Title: Unequal Exchange
Fandom: The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Andersen)
Length: 100
Content notes: choose not to warn
Rating: G
Author note: also a fill for the Scales square on my bingo card.
Summary: In the cave of the sea witch, you sign away your voice in pursuit of a vision.



In the cave of the sea witch, you sign away your voice in pursuit of a vision. Your shimmering scales grow dull before they vanish; your new legs barely know how to stand. Every step feels like walking on knives. You cut yourself off from everything you know, everyone you love, a desperate bargain for what you can't let yourself see is a dubious future. What you had till now was nothing in comparison with the promise of love. The man who wrote your story knows the pain of impossible desire, the barriers that can't be crossed except in dreams.