The Wee Yin

Wip Wednesday! No prompts last week-- hardly surprising-- but here's a little bit more of the mermaid story. It follows the previous clip I posted but I'm still working on the connecting tissue, so I'm not reposting anything for context. If you need any, I've gone back and tagged the previous parts as "mermaid story" for now.

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Estelle doesn't go back down to the beach for some weeks and takes care to avoid any route that would take her past it. She cannot escape hearing the gossip, however.

Caleb has been stalking the beach in the days since they both saw the pendent and the mermaid who went diving after it. He sends the children scattering, they say, as he prowls through the wealth scattered in the sand. Sometimes he just stands there, staring out into the sea.

The mermaids, Estelle is given to understand, kick up a cacophony when he does. Their chittering sometimes grows even louder than the calls of their stolen voices. It is as if, one old woman declares in amazement, they are laughing at him.

No one mentions Millie's laughter. Estelle would think that she'd imagined it if not for the fact that she can still hear it sometimes on the breeze when she walks behind the row of houses that separate the main road from the beach. Even at the distance, she knows it.

It's almost a week before she realizes that no one mentions it because no one else recognizes the sound.