The journey had been a difficult one for Coraline. It was many leagues distance over both sea and land from Ansa`fel to her home city, and being heavy with child did not make that distance seem any shorter. She had left without a word to anyone, not even to Rhodan. It didn’t matter. She knew the wizard might wonder for a moment at her absence, but would soon be distracted by some more weighty matter that would quickly drive her from his mind. It was his way. Her only real consideration as she started out was to deliver safely the precious cargo which she carried, to her childhood home and her parents there.
She finally arrived at her home safely with only a few days to spare. The moon waxed full over Ansa`fel on the day she left, and it had waned and grown nearly full again by her arrival. It was under the glowing, fecundating, silver shimmer of that full moon that she gave birth to her beautiful, healthy, elven girl. She named the girl, Rowan, a name she had chosen soon after she realized she was with child. The gender of the child wouldn’t matter, she thought, “Rowan, would be a fine name.”
After a respite at her home, and seeing that her darling Rowan was well settled in the care of her parents, she began her long journey back to Ansa`fel. It was on the sea leg of that journey that something strange began to happen to her. She first noticed the change when she was washing herself with seawater. She began to see small, pale bluish, scales appearing on her skin. These scales would appear down the outside of her arms, across her breasts, and on her lower belly and upper pelvis. Other scales that were larger, heavier, and more pronounced would appear on her lower pelvic area, her butt and legs. She observed that this would only occur when she used seawater to wash, which was often as what little freshwater there was aboard the ship was conserved for consumption. She also observed the scales would diminish and disappear as her body dried.
After weeks of observing this phenomenon, and pondering on it in her little shipbound cabin, she decided to try an experiment. Her chance came when the ship took anchorage overnight in a small bay, to take on fresh provisions the next day. Late that night, she crept quietly up to the deck, looking carefully at the watch stationed both fore and aft. They were vigilant and alert, but they were just humans and did not see her naked elven form glide across the deck and climb over the rail. Silently, she climbed down the rope ladder towards a small boat tethered there but, she did not get into the boat. Instead, she slipped quietly into the water of the bay.
It seemed, to her at least, a marvelous thing that happened to her as she floated in the warm seawater. Her legs began to grow together, and soon she had a shiny powerful fin instead of two legs. Her body scales returned with even more density and thickness than they had before then, and she could see their shimmering reflection in the moonlit water. She drew a lusty breath and dove her head down into the water. She found that she could swim powerfully and fast. She swam many leagues out into the sea without tiring or need for air. It was magical, and she wondered if her new aquatic attributes would diminish as she swam back to the ship. Her answer came as she hung on the rope ladder, her body out of the water, allowing the breeze to dry her. She was soon a normal elf again.
“Magic!” she thought as she returned unseen to her cabin. “I have become a mermaid, at least in part. I have a tail in saltwater!” She pondered this, sitting awake on her berth, for the remainder of the night. She always had an affinity for water. This came from her water nymph mother. But, her overwhelming preference was for freshwater streams and pools, saltwater was something completely different. As she sat and considered this, she slowly realized that this was the price of her coupling with a merman and giving birth to their child. If magic is the transforming of nature, and nature must always seek a balance, she was given the attributes of her daughter’s father that were not passed to her daughter. “I wonder what Rhodan will think about this?” she asked aloud to herself.