This story, like many others before it, is a fairytale. It speaks of magic and sorcerers, mermaids and animals that talk. It speaks of power, of fear, of adventure and the emotional turmoil of a young man. But most of all, it speaks of love.

Let me tell you beforehand, then, that, like most fairytales, this one will have a happy ending. There will be a prince that falls in love, and a wedding, and a happily ever after with a ‘dot dot dot’ that results in a part two where a child is born. But let’s not rush to the end; all of that will come in its due time.

No, this story begins, not with a princess, not even with a prince, but with a merman.

---

You see, deep in the ocean, way deep—deeper than you’ve ever dared to go before, unless you’re in marine biology research and take frequent trips on submarines—beneath the shallow water, down where the sun barely even reaches the tips of the corals, there is a kingdom, hidden from the human world, with castles made out of gold and lights that shimmer from pearls. It is a dark world; mysterious, forbidden, mystical.

There had always been stories about mermaids, of course. Legends, passed on from sailor to sailor as they navigated the treacherous waves of the oceans, glimpses of scales that flipped over the surface before they were hidden under the water again. Some said that there were merpeople living all around the world, concealed in the depths of the ocean, some said it was gibberish; many claimed that the sailors had gone insane during the voyages.

There were a couple of men—there’s always a couple—that knew what they had seen. Whose eyes had met those of a person; a girl, sometimes a boy, peering at them over the surface.

Those who knew what they were talking about never spoke of it. Those who never spoke of it knew about it.

Even so, there had never been an acceptance of the reality of merpeople in the human world, no matter what a soldier said, or a captain said, and no matter how many sketches there were made of people claiming to have seen a fish’s tail attached to a maiden’s body over a rock near the beach. At least, not until the prince was rescued by one.

But we can’t talk about the prince just yet. After all, our main character hasn’t even met him yet.

Let’s rewind back to the underwater kingdom. Like I was saying, even though humans were blind to the existence of merpeople, they were real. Very real, flesh and blood, and living in the deepest parts of the ocean. There were several kingdoms, of course, scattered all across the globe, but the one where our story is set reigns over the merpeople of the Atlantic Ocean.

This kingdom was ruled by King Burton; successor of the late King Triton, named this way after the far ancestor son of Poseidon, and father to six children, the names of which are not important, because our main character is the youngest son of King Burton—Kurt.

---

“Are you crazy?” Finn yelped, swimming over, his tail flicking from side to side erratically as he struggled to catch up—let me just take a moment to say that Finn is a fish. Kurt’s best friend and the most loyal companion he could’ve asked for, but a fish all the same.

Kurt only laughed over his shoulder, dipping under the corroded bar of steel forming a small part of the large shipwreck that they were at. “Don’t be such a coward!” he called back, reaching up to hold onto the top of a doorway and peered in. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Finn? I think this is one of the largest we’ve been at so far,” he whispered, in awe, taking in the inside of the dark ship.

Finn was at his shoulder immediately, panting a little and looking around. He could see him trembling, his fins brushing against Kurt’s pale skin. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Finn muttered to himself, and the sea prince rolled his eyes.

“You worry too much.”

“Kurt, wait--!” But Kurt was already under the doorway and swimming into the ship, his long navy tail swishing elegantly behind him as he started to explore the contents.

See, Kurt had always been different than the rest of his siblings and father—than the rest of the merpeople, if we’re being accurate, actually. Though the entire population of mermen in the ocean were perfectly content with the way that they lived, Kurt had always been… unsatisfied with it. The first time he’d been to the surface was when he was thirteen, and it had been an accident, really.

He had never seen the sunlight before, and one time, while he was playing hide and seek with Finn, he’d started swimming upwards, forgetting for a moment all of the warnings his parents had given him of going up—it was the forbidden direction—and saw a bright light streaming from ahead that had been almost blinding.

A responsible child that obeyed his father’s every order would have immediately realized where he was going, and turned back aground, but Kurt had the curse of curiosity. The same which was said to have killed the cat, and King Burton would swear it upon himself that it was one day going to kill his son.

Kurt had broken surface with a splash, and the roaring of the ocean as heard from the air had startled him, made him flop around for a while before ducking under the water again, looking up curiously at the ripples above that he now knew held something… different.

Air.

Finn had caught up with him by then, and was tugging on his tail, begging him to go back to the castle, but Kurt had had a taste of something foreign, and sweet, and refreshing and with bright eyes, he’d surfaced again, and stayed up.

