2009.

 The water was warm. It should have been a good thing, but it felt wrong, for some reason.

 She realized what was wrong the moment her fingers touched the sand under her. They were getting too close. They should have turned back, away from the danger. But they were heading straight for it. Their parents always forbade them from getting that far because it was way too dangerous. It would not end well, there was no way anything good could come out of this.

 Sana reached forward and grabbed Momo by the tail to get her attention. It worked, but all Sana got was a stern glare from her friend.

 Momo had always been somewhat rebellious. Always wanting to swim further away from the safety of their pod, to see more of the world. The elders and Momo's parents thought it was mere curiosity, but Sana knew that Momo just wanted to rebel, without thinking much about potential consequences. Mina's parents knew though, and it was the reason why their younger friend wasn't allowed to swim with them anymore if no adult was around.

 Every mermaid in their pod knew that Momo would get them in too much trouble one day. Many of their friends were certain that Momo and her would be found out by humans and killed before mating age.

 For the first time since she had started to swim north of the pod with Momo, Sana was scared.

 She could feel them now, the humans. Too close. Their movements in the water, their musky smell spreading through the water. Momo had promised her the best food she would have in her whole life, but there was no fish around, just humans.

 Momo tilted her head to signal for Sana to keep swimming.

 Sana shook her head and bared her teeth. She refused to get closer to the humans. They were too close already, breaking all the rules and the laws of their people. Momo had probably expected Sana's curiosity and desire to know more about humans to make her follow without questioning, but Sana was decided not to get even one scale closer to the human beach.

 She watched Momo swim away. But the waters were getting so shallow that she couldn't go too far away from Sana. Maybe it would be enough to convince her to turn back.

 To her great surprise, Momo settled down on the sand. It was odd. 

 Sana didn't understand what her friend was trying to do until she heard her song.

 Oh no. Bad. Very bad. 

 Unlike herself, Momo already knew how to sing, how to attract small preys; she was quite good at it already, and the elders believed she would make a good hunter if she just stopped being too adventurous. Did Momo want to hunt a human? It was forbidden. They would both get cast out if Momo preyed on humans.

 Sana wanted to warn Momo, to tell her to stop, to just grab her arm and force her away. But she couldn't move. She was too scared. A human was approaching Momo already. Small human. A child that wasn't much smaller than their own human bodies were.

 Human children were known for being easy preys. Sana knew that a few males from their pod had gotten away with dragging human children to the deep waters. But she refused to think that her best friend would be like them. Even if singing to humans was more dangerous, as it brought forth more predatory instincts than singing for small sharks did, Momo had always been too good with her song to let it take over. Momo had never lost control. Sana was certain that she wouldn't go too far.

 The human was getting too close, though. And Momo was still singing.

 Just a few more steps and the child would be within Momo's reach. 

 Momo started to rise up, head peeking out from the water.

 No.

 Sana needed to do something.

 Momo was losing it completely. There was only one thing she could do to get her friend's attention away from the human child. She couldn't even be certain that it would work.

 Distress call.

 Sana swam away slowly, letting out a little screech. She sensed Momo shifting and didn't even need to look back to know that she was following her. She sped up her pace, wanting nothing more than to get away from the humans as quickly as possible.

 Momo was getting too close to her. Still affected by her own song. Sana knew that the distress call had made her a prey, but she had hoped Momo would have shaken off the effects of the song already. Stupid song, always getting the worst of their instincts, pushing them to hunt more and more. The others never understood why Sana was thankful that she remained unable to sing even though she should have been mature enough to.

 Sana just was not meant to be a hunter.

 She was a prey.
 

 2010.

 Sana knew that she shouldn't come back so close to the humans. But it has been a year since the incident and she still couldn't stop thinking about the small human that Momo had almost killed. She was too curious not to come back and see if there were still humans coming to those waters.

 Sana had little knowledge of land people – for all the she knew, they could migrate regularly and the child would never come back to that beach again, or maybe they would be too scared to step in the water after what had happened with Momo. Humans were fragile creatures.

 When she felt sand under her fingertips, she slowed the movements of her tail so that she could lie on the sand. She needed to stay away from the surface, even if the algae felt gross against her skin. Stupid algae. Sana had never liked that feeling, and humans brought a different texture to the algae, a different smell that made her want to go back to the pod, to rest on a rock in a grotto.

 Her grip on the small object that she had found, when she came back to the beach the first time, tightened. The day after the incident. Sana was sure it belonged to the child. She could sense it. A small shell like Sana had seen thousands of, attached to a string of a material she couldn't identify. They were a few other things on the string, but Sana had no idea what they were. Mina and her and spent hours trying to figure out its function, only to guess that it was some sort of ornament; their people liked to wear shells and bones around their necks, so why not humans too.

 The waters were dark, as the moon was high in the sky. But Sana didn't need to see to know that there was no human around. Humans were not nocturnal creatures, Sana knew that. But she hadn't been able to escape the pod's scrutiny early enough to get to the beach while the sun was still up.

 How disappointing.

 She shouldn't have wanted to give back the little ornament to the human youngling. Her people and humans didn't mix well together, and what had happened with Momo was a perfect example of why. But Sana wasn't Momo. She wanted to find the little human, to explain that Momo had merely lost control and was not cruel, and to give them back what they had lost – Momo had told her that she had only wanted to play a little and scare the human, not to kill, it had just been a mistake.

 She needed to go back before the wrong people realized she had disappeared again. She didn't want to get punished again. Being forced to take her human form and forbidden to access water was bad. Shedding the tail was alright, but being unable to feed, and all the pain that rushed through her body the moment she hit wa