From the beginning...

The quill long since washed away, you attempt to mark the page with a fingernail. After a few emphatic incisions below 'From the beginning', a current sweeps the book out of your grasp...

You flip your new tail for a few moments expecting some further change wrought by the book's power. But nothing appears to happen. You run your fingers through your hair, staring off into the murky depths. You're sort of afraid that something is out there, watching back. Perhaps you ought to swim on... but to where?

The ocean decides for you: you're hit by an incredible current that shakes you from side to side. Having never experienced life as half a fish before today, you're not able to kick against the current. It gets stronger, shaking your head from side to side. It feels almost like something is gripping you around the waist, trying to shake something loose from your head... thoughts... memories? All smashing against the walls of your skull like a cupboard full of fine china in an earthquake.

...

Suddenly, you find the kick action that has been escaping you. Father wouldn't be proud to see you failing such basic technique... but then daddy wouldn't want his little princess sneaking out of the reef and heading for the surface to see if she could ogle some humans either. Well, what he doesn't know can't hurt him.

You rise swiftly, breaking the surface and breathing the strange, agreeable atmosphere of the surface. In five days, you've been up here six times. You've lost count how many times you've been up here in the three years since turning fifteen, hoping to glimpse again the humans with their strange legs and feet... but you've never seen another ship in all this time. The sea is quiet, the moon hanging in a pitch black sky, but there are no ships.

You sit there treading water for maybe an hour. And then you see it on the horizon... not a ship, but a small one-person boat. You swim manically towards it all the same, reaching it in a minute, gripping the edge, staring to see if anyone is aboard. A shape stirs, fully concealed under a heap of old sail, but he doesn't appear to have noticed you.