Sea foam wraps itself around the man’s ankles and seaweed drags over the sand, tickling his skin with their salted arms. It’s the first time he’s visited the ocean in a long time and he is suddenly unsure of what has kept him away for so long. Tonight, the waves are calm—at least, as calm as waves can be.
“Daddy!” A shrill laugh captures his attention, breaking him from his daydream. Turning, he sees his daughter running across the sand towards him, her little legs taking uneven steps as she sinks into the sand. A soft smile spreads across his lips at the sight of her. The wind carries her hair across her face. The resemblance she held to her mother was striking, especially when she smiled.
He kneels next to his daughter when she reaches him. She shrieks happily again as the salt water rushes forward and envelopes her little feet in the stinging cold.
“Maybe we’ll see a mermaid today, Daddy!”
She always used to speak of how she wished she could meet a mermaid. She would swim through the salt-water, golden hair trailing behind her like strands of silk, and pretend that she herself was one.
“What colour mermaid would you want to be, Tessa?”
“Red!” Tessa cries without hesitation. She then purses her lips thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. “But if I became a mermaid, you and Mommy would come with me, right? Mommy would be yellow, and you could be green.”
Tessa runs in a circle, moving her arms in front of her as though she is already swimming through the ocean.
He rubs his eyes and she appears in front of him. Something stirs uneasily inside him, but he pushes it aside. “Do you know how mermaids get their colour, Tessa?”
Tessa immediately stops spinning, but her long blonde hair continues its way around and swings over her shoulder. Her eyes are alight with familiar curiosity when she faces her father, anxiously awaiting an explanation.
“Well,” he starts in a low voice, the same that he always used to use when telling her stories. He loved to watch the suspense build in her face when he began. “Every time a rainbow fades over the ocean, each colour drips into the water. They sink and sink, until finally they each find a little baby mermaid with silvery-white scales. When the little drops touch them, their scales are painted with colour. So even though the rainbow is gone, its colours will live on forever in the ocean.”
Tessa’s face is serious as she listens adamantly, absorbing every word with genuine interest. “So they don’t get to choose what colour they are?” Her voice is quiet as she considers the story.
