No, the sea is not real.

She listened quietly, eyes fixed on the watery floor. She let the stream of words wash over her, listening instead for pauses and nodding appropriately. A cold wind was blowing; little colonies of goose bumps erupted all over her bare chest and arms like soldiers standing to attention. Bobbing up and down in the water she swished her tail around unconsciously, feeling the water bubble and ripples down her scales. She swallowed; breathing in the air was tough on her weak lungs. Her fingers were crusted over with blood, but she didn’t dip them in the water to wash them out. Instead she held them out in front of her, silhouetted against the darkening sky.

The pain is always the easiest part. When you are grappling with a dizzying abyss inside, the comforting throb of your nerves screaming is the only thing that binds you to your body; the only handle to hold onto as you fight the antigravity sucking you further and further away.

She watched dispassionately; lights, colours and sounds all floating past her narrowed eyes. The silver flash of metal; the slow, deliberate shredding of her scales. Under her tongue was the shreebroot she was supposed to swallow to numb the pain, but she left it in her mouth, drawing sustenance from its solidity. Her face was deathly pale and she bit onto a piece of driftwood to keep from passing out. But he knew what he was doing, and the seemingly random strokes were fanning out in a pre-determined pattern. The chunks of her lifeless tail were thrown into a bin behind him, and she stared harder at those than at the sickly pinkish-white extensions that were slowly being uncovered.

Then he was done, and she tore her eyes away from the pool of black liquid chunks of her were floating in and looked down. They erupted from her waist, with a black triangle pushing them outwards. Ending with a flattened hard bit, with ten smaller extensions. The ends of every extension was covered with a dull, transparent substance.

“Three nights under the August moon should be fine."

She nodded, nodded and nodded again. Listened till the last splash was barely audible. When she was sure she was alone, she uncovered the most sacred part of her body.

Closed her eyes.

And showed the moon her eyelids.