Aqua: The Pufferfish & The Prince
Description
Aqua, a former mermaid, washes up on a beach, stripped of her ocean identity and forced to adapt to a world she doesn't fit into. As she tries to rebuild her life at Bryn's family resort, she faces cruel taunts from Kieran, who constantly mocks her for her size and the secrets she hides. But as Aqua grows closer to Finn, a kind resort worker, she struggles with her feelings for Kieran, whose cruel remarks hide a deeper, confusing attraction. When her true identity is exposed, Aqua must confront the reality of her past and the consequences of choosing a life on land, while fighting the pull of the ocean that threatens to pull her back to the world she left behind.
Chapter 1
Jun 19, 2025
“Where am I?”
The question floats in my mind before I’m fully awake, like a whisper caught between waves. Everything is sore. My skin burns with salt and sand, my throat raw from choking on something too dry, too sharp. I blink against the light, but the world above me spins, smudged with gray clouds and dying thunder. The storm is leaving, but it’s taken something with it.
I’m lying on a beach, that much I can tell. My fingers sink into wet sand, trembling. My lungs rattle in my chest—tight, unfamiliar. My body is… wrong. Heavy, slow, like it’s been rewired overnight. I reach instinctively for my neck, for something I know should be there. Gills. But all I find is smooth skin. Human skin. My breath catches, my chest tightening. I’m not supposed to be like this.
I try to sit up, but my muscles won’t cooperate. My legs are numb, long, pale things that feel like they belong to someone else. I stare at them, confused. Two legs. Not a tail. My body is draped in seaweed, tangled and cold, barely covering anything. My top is ripped and soaked, clinging in all the wrong places, pulling tight over the curves I was always told were too much. I tug the seaweed off with shaking fingers, trying to hide, but it doesn’t matter. I feel exposed, like the tide spat me out just to be laughed at again.
I don’t know my name. I don’t remember who I was. Not really. But I remember the word.
“Pufferfish.”
It slaps through my skull like a slap across the face. That word, sharp and sing-song, spat out with fake smiles and glittery laughter. Faces blur in my mind—perfect, slim, shining girls with tails like silk ribbons. They moved like poetry. I was never like them. I was the punchline. The background. The joke.
Pufferfish.
Too fat. Too slow. Too clumsy.
“Why don’t you float away, Pufferfish?”
“Try not to get stuck in the coral again.”
Their laughter was always louder underwater. Louder and colder.
Even in whatever world I came from, I was an outsider. Always too big. Always in the way. I remember their eyes—wide and pitying when they weren’t laughing. Like they couldn’t figure out what I was even doing there. I wasn’t graceful. I wasn’t delicate. I didn’t glide. I bobbed. I bumped into things. I covered up, I sucked in, I tried to take up less space, but it never worked.
They made sure I never forgot.
The word won’t leave me alone.
Pufferfish.
That’s all I am now. A washed-up, nameless lump on a beach, covered in kelp and shame.
I heard footsteps crunch nearby. I panic, trying to curl into myself, but everything aches. I can’t move fast enough.
“Hey!” a girl’s voice calls out, surprised and gentle. “Oh my god—are you okay?”
She kneels beside me. I blink up at her, dazed. She looks like she stepped out of a beach ad—freckled shoulders, sun-streaked curls tied back in a scarf, white linen romper spotless and flowing. Her skin glows with health, her frame all long limbs and confidence. She doesn’t look like someone who’s ever been called names. She doesn’t look like someone who’s ever felt wrong.
She looks at me with wide green eyes, not recoiling at the mess I must be.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
I open my mouth, but it stays empty. My voice shrivels up before I can speak. I shake my head.
“That’s okay,” she says softly. “I’m Bryn.”
She shrugs off a big hoodie from around her waist and wraps it around me without hesitation. It swallows me whole. For a moment, I just sit there, clinging to the fabric like it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
She doesn’t ask what happened. Doesn’t push. Just stays beside me like I’m worth the space I take up.
I hate that.
I hate how kind she is.
Because the part of me that remembers—really remembers—knows I’m not supposed to be treated this way. Kindness feels like a lie. Like a trick. Like something I’ll pay for later.
I look away, toward the ocean, but even that feels distant. It used to feel like home. Maybe. But now it’s just noise. A place that threw me out.
I pull Bryn’s hoodie tighter around me, my voice barely above a whisper. “I’m fine. Just need a minute.”
But inside, I’m screaming.
“I’m not fine. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what happened. All I know is I’m not from this land. I used to be a mermaid. A mermaid who knows too much about humans. But how I ended up naked on the shore with human feet tells me something forced me out of the ocean.”
The waves keep crashing like they don’t care. And maybe they don’t. Maybe the world’s better off without me knowing who I was.
Because if all I ever was… was the fat one…
Then maybe forgetting is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Aqua: The Pufferfish & The Prince
30 Chapters
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