I spent my days looking up, at the sky and the clouds and the birds—all the things I wanted to experience but never could. It’s completely the same thing as that human story about the ‘grass is always greener’, but for me it’s not just a simple want. It’s a longing that starts at my heart and spreads throughout my body until I want nothing more than for the world to tip upside-down, so I’d fall up and float away and feel the wind on my skin and tail until I died in blissful suffocation.

My parents didn’t understand. They would smile and nod at first, and then shake their heads and mutter to themselves, “She’s turning out like Arial did, you know.” But I was so much different than my ancestor, the beautiful mermaid who turned into sea foam for revealing what she was to a human. While Arial longed for land and love, I wished only for the unbounded beyond that the humans called sky and space.

To compensate for my solitude, I would sit in shallow water and stare up at the stars, those fascinating pinpricks that shimmered and shone, appearing so close, like I could reach my hand up and grab a few to light up the dark sea that was my home. Unfortunately, they were miles and miles and miles away, just like my unrealistic dream of soaring with the birds.

One night, I saw a shooting star. I began to wonder. What if that star was actually a ship, like the ones that sliced through the rough surface of the ocean far above my city? Perhaps the star was similar to those wooden monstrosities, with cloth sails and glass windows and a crude impression of one of my people, the ones humans called mermaids, carved onto the front.

But it could never be like those ugly man-made machines. If the shooting star were a ship, it would be made of the finest stardust, lined with gold and dotted with diamonds to sparkle just like the other stars. It wouldn’t require wind to move, and it wouldn’t get tipped over in a simple storm. No, it would instead stream through the limitless nighttime sky, going everywhere and nowhere, its godly powers shining brightly after twilight and disappearing without a trace come sunrise. But it would always come back, for there would always be untouched places for this star-ship to explore.

Even the fish were silent when I voiced my thoughts.