“No.” She said firmly, and dropped the knife into the water. “Never.” I dove down and brought it back up to the surface.

“Please.” I could see the sun sinking toward the horizon. It had to be now. “I’m supposed to die when I go to the land. I’ve lived a good life, Se’Janna. I’m here at the land for you. I’m supposed to die, and you are supposed to live. I can’t do this for you.

She smiled a pure, joyful smile. “Then live, Ommer. Live, adopt more children, save them, and show them the love and caring kindness you’ve shown me.” She looked over at the sun. It was a bare sliver above the sea. “Live, and thank you for the extra years of my live. I love you, and the Sea Witch.”

I took the knife and pressed it to my breastbone, and put her hand on the hilt. “Please.”

Se’Janna tossed the knife into the sea again. “No.”

And then the sun sunk behind the waves.

I watched in fascinated horror and sorrow as my daughter, my Se’Janna, flew apart into thousands of tiny jellyfish, each with a tiny pink flower at their center. They floated around me, like sea foam, never touching me. I watched them for a long time, as the night fell around me. Pearls fell from my eyes into the sea. Merperson tears. I felt as though I would surely die, surrounded there, by the jellyfish that had been my daughter.

But I lived.

Eventually I found the strength to go home.

It took years, but eventually the pain of losing Se’Janna was far enough away for me think of adopting another child. I found him bruised, crying, and alone on a sea cliff. I had been spending more and more time near the land. I offered him the potion, telling him the price he might have to pay upfront. He came home with me. Adrian was seven, and had been abused by his father. He married a mermaid who loved him dearly when he was nineteen.

He was the first of many children I found that way. Abused, lost to the sea, abandoned, I gave them the potion, and took them home. All of them found love eventually. I never lost another child to the jellyfish. The children began to tell me they had heard of me, the merperson who would take any child to live in the sea. Others began to do as I did, bringing landwalker children to live in the sea. They lived, they loved, they thrived. We took what the land did not want, and found it good.

Sometimes, as the years wore on, I would see one, a jellyfish with a pink flower, and know that part of my Se’Janna was still out there, still alive.