It had been his first real taste of air, and by far the last one.

Over five years, Kurt had become somewhat obsessed with the world outside the water; the human world. He met Artie, the seagull, while he was exploring one of the large rocks that broke outside the surface, and Artie had filled his head with stories about humans, and how they walked, and ran, and danced. There were books, of course, back in the library at home, that Kurt had pursued from that moment on, learning everything he could about humans, tracing the shape of their feet with his fingers and wondered what it would be like to step instead of swim.

He was in love with the idea of humanity, and held onto it with every fiber of his being, because if he didn’t, he thought he’d go insane under the sea.

---

Exploring the shipwreck miles away from the castle turned out not to be such a good idea, and Finn nearly had a heart attack when a shark appeared out of nowhere and tried to eat them. Kurt was a fast swimmer, thankfully, and they managed to get out relatively unscathed—Kurt’s shoulder was scraped and oozed a little blood—and lost the shark after swimming and swimming away.

“Look at the up side,” Kurt told Finn, as they swam towards the surface, a little breathless from the exercise. “We got this.” He held out the couple of human objects to him with a wicked smile.

Finn didn’t see how that was a sufficient enough ‘up side’ to almost being eaten to death, but he kept quiet and followed his friend until they reached the surface, and swam out.

Artie was, as usual, lounging about on his rock, nestled among twigs and what Kurt now knew was rope. “Hey, Artie!” he called out, lifting his arm over his head and waved at him.

The seagull flailed about for a moment before toppling off over the edge onto a lower part of the rock, clearly having just been woken by a rude yell of his name, and hopped onto the edge on his good leg. “Holla, Kurt,” he greeted him, squinting down at the items he was carrying. “What’cha got there?”

“I don’t know!” he breathed out excitedly, floating over in front of the rock and placing the silver object and a wooden one with a hole in it next to it. “I thought you could tell me.”

“Let me see…” Artie said, grabbing onto the silver one with his wing and lifting it up to eye level, frowning at it before nodding. “Ah, yes! This is—a dinglehopper,” he announced proudly, lifting the object up to his head and twirling it around in the feathers until they twisted around his head, and pulled it out. “Humans use it to comb their hair!”

“Dinglehopper,” Kurt whispered to himself in awe, smiling as he picked up the object and watched it. Kurt had never had to comb his hair. Under the water, his hair was smooth and flopped back over his forehead the way he liked it all the time. There was no need to untangle anything.

“And this—oh, this makes music!”

The rest of what Artie was saying about the wooden object was lost to Kurt’s ears, because he had gasped and brought a hand up to his own mouth at the mention of music. “Oh, god!” he cried out. “The concert! I have to go!”

---

Needless to say, King Burton was not happy.

It was tradition within the merpeople that the prince and princesses of the castle were presented to the rest of society with a large, elaborate ceremony that consisted of a concert and a ball, so that they could get a chance to interact with the other mermaids and mermen at court.

Kurt was the last of his children, and thus would be the last to get a ceremony to present him to the rest of the kingdom. Kurt worried him, sometimes. He was a good son, loving, caring, and worried about his health ever since he had had a minor heart attack a couple of years ago. But he worried about Kurt not being able to take care of himself.

This would be the day, though, he was sure of that. Kurt would be presented to the other mermen, and he would find someone he could fall in love with, and be safe in the castle.

Not that he thought any of the other mermen were good enough for his boy, but at some point, he figured, he would have to give in, like he had with his eldest daughters who had already gotten married.

All in all, today was a good day. Kurt had the most beautiful voice out of all of his children—he didn’t like to have any preferences, but it was a fact that he did—and he was going to sing for all of them today. Oh, and the concert was organized by the most talented conductor of them all—Rachel Berry.

Rachel was not only the best conductor, but the vocal teacher that had instructed his children as they grew up, and the most dedicated, responsible, and driven crab of them all. She would make sure Kurt’s ceremony was perfect.

King Burton hadn’t ever imagined that Kurt wouldn’t even show up.

And when he did, two hours later, after he had had to regretfully send everybody home, his patience had drawn its limit.

“May I know where in the ocean have you been, young man?” he bellowed, startling Rachel, who scrambled on the edge of his throne, fuming. If it was possible, she was angrier than he was.

