Mermaid Home, remote dream by John
My girlfriend was helping me settle into her mermaid home. Beautifully vivid colors for all of this, sun-filtering through the kelp from above, and our home made of kelp woven airtight about air bubbles, creating rooms that ranged in size and dryness. She did a morning ritual that involved swimming in fast arcs in tight spirals around the kelp, and that woke up all the fish that weren’t nocturnal. She was teaching me which fish were OK to eat; I had to ask their names first, and any named Frank were OK to eat because they were both tasty and predators themselves.
I nearly ate one of her friends, an angelfish named Liza, who facetiously told me her name was Frank, then made hilarious squeaky fish noises when I grabbed her. My girlfriend chided her, saying, he’s a big guy and he gets hungry…you don’t want to fuck around with that. Liza’s eyes got very big and she regarded me solemnly before swimming off with a flourish of her tail.