Beyond the Seven Kingdoms

Every little mermaid and every little merman that grows up in the blue ocean under the sparkling sun knows that there are seven merpeople kingdoms.

There are the courageous merpeople of the Atlantic Kingdom. Their fins are blue and silver, their magic powerful and ancient like starlight and moonlight.

Their neighbours to the North are the merpeople of the Alaskanta Kingdom. Their fins glow green, purple and yellow like the northern lights above them. Their waters are mysterious, they hold many treasures of the ocean and are filled with beautiful corals and sea plants.

On the other side of the blue planet there is another frozen kingdom inhabited by the merpeople of the Vert Sea. Their fins are green and blue. They receive their magical powers from all the algae and plankton that thrive there. Their magic is great and stormy like the sea they live in.

The biggest of the kingdoms is the Aquorsia Sea. It stretches far to the North, South, East and West and covers a third of the surface of this blue planet. The merpeople of this kingdom have red and purple fins. They are both wise and fearsome warriors, for they have to protect so much of the ocean. It is in this sea where most of the corals thrive, the souls of the ocean.

And next to this large kingdom there is a smaller one. Here the merpeople  sing to the most magical blue and purple corals which have gifted them with fins in their colour. The singing voices here are some of the most beautiful among all merpeople. They have the greatest healing abilities of all kingdoms, as the corals shared their healing powers with them and many merpeople of this kingdom travel wide and far to heal all creatures under sun and moon.

To the West of this Kingdom lays another one where the sun is worshipped above all other celestial lights. Here the merpeople have gained all the knowledge of the world for the sun is their friend and shares their knowledge with them. Their fins shine golden and yellow just like the sun herself.

The smallest of the seven kingdoms which is enclosed on three sides by land is also the strongest. Here the merpeople help grow green corals and algae and in exchange they receive magical powers that are of exceptional might. They are proud and dangerous warriors.

All these kingdoms thrive in the sunlight and the twilight sphere of the ocean which are the uppermost layers of the sea. Deeper down roam dangerous creatures of the dark. Kraken and great fish that are beasts to be feared. And even deeper where only echoes of mystery exist among the merpeople kingdoms live even stranger beings that have never seen the sun, the moon, starlight or the northern lights. Absolute darkness and greatest pressure rules in the deep underwater. All the water could crush everything alive down there, it is a pressing atmosphere, a hostile and cold world. But here in the darkest of places lives an eighth and forgotten kingdom of the merpeople. They are estranged from all the others. There are palaces of black stone with bubbling streams of hot nutritious water. Deep sea water vents are the essence of every life in this coldest of places. And it is not dark entirely, for the merpeople here do not communicate through language. The merpeople here speak to each other through light that glows on their fins. Every light pattern on their scales tells a different story, every colour has a different meaning, every shape is a different word. Their fins, their conversations and storytelling are like diamonds sparkling in the dark, breaking up every colour of the rainbow, creating a billion of words and meanings.

 If a mermaid or a merman of the sunlight sphere would encounter a mermaid of the deep sea they would scream out in fear and swim away. The skin of the deep sea merpeople is pale grey, their sockets where their eyes should be are empty and no beautiful hair grows on their heads. They do not afford the luxury of hair in such a dark world. Strangest is their single black eye that sits above their nose, a third eye socket with which they can see and understand the colour language of another deep sea mermaid or merman. They look stranger and most dangerous, truly alien to the merpeople of the seven kingdoms but just like them they are children of the ocean. They have transformed their deep sea vents into beautiful palaces with deep sea magic. The walls of their palaces are decorated with the scales of their ancestors, sparkling, shining in all colours, telling the life stories of all ancestors of long ago. The palaces are big and beautiful, towers rising within the dark, circulating the hot water of the vents within the palace to make it a comfortable and warm place to live in.

 Never have they experienced famine in their kingdom. They live off all the dead creatures that float down from the twilight sphere into the deep sea. Food is literally raining down on them. And as there is no shortage of food they are the most peaceful merpeople filled with kindness and love. Most of the time they tell each other colourful stories on their otherwise dark fins or help the deep sea corals grow by weaving the hot water from the vents rhythmically around the corals. They are also the most colourful within the ocean. But no one ever gets to see their rainbow branches except for when the glowing fins of the deep sea merpeople shine on them from time to time. For the deep sea merpeople, the corals and their expressional colours are like books that tell stories. Very often the merpeople of the deep sea would swim to the corals that grow just outside or on the palaces and while they are feeding them with the hot nutritious mineral water of the vents, they would read the colours and their shapes of all the coral branches and study the stories of the deep sea corals. Some of the corals are so exceptional and beautifully coloured with not only two or three but seven or eight different shades that the merpeople look at them and understand them as poetry of the natural world.

And this is their life. Unlike the merpeople of the seven kingdoms the sun, moon, starlight and northern lights mean nothing to them. They have created their own lights within them. They are like deep sea comets, swimming through an otherwise black universe.

Although, they know about the seven merpeople kingdoms above, they would not dare travel there. It is dangerous. There are no hot water vents giving them life. Up there it’s brutally bright and there are too many colours to distinguish. It would give them terrible headaches, pain beyond imagination. It would be like a noise of colour, an explosion of colour that could blind their most precious black eye forever.

One time though, there was a brave deep sea mermaid that ventured upwards. Luckily, she swam to the surface during the night and returned to her deep sea vent palace before dawn with the strangest of stories. She told her family and friends about the stars and the moon. She called them glowing sand corns beyond time and space and through their sparkling shining light they told her stories of the most ancient times of the universe and this planet. All of it sounded so alien to her. There were creatures that could fly in the sky above the surface. Other animals, strangest in form, did not even swim but walk over hard surfaces beyond the ocean. There were even places to be found which were hotter than the dangerous deep sea volcanoes and not far from the water vents. It was called fire, brighter than any colour the deep sea merpeople could create or understand on their scales. There were also places that were colder than the darkest deep sea canyon. Far away, there was water that had turned to ice, colder than anything in the deep sea. No, the deep sea merpeople knew, this upper life was too dangerous. They could not imagine living there. What a hostile world!

And then the deep sea mermaid had told them about the moon. The symbols and colours for female, magic, majestic and might appeared on her dark fin and the others began to understand what she meant. What she had described was something greater they had ever known. It was another planet that circled around their own. One that glowed brighter than the fin of the most eloquent deep sea mermaid. This glowing being, the moon, told the deep sea mermaid about the histories of the seven merpeople kingdoms and about the fact that hardly anyone knew of their existence. When the deep sea merpeople learned about this, they were astounded by this new knowledge. They knew about the seven merpeople kingdoms and now they knew about the world beyond. But they in turn did not know anything about them? The merpeople of the deep sea were filled with wonder.