than his hideous looks, stories reveal the depths in the world around us.

They also cage us. Narrow our views. Instill fear.

In this #minithology, our authors have spun stories of merfolk overcoming the limiting words spoken into their lives. Karli Stites tells of the conflict between mermaid and siren. Max Florence portrays a mermaid who once made a decision and is now under the belief she shouldn’t have set her standards so high. A mermaid sea-slug must take a risk when it comes to mersharks in Ian Madison Keller’s story. Heidi Moone’s mer-Kin discovers that all the training in the world cannot shield a heart against love. And my own merman experiences a collision between his life expectations and the need of an ancient kingdom.

Settle into your beach chair by the ocean, or run an ambient video of ocean waves, while you open this book and dive deep into our mer tales.

ND Gray

March 2022

Camp Verde, AZ

STORY ONE

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While researching for this story, N. D. Gray was intrigued by several fish species which are matriarchal. When the matriarch dies, the most dominant male changes sex and becomes the new matriarch.

Does the male expect the change? Is he confused? Unaware?

She also wanted to write about ancient stories. Stories so old their original meanings are obscure. Her own life has been heavily influenced by such stories and, like her main character Xal, she’s swimming through the unknown, looking for the wide open future.

THE NEWNESS OF THIS REGION of the ocean is both blessing and danger. The pod recently came to this stretch of continental shelf, chasing schools of silverfish and blue fins, hoping for a better place to raise their fry than the usual bleak reefs.

The warm water running across Xal’s tongue and through his gills carries the salt of strange silt and the tang of new kelp. But it has no flavor of Yrim.

Where has she gone?

Xal pauses his search. His tail and side fins swirl against the water to keep him in place. Holding his carved trident sideways before himself, he uses it to maintain balance while he surveys his surroundings.

Below him, bright yellow fish no larger than his hand dart to and fro among waving seaweeds and lacy coral. Beneath the fish, an orange scuttler crawls sideways, its pinchers snapping at knock knock snails hiding among rounded pebbles. When the scuttler is lucky enough to find a snail, its pinchers crack it open, and the orange crustacean happily devours its prize.

Xal does not begrudge the creature its snack, but the ease at which the snails are cracked open is all too unsettling. A miniature demonstration of how swiftly life is forfeit in the wild untamed ocean.

Where is Yrim?

She knows better—everyone in the pod knows better—than to swim away on their own, especially with the approach of the Shifting Currents.

When the Currents Shift and she is male, Yrim is larger than Xal—with biceps literally double in size.(They measured when they were younger.) Yrim’s male chest is thickly corded muscle, and his powerful tail merges with his skin-covered torso in deep, side gills, which absorb substantial amounts of oxygen. The result is a formidable merleen, capable of single-handedly facing down most predators. But when Yrim is female, as she is now, she is one of the smallest adults in the pod.

Each member of the pod is precious, and they never swim far, even here, among the unexpected wealth of vegetation and fish. Usually an area has so little vegetation and so thin a population of fish, the pod is only able to linger for a few days before they are forced to move on in search of food. They might travel for miles, bypassing many local ecosystem ravaged by sickness, before they find sustenance.

The shelf which they have found is one of many along this length of the continental slope. Happily, it provides sheltering grottoes near the surface. The grottoes will help protect the pod as their fry grow. And the warm temperatures and sunlight nurture a wide variety of corals, seaweeds, and lettuces.

The downside is that the abundance of food attracts many species of small fish, which, in turn, draw a plethora of shark, cephalopods, large crustaceans, and others who would happily dine on merleen fry and the smaller adults.

Xal follows the edge of one of the teeming shelves. It drops away in staggered ledges, each featuring different grasses and creatures as the depth increases and the temperature cools, until far out, the wide abyssal plain fades into murky shadows filled with hints of a seamount. The seamount’s slopes are sharp with twisting towers and arches of rocks, all laced with deep pools of darkness.

Could Yrim have swum over there among the seamounts and caves? Surely not. Not even as a male would she go there alone. The terrain looks perfect for a colony of gulpers. And even an average-sized gulper has jaws large enough to swallow any merleen whole.

A pulse of energy tolls through the water, and Xal is temporarily stunned. It only lasts a moment, but his trepidation increases. He should be back at the grotto, taking his place along the outer ring of protectors. Smaller built males in the second ring. Females next. Then all the fry around the Great Pearl, eager for their first Shifting.

Yrim’s own fry are there. Triplets. Energetic and exuberant in all they do. Xal has searched their features for signs that one of them developed from his contribution in the mating dance, but two look like their mother and one has a splash of red skin across their nose, exactly like Zoor’s.

He feels a pang of sadness. Yrim’s fry are as close as he will ever get to having his own. The Currents have never Shifted for him. He has doubts they ever will. When his time comes, the pod will choose to follow another’s offspring.

As leader of the pod, he should turn around now, before the Great Pearl resonates again. His duty is clear. Protecting the others through the Shifting Currents is his priority. But it hurts to leave his friend out here, defenseless as she is.

Something catches his eye. He bends in half at the waist, diving to the next shelf. There had once been a structure here. White marble veined in gold and silver. Coral clings to the graceful columns, which anchor the front of the clam-shaped structure. There is nothing inside the small space to hint at what it was once used for.

Xal touches one of the columns, wondering if this is one of the places in the legends the old merleens sing of when they rest in the shallows at the end of the day. When they watch the sun setting on their world, turning the ocean as golden as a Great Pearl.

Silt has risen up around three sides, or the shelf itself slid down the continental slope, tipping the structure back at an odd angle. But there, on a wide, flat slab of marble before the slanting structure, a triangle of fist-sized stones point the way.

This is the direction signal his pod uses when they hunt for food.

Trident held to his side and caudal fin flexing, he powers through the water, over the edge of the shelf and toward the next, where a large cone of coral juts up. He swims around it just as Zoor swims from the other direction. Of course, Zoor would be out here. He should have expected it.

His friend draws up, placing