Life on the island could get so boring at times. Having everyone at your beck and call can get old. I just wanted excitement. An adventure. The most exciting thing I had was my music. After all my daily, not to mention trivial, royal duties, I would just sit and play my piano for hours. It was my only escape from the world of balls, banquets and insipidity. Unfortunately, my father didn’t approve. “Princesses should be entertaining potential suitors and looking pretty, not getting all passionate and spirited. That’s not what princes are looking for, darling.” Well, that suited me just fine, since princes were certainly not what I was looking for.
    One day though, all the dull, menial, obsequious proceedings of the day were, well, not replaced, but joined by one slightly less dull, menial and obsequious. I made a friend. I was walking along the beach when I heard some beautiful music off the shore. After a little searching, I found a young lady who looked to be around my age. She was in the water. A strange creature, she looked to be perfectly happy there. Another strange thing was that she wasn’t properly dressed. Sitting there in the sea, barely decent, staring at me with conflicting confusion and awe, and singing. Strange. Not wanting to ruin my dress, I called to her, beckoned her over. She simply stared. I thought that perhaps she had come from a distant land (it would explain the abnormality at least), and couldn’t understand me, until she spoke.
    “No,”. No. Not a word I was entirely familiar with. “What do you mean, ‘no,’ surely you know who I am?” I enquired of her, a little arrogantly I’ll admit. “I’m afraid I do not, sorry.” she replied nonchalantly. I was very little short of outraged. “Oh, and I suppose you’re simply too important to know who’s ruling over you then?  Above royalty, are you?” I asked indignantly. “Not above it, no.” She twittered, somewhat knowingly. “And whatever could that possibly mean?” I snapped. “It means that I am the Princess of the Seas.” she announced. “Princess of the Seas? What kind of idiocy is that?” I scoffed, amused. That was when she climbed out of the water. I say ‘climbed’, because that’s really what it was. She pulled herself onto the rocky shore with her arms, and sat there as if this very act answered my question.
    It didn’t. It did shock me, however. This curious creature was sitting on my shore, this thing that I had taken to be a completely normal young woman. She was, from the waist up, but she didn’t have any legs. She had the tail of a fish, the brilliant blue scales all glistening in the sunlight. Strange, strange, strange. I must have been some spectacle, standing there beside this bizarre individual with my jaw practically resting on the sand. She simply smiled. I realised then that I wasn’t the single most important person in the world. I was just a princess. If what this varmint said was true, then I wasn’t even the only princess in the vicinity of my island. For all I now knew, there could be princesses of the sky, princesses of the underground, princesses of the princesses!
    I sat down to collect myself, and there I stayed for the remainder of that day, and returned to for days and days after that to talk to Aidena, the Mermaid.
    One day, months later, when we had formed a kind of friendship, I was sitting in my room at my piano, as I do, and she was away under the sea doing whatever it was that she did. I was staring at the crashing waves and the velvet sand, thinking of the world of mermaids and other creatures that I could not begin to imagine, and playing what may just have been the most beautiful song ever to be played. The creatures of the land all seemed to fall into this mesmerising lullaby as they went about their tasks with more grace than I had ever seen a dancer display.
    I was almost unaware of my own fingers gliding across the keys, producing this hypnotic sound, until, through my window, I saw a ship dock and was brought back to reality. The captain hopped off the boat and looked around with an expression of utter bewilderment. When I looked at him, it felt as though I had a splinter in my heart. This was truly love at first sight. I fixed my hair and ran, in a completely ladylike fashion, out onto the beach. I cast my eyes along the shore but he was nowhere to be seen. I decided to take a stroll to the tree at which I used to meet Aidena, to tell her about my new found love, but when I got there, I realised that I wouldn’t have to.
    There he was. More to the point though, there she was, flapping her tail and flipping her hair like her life depended on it. The Captain soaking it all up. I marched over, less than elegantly I’d imagine, and introduced myself. He stood up and bowed of course, and little Flipper with her sparkly tail and otherworldly beauty didn’t like that one bit. I asked if he had come on official business, and promised him an audience with the king if that’s what he’d like, but he said no.
    He had only come because he had heard what he described as an angel’s song. Music, the likes of which he had never dreamed. He said he had left his boat with the intention of marrying the one responsible for such a song. I smiled my royal smile and told him that it was my piano that he had heard, playing the modesty card all the while. Bubbles snapped. “That was my song he heard! I was the one singing!” she spluttered. I simply laughed. How could she possibly think a man like him would stop his ship because of her? It was quite hilarious. What could she possibly sing? Once I Caught a Fish Alive? “Oh, how am I to know which of you are telling the truth?” He asked, with the most confused expression. Idiot. “Perhaps you could listen to us both and decide which of us to take as your wife?” Obviously. And so it began.
    She was to sing first, and then we were to go to the music room to hear me play. She sang her song, and , I must admit, it was quite beautiful. The Captain thought so too. “That was amazing, and you have one of the best voices I have ever heard, but that’s not my song. It was beautiful, but it’s missing something.” My heart leapt. This meant that it had to be me. We strolled over to the music room, with Aidena in the water outside the window, and I began to play. I tried to play the song I had been playing when his ship docked, but the magic wasn’t there anymore. To me he said almost the same “You have amazing skill and talent, but that’s not quite the song I heard. It was quite beautiful though, you just seem to be missing something.” I felt utterly dejected.
    I thanked him anyway, and graciously offered that he stay for dinner and set sail in the morning, which, to my delight, he accepted. Not wanting to appear bitter, I suggested that the two of us eat on the beach so that Aidena could join us. After he had gone to bed, I was talking to the mermaid from my balcony, apologising for my bitterness earlier. We were both complimenting each other on our music, and so I began to play my song again, as she sang hers. The two fitted perfectly. It was magical. Hypnotic.
    The Captain burst into my room. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s the song.” I smiled at the irony. We had both been in competition, when really it was only by uniting that we could recreate our wonderful music. There was still a problem though. He couldn’t marry both of us. It was Aidena that came up with the solution. Being a wanderer of the sea, she knew of a beautiful uninhabited island not far away. It was decided that the three of us would live there together until he decided that he’d like to marry one of us, and in the meantime, we could make beautiful music.