“What kind of dreams is everyone having?”
“Happy dreams.”
“Happy…?”
“So they will not try to escape.”
Looking exhausted, Eunha sat on the marble stairs reflecting waves of gold. Cha Yisol followed and sat beside him. Gio was seated only a few steps above them.
Eunha looked at the adult humans submerged in the seawater filling the Pope’s chamber.
“As the years pass, wounds accumulate.”
The world was not as beautiful as a dream.
“I know human nature. When circumstances turn against them, they struggle by any means to resolve the situation. My sister and Teacher called that ‘growth.’ It is an exceedingly vague word to merfolk….”
“Don’t merfolk grow?”
“The species may differ from dimension to dimension, but on my planet, merfolk are born from the sea rather than from inside another creature’s belly. At some point, seawater gathers together and forms the being called a merfolk.”
“Uhhh….”
Cha Yisol poked Eunha’s bare forearm.
“…But you have one?!”
“Of course I do.”
Merfolk, however, were beings of a cycle.
“We are born from the sea and take a form resembling humans. As time passes, we Synchronize more deeply with the sea and enjoy its Authority, until eventually we melt away and disappear. That is the cycle of merfolk.”
It was also the Natural Order of the sea.
“Strictly speaking, I failed to…