Ariel walked down the dusty lane. The reason for Prince Sebastian coming to this hot dusty country were still not clear. The little mermaid recalled the past month. The prince's stubborn silence. Their first real argument. Later, shedding her clothes and slipping into the water as the royal yacht sailed out of the harbor. Her following the royal yacht through endless lengths of ocean and some truly frightening storms. She was so tired at the end of some days! The water turned warm, almost tropical. Coral reefs and intensely colored fish appeared.
As always, her friends the dolphins helped along the way, sometimes carrying Ariel while she rested as Sebastian's yacht sailed through the night. It still angered her that her prince would not explain the point of this journey. Despite her every entreaty, he refused to tell her anything other than it was a matter he had to attend to in person. A couple should have no secrets between each other. Of this fact, Ariel was convinced. She would teach Sebastian not to keep her in the dark. Oh, Sebastian would be upset when he discovered that his little mermaid had followed him, but he would soon get over that and they would laugh and laugh, and Sebastian would grace her lips with some more of his sweet, sweet kisses!
Ariel glanced at her scanty attire, a purple silk bandeau, gauzy pantaloons that verged on the transparent suspended from a silk and jeweled girdle, gold slippers with upward curved toes, a small red jacket impossible to button up and a gauzy purple veil which hid her face from view below the bridge of her nose. Ordinarily, she would never wear something so indecent, but they were the first clothes she found, hanging on a line outside the palace whose wharf Sebastian's yacht had docked at.
These seemed to be the fashions of this dry and dusty land. The girls that were not clad in next to nothing like herself, concealed themselves in voluminous dark robes. Ariel thought that style too severe. "Something in the middle would be fitting," she opined to no one. She was positive the prince had come this way...
A huge figure loomed in front of her. Ariel gasped, he was the biggest, tallest, and most muscular man she had ever seen. He was shirtless, his corded muscles glistened in the sunset, he wore a neatly trimmed dark beard beneath his turbaned head. In his right hand he held a massive bullwhip.
"Where are you headed, little flower?" he asked.
"I...I...I am on an errand!" she returned.
"Really? Then let me see your pass."
