There was once a little girl who believed with all her heart she was a mermaid. The mermaid girl was living in Florida on the beautiful Gulf Coast, when her mother and grandmother took her and her siblings to the “Jetties” at Indian Pass to swim. It was a popular place for locals but not well known for tourists. The Jetties are breakers made of huge boulders that, like a pier, one can tie a boat up to. It wasn’t the sunniest of days to go swimming, the August sky was covered with gray clouds and the sea was rolling with drab green humps like whales coming to shore, a telling sign that in the far distance there had been a big storm churning up the waters.

The little girl was in fact, a natural mermaid. Anyone would think she had a tail, as she swam out farther than anyone else. Like a dolphin, the little mermaid girl moved with grace and agility.  She could stay underwater for many minutes at a time, never really wanting to come up for air. Her dreams were always the same, she was a mermaid. The vivid images filled her soul and heart as she dreamed she could leap with ease off a large sea rock into the turquoise waters. She would swim into deep waters, she dreamed, and collect small seed pearls that she would string into a necklace, like all mermaid girls do. She also dreamed she would find her mermaid clan, one day.