The icefield was smaller than she’d pictured, a white plate under a knife-cold sky. Even after combing it, the mermaid mother couldn’t find her child.

Worry pricked like needles. “Strange… where did she run off to?”

She shut her eyes, a seashell closing, and tried to hunt by sound for her child.

The icefield held no trace of other life, a desert of white; only the howling wind and waves thudding against ice spoke.

A quiver of hope rose like a spark. No… there was something else—ah, found it.

From the northeast came a faint breath, a flicker like a sleeping fawn. If she guessed right, it was a child. Barefoot, she ran across the iron-cold snow.

“Cold, cold, cold”—her words steamed like fog. She hugged her shivering frame. Even with magic, her feet blushed red with frost. “Why is it so far?”

Anxiety pooled like ice water. Without noticing, she’d wandered into the deep snow, where the air bit. “Is something wrong?”

She clenched her resolve like a torch. “No, faster… If I feel this cold, Dreamsound won’t stand it. I have to hurry.”

She pushed toward the heart of the snowfield, each step deeper into a freezer-blue bowl; the cold sharpened. Unnoticed, her hair had frozen into brittle ice.

Her breath trembled like frost smoke. “So cold… but close, right?” She swallowed and quickened her pace.

At last, she reached the source, a hush like a buried spring; a child lay there. But not Dreamsound.

Disappointment dulled her like a gray cloud. She turned to leave, then winced—abandoning an unknown child on the ice was too cruel. She bent and gathered the girl up like a fallen feather.

Cold bit like a blade. The instant her skin touched the girl, her blood felt frozen, her body locked stiff, her mind blurring like a fogged pane. Then, sudden as sunrise, she eased back to normal. The wind lost its teeth, and the white field shed its bite.

Fear fluttered under her eyelids like moths. “Am I freezing to death?” She’d heard merfolk get a last flare of warmth before the end, a false dawn of heat. Was this it?

She tested her senses like pebbles in hand. Her eyes still felt icy, her thoughts clear; it didn’t feel like a final blaze. Had she grown resistant to cold?

No—not that.

When she lifted the child, the snow around them began to melt, a white island sinking into spring. The knife-wind softened into warm breath. The world was vanishing fast.

“Yipe?!” The ice under her feet liquefied like glass to water. She lost balance and splashed into the sea.

For a mermaid, the sea is a cradle, not a hazard; but for a human, deep water can be ruin.

She thrashed up to the surface, foam like torn lace around her, and peered at the small… girl in her arms?

The child had no clear sex traits; cute face, body untouched by growth—impossible to tell. She felt like a doll carved from sky.

She sighed, a bubble rising. “Well… she looks like a girl on the outside, so let’s call her a girl.”

In the scramble, she’d missed details. Now she saw the child breathed fine in air and water, like a reed flexing in both breeze and tide. It felt wrong to test, but she dipped the child under anyway.

Wonder lifted like dawn. “Mm… she really can breathe underwater. So she’s not human, right? Could she be merfolk too?”

She checked with care, hands gentle as seaweed. Merfolk in human form keep traces—scales, marks, the tide’s memory. This child was smooth as a doll, no mer-sign at all.

She let the worry drift like foam. “Fine—if she can live in the sea, the next steps get easier.” She glanced around: the ice sheet was gone, the ocean open. Ten to one, the frozen plain had been this child’s doing.

“Keep searching for Dreamsound… and for this child’s mother,” she vowed, like a compass pointing home.

She spent the afternoon like a gull chasing horizon, yet found no Dreamsound. The child’s family was no less a blank.

A whimper rose like a tide. “Dreamsound, where are you…” She slumped against a rock and stroked the child in her arms.

Like her, the girl’s hair was blue—a deeper ocean shade than her own pale surf.

Beep—

She answered with a jolt like lightning. “Hello…? Huh? Dreamsound, why haven’t I gone back? Dreamsound… what?! Dreamsound’s at home?”

Silence fell like a dropped net. She’d gotten lost and wandered into strange waters; Dreamsound had stayed put, then went home for dinner when Mom didn’t return.

The mother had no sense of direction, a compass gone astray. The daughter did.

She rubbed her temple, clouds drifting inside. “So… how do I get back?”

Near midnight, after hours of circling like a lost gull, the mermaid mother finally swam home. With no trace of the child’s kin, she’d take her in for now.

Come to think of it, she was a mermaid princess…

Guilt pooled like ink. “Ugh, coming home this late—Mother’s going to kill me.”

Her parents cared like warm currents. They scolded, sure, but worried more about her safety. By around midnight, she slipped back into her room.

The mermaid princess’s name was Yaya—her. Life had been kind: she found someone she loved early and had a sweet daughter. She wasn’t heir to the throne, so politics didn’t nip at her heels. Her parents were healthy, and her elder sister doted on her; in the palace, she was everyone’s favorite pearl. Of course, it’d be better if she didn’t wander off and stir trouble.

Late at night, Dreamsound already slept, a little under five, out cold the moment she touched the bed after a day of play. Yaya couldn’t sleep at all. Her nerves had been taut as a bowstring all day; she got home only to be scolded, and she’d picked up a child to care for besides.

Yaya warmed a cup of milk again, resignation curling like steam. She just hoped the child would wake soon, not only when she finally nodded off.

…

Maybe Heaven heard Yaya’s whisper; the little one actually woke.

…?

Relief bloomed like dawn. “Ah… you really woke up! Don’t be scared, little one. I saw you lying alone on the ice and worried for you, so I brought you back. Do you know where your family is? I’ll take you to them in the morning.”

She’d dealt with kids before, yet before this one she flustered like a leaf in wind. Those pale blue eyes were prettier than her own, and for a dizzy beat she half-believed the child was a long-lost sister.

But Yaya had asked her parents; she had no extra sister.

?

Silence stacked between them like bricks. After nearly ten minutes of empty staring, Yaya realized the child probably didn’t understand a word she said.