If you're certain.

[ clearing her throat ]

Well, the mermaid princess earned her legs, although it was a painful transformation. The sea witch gave her an ultimatum--she must get the prince to marry her, and if so, she would be able to live on land with him forever and obtain an immortal soul, something mermaids lacked, apparently. On the morning of his marriage to anyone else, she would dissolve into sea foam and cease to exist.

Things seemed to be going quite well, except when the queen arranged an engagement for her son with a princess from the neighboring kingdom. He said, "do not worry, the only one I could ever love besides you is the priestess who rescued me that day I almost drowned." Except, as it turned out, that priestess was the princess, who had lived at the temple for temporary training.

And so the prince married the priestess-princess, leaving the mermaid princess in the cold. She was resigned to her death, but was suddenly approached by her many older sisters. They'd given the sea witch their beautiful hair in exchange for a magic dagger--if the mermaid princess killed the prince with it, and let his blood splatter on her feet, she would turn into a mermaid again, and be able to live out the rest of her life with her family in the ocean.

She stood by his bed, but she could not bring herself to kill the one she still loved, even if he did not love her anymore. Just as she was about to die, however, she was lifted up into the heavens by many spectral beings. The Daughters of the Air, they said, were beings frozen in a sort of purgatory. Although they did not possess immortal souls, they showed the kindness and grace required to enter the kingdom of Heaven. So, if they kept this up, and helped mankind for 300 years, they would earn their peace.

The mermaid princess set off into the sky to begin her journey.

[ More bittersweet than sad, maybe, but what a fuckin' raw deal that poor girl got. Mermaids not having souls, pssshhh. ]