“Dad, I’m so sorry!” Kurt begged, swimming up in front of him and hanging his head in shame. “I completely forgot, I was—my mind was somewhere else, and I—“

“Damn right it was!” Rachel yelled from beside his throne angrily. “Do you have any idea what this has done to my career? I’m now the laughingstock of the entire kingdom!”

Kurt looked miserable. “Rachel, I’m sorry,” he insisted, wringing his hands in front of him as Finn swam around nervously next to him. “It wasn’t his fault, sir!” Finn piped up, and Kurt made a motion to shush him, but, as usual, he didn’t even notice.

“We were exploring around and then—a shark and—he was all ‘rawr!’ and we were all ‘argh!’ and then we—he—and then we went up to the surface and—“

Kurt winced visibly at that and resisted the urge to slap his palm up to his face in the split second it took for Finn’s words to sink into his father’s mind.

“You did WHAT!?”

“Dad, it wasn’t—“

“HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO GO THERE?” King Burton’s voice echoed around the palace, deep and unforgiving as he shot fire from his eyes. “It’s like you don’t understand how dangerous humans are! Kurt, I don’t want to see my youngest son end up skewed on a stick because of your careless behavior!”

“Dad, it’s not like that!” he tried to beg, biting his lower lip. “They’re not—“

“Don’t you dare tell me you know better than I do, Kurt Hummel,” his father said, voice low, and dangerous. “I don’t ever want to hear of you going to the surface again, is that clear?”

Kurt pressed his lips together, gritting his teeth and glared at his dad before turning around and swimming away from him quickly, disappearing off the end of the hall with Finn and leaving the king alone with Rachel, sighing and sinking back into his throne.

“Was I too hard on him?” he mused to the crab, who immediately shook her head. “Not in the least, sir, if I had a child like that, I would make sure he was under constant supervision, you know how teenagers are…” she muttered angrily. “Going about ruining concerts, and what merman in his right mind is going to want him now, with all of that air going through his head and—“

But King Burton had narrowed his eyes, and was watching Rachel without listening to what she was saying. “You’re right,” he said after a while, quietly.

“Of course I’m right, I—”

“He does need constant supervision.”

“He most certainly does—”

“And who’s better for the job than someone who knows him as well as you do?”

“That’s exactly what I—what?” Rachel stopped talking, looking up at the king with wide eyes. “S-sir?” Oh no. No, no, no, he could not be saying…

The king only smiled back at her, reaching over to pat her shell lightly with his hand. “It’s settled then. You are to look over Kurt at all times. Make sure he doesn’t stray too far from the castle, and report back to me with anything out of place that he does.”

Rachel pursed her lips and had to use all of her strength not to say something she was going to regret later if she didn’t want to be saut�ed crab for dinner tonight. “Yes, sir,” she nodded instead, and scrambled off.

---

Kurt was singing when Rachel followed him into a cave of sorts that she was almost a hundred percent sure his father did not know about. The boy always sang. It made bitterness rile up in her throat at the reminder that he had ditched the concert. Kurt hadn’t even shown up for most of the rehearsals, but his voice remained flawless. It was enviable, really.

As it was, Rachel was so distracted by Kurt’s singing about walking and running and people that she hadn’t yet noticed what was in the cave they were at. A grotto of sorts, actually. And—“Argh!”

She toppled over the edge of the rock at the sight of herself magnified through a glass ball, and fell onto the sandy floor with about ten things on top of her.

“Rachel!” Kurt’s voice rang out, and he swam over to her, frowning and picking up a box off her head. “What are you doing here? Did father send you?”

“May I ask,” she replied, irked, shrugging off some sort of necklace. “WHAT. THIS. IS?”

Kurt reached out to cover her mouth with his hand, looking around. “Ssh,” he hissed, frowning over at him, Finn hovering over his shoulder. “Oh, promise me you won’t give me away, Rach. Please? My dad can’t know about this.”

Of course Rachel wouldn’t have admitted it to herself in over a thousand years, but in reality, she was a softie on the inside, and it didn’t take long for Kurt to convince her not to tell his father rightaway.

And I’m going to cut into the way that Rachel started ranting about the dangers of having human objects hidden somewhere to let you know that this is where the interesting part begins. It begins with a shadow that fell over the top of the grotto, and the way that Kurt quirked an eyebrow in curiosity and went up to follow it.

It begins, again, with Kurt breaking the rules, and moving up to the surface, where a ship is sailing overhead, with a prince on it.