Lilophea, the Bride of the Sea King

Lilophea thought that her kind and caring father would one day be forced to give her in marriage to someone she had not chosen herself, and she immediately felt gloomy.

Iridescent streams flashed in the water in the fountain, as if someone was trying to comfort her. But the box of pearls in her hands became heavier.

“Who gave it to you?” Morissa asked.

“I don’t know? But I think each one of these pearls has a woman’s name.”

“Is that so?” The girl giggled softly.

“My peacock says that all the pearls are the souls of drowned women.”

“But I hear him say nothing but silence.”

Morissa even began to tease Seneschal and provoke him to say something, but he remained stubbornly silent.

“You see! It looks like he is deaf and dumb.”

“It is not true!” Lilophea herself did not understand why she had to defend him. Seneschal was so often rude to her.

“By the way, have you seen an unusual ship by the shore, looking like a large carved figure of a mermaid?”

Morissa shook her head in the negative. She and Lilophea were getting out of the crowd that had gathered for the reception, because they were both tired of it. Thankfully, Aquilania was a tropical island nation, and they didn’t have much regard for etiquette. Besides, the king never reprimanded his daughter for her manners, nor did he let others.

It was a good thing he didn’t know yet that seafaring gifts had begun to be delivered to the princess’s palace. Boxes appeared by themselves at springs, fountains, and once, instead of a jug for washing, Lilophea found an amphora with pearls and a wonderful mirror in which you can see the underwater world.

Morissa had already traded the monkey from some pretty caper by then. But the mirror, which could see mermaids, schools of fish, and tridents of newts, fascinated her so much that she was ready to give the monkey in exchange for it.

“Curious, how does it work?” She was nervous. “I knew a toy-maker in the province, where I lived with my father. He made such marvelous mechanisms, but even he couldn’t have made such a marvelous thing.”

“What if it was magic?” Lilophea watched the swarms of piranhas that pounced on those drowning in the water, wrinkled at the sight of the mermaids picking up and eating the bodies that fell into the sea after the battle of the ships above. In the mirror there were glimpses of sunken palaces, lagoons of sirens, colorful jellyfish, and some strange underwater flowers that caught and devoured the fish that swam by.

“Do not show it to anyone,” Morissa advised in a whisper. “If it really is magic, it is better to keep it a secret.”

Lilophea wanted to tell her that the jewels she had been given by someone unseen were also magical, but she did not dare. What if Morissa started sneaking them around and something bad would happen to her. She herself remembered what visions began as soon as she tried on one of the gifts.

Lilophea went for walks closer and closer to the sea shore, but she no longer saw a ship in the shape of a mermaid. But once she noticed a strange girl, who was diving into the sea waves and after a couple of minutes swam out. Her hair shimmered in the setting sun with multicolored strands. Strangely, there wasn’t even a dress thrown on the shore. What had she come to the sea in? Her shoulders, occasionally peeking out of the waves, were definitely bare. The swimmer suddenly disappeared for a long time under water, and Lilophea even worried about whether she would drown, but a bright head with purple-green strands suddenly came up very close. The stranger and the princess were separated only by a coastal boulder.

“Hello!” The stranger’s voice sounded like the echo in a shell. Lilophea only now noticed that her pale face had some bumps on it, and the pearl on her forehead looked as if it were growing right out of her skin.

“Who are you? I have not seen you at court. You must have just come in from across the sea.”

“You could say that.”

Probably she was by that peculiar ship that looks like a mermaid.

“I am Nereida,” the setting sun disappeared behind the horizon, and the girl in the water suddenly began to behave more bravely.

“And I am Lilophea.”

“I know.”

She must have heard the name of the local princess before. But how does she know that it is the princess who walks unaccompanied on the seashore?

“I wish they would let me swim in the sea,” Lilophea sighed. “Sometimes I want to dive into the waves too.”

“Try it!” Nereida beckoned her with a pale hand. “Come on, let’s swim together. Let’s dive deep! It’s very exciting.”

Lilophea didn’t mind, but she was ashamed to take off her dress. What if someone walked along the shore and saw her naked. Besides, a corset without a maid couldn’t be undone. Better just to chat with a new acquaintance for now.

“Are you from far away, Nereida? Your homeland must be very far away.”

“It was measured by depth or height.”

What did she mean by that? Lilophea grimaced as she noticed the white skin between her fingers. It looks so much like webs.

“You must be bored at the beach,” Nereida suggested. “Ashore is always boring, unless it’s a siege of a fortress or a battle at sea. I like to see armadas in action.”

“Have you ever seen one? I haven’t.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things.”

Nereida’s eyes flashed strangely as she stumbled over the mother-of-pearl mirror in Lilophea’s hand.

“It is better to see things in real life than inside toys,” she hinted. So the mirror is a toy after all. And Lilophea decided that it really was magic.

“Don’t stay on the beach, come to me!” Nereida tried to clutch at Lilophea’s dress, but she was just a little short of it. In addition, Seneschal was already flying toward the shore, squeaking something anxiously as he flew. Seeing him, Nereida’s face twisted so sour that it became almost ugly.

“See you later, Lilophea,” she ducked under the water quickly. You could only make out a long tail of her multicolored strands and what looked like fish fins. Lilophea looked after her for a long time, and the foamy circles on the water diverged in the form of some signs.

In the company of the peacock

Morissa was glad that she had successfully traded the monkey. The amusing little beast was worth nothing more than a kiss. She had trained him to sit on her narrow shoulder, where he could only fit with difficulty, and always had his tail around her neck to keep him from falling over.

“I’ll call him Traitor, because he only wants to jump on someone else’s shoulder where there’s more room,” she said.

“Better the Cheater,” said Lilophea, noticing the way the monkey had deftly removed the ring and pearl from the gift chest.

“Traitor sounds more romantic, it’s as if I were a fairy who bewitched the cheating lover into a monkey and now takes him with her,” joked the girl.

Cheater meanwhile offended snorted and dropped the ring, as if burned on it. He even blew on his paw.

“Your jewelry chills me,” said Morissa reluctantly. “I tried it on while you were away, and it looked as if I were freezing at the bottom of the ocean, snow and angry swordfish. It was horrible! I took them off right away, and I felt warmer. Aren’t you cold in them?”

“No!” Lilophea wore a pearl bracelet made of many strands, and she felt no cold at all.

“You’d better be more careful. The pirates in the harbor are wondering if it’s easy to kidnap the Princess,” Morissa hinted.

“And they weren’t teasing you.”