Night Skies too Distant for True Comfort

Being a human is a dream come true. Ariel couldn’t be happier among the humans and their cute quirks. The shaking hands upon greeting, the smell of logs on fire during colder nights, even their painful corsets have their own intrigue to them.

But she really wishes when she had become human that her anatomy had changed a little more beyond just… legs.

“My lady, it's freezing out. Put this coat on.” Her well meaning attendee wraps a thick fur around her shoulders. The night air is cool and breezy, a godsend to Ariel’s overheating body.

The second the heavy clothing disturbs her shoulders, she’s flinching away. “No, I’m really fine.”

“My lady, and I don’t want this to sound… rude? But you’ve not looked well lately.”

“I’ve said I’m fine. Just adjusting still.”

“Please, my lady, we’re all worried. I’m worried. And you’re always so deathly cold. Please will you just humor me and wear this if you insist on going out this late?” Her attendee pushes the coat back to her. Their pleading eyes hold too much fear and hope for refusal to be an option.

“I- Yes, I can do that.” The warmth draped on her feels like a death sentence. Tears come to her eyes but don’t fall. It would take too much energy to blink them away, let alone stay hydrated enough for more than a small pool to form.

And so her one source of cooling was smothered.

----

“We really can’t explain it my king, she’s simply fallen ill.”

Ariel could explain it just fine. She was a fish out of water. Cold blooded and baking under the hot sun of her beautiful awaited land.

“I can expl-”

“She’s also gained delusions sir.” The physician stands away from her bed. She’s trapped neatly under 3 layers of blankets and the effort it would take to move the blankets off herself requires a strength that has long since been sapped by the boiling of her blood. “She’s not fit to serve as a queen of this land.”

“Well no woman truly is. She will however attend the dinner with the visiting dignitaries. Ensure she is in enough health to sit and look like a good pretty figurehead for this country.”

“Of course.”

King Eric leaves the room. It would be a relief to Ariel to have his presence gone if it didn’t mean she now had to dress for a dinner.

Moving was a challenge she wasn’t allowed the privilege of meeting herself. Blankets thrust off her quickly replaced by layers of weighty fabrics draped over hoops and undergarments. It was enough to bring her to her knees if not for the sudden alarming pain of a corset forcing her upright.

It was laced too tightly. Pulled by the strings until her ribs began to bend. Waistline more narrow than any other thanks to the malleability of her naturally flexible bones. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She would scream for an escape if only she could muster the air in her lungs.

Dinner proceeded. She was praised for her quiet, beautiful presence.

----

So maybe happily ever after was closer to a nightmare than a dream. The unbearable heat trapped within her skin and the force it took to gain a small gasp of air through warped ribs was wearing on her. She knew it wouldn’t be long before she slipped out of consciousness once more. Knew in her bones it would be her last time awake.

“My lady is this as you would like?” Her attendee asked with sorrowful thoughts concealed only by duty.

“Yes. Yes this is lovely, thank you.”

Far from perfect. But with the night sky laying stars across her hair, hills for miles displaying flowers of every kind, and an attendee whose care for her softened every ache, it wasn’t the worst way to go.