Character: VIOLET BARDISA-NICKERSON, a girl assigned male at birth, 12 going on 15, mixed ethnicity.
VI: Thank you for watching my entry in The Mermaid Hour “Be Your Own Merperson” Video Challenge. Please like, comment, and share. A lot.
(She finds her inner light. And begins.) I am a mermaid. My name is Violet.
Most people don’t know that there’s a magic time, a little blue window, when mermaids can be anything they want. Not part fish and part human, but all at once themselves: tail strong enough to walk on, lungs able to hold air and water.
When a mermaid is under the sea, she is all fish, swimming like the others, water flowing through her. But she thinks: I am not fish. I want to breathe the way the mortal humans do. When a mermaid is on land, she must give up her tail and take on legs, wobble along until it feels ok, and breathe only air, like mortals. But then she thinks: I am not mortal either.
She is happiest in the mermaid hour, the time you see her on the rock, beautiful fins sweeping across stone, her chest rising and falling with fresh air in full lungs. It’s only there, where air and ocean meet, that she’s everything she wants to be. No one needs her to have legs, no one wonders at the smoothness of her perfect tail.
When you see her sitting on a rock in the mermaid hour, she isn’t waiting for a prince to come and make her human. She’s singing a song for the sailor who will see magic in how she looks at sunset.
I am a mermaid and I have I found a sailor who sees my magic. He loves the sea like he’s supposed to love the land so he knows about being caught between “should be” and “is.” He saw me in the mermaid hour and said I was beautiful. When we are together, in mermaid light, atop my rock, free from land or sea, fish or mortal, we are beautiful. You can be beautiful! You can be the mermaid!
Thank you for watching my movie.
(She reaches forward about to hit pause but impulse seizes her, and she adds one more line.) I LOVE YOU JACOB ENDO!
