Once upon a time.

That's how fairy tales start, right? Once upon a time: princesses and princes, witches and warlocks, gremlins and goblins, dragons and danger and druids. Love stories. A bad side and a good side, with a winner.

You'd never been much of a fairy-tale type of person. That would be your sister, Sally. Well, half-sister. Unofficial sister. Adopted sister. There were four of you, in total. Sally, Lizzie, Jimmy, and you, Y/N. Young, foolish ocean spirits.

Lizzie, the oldest, embodied the spirits of the axolotls, the glow-squids and squids, the octopi, and the sharks. You were the embodiment of betta fish, flying fish, mandarin dragonets, lyretail coralfish, and tropical fish in general. Your younger sister, Sally, represents salmon and all other types of saltwater fish. Finally, Jimmy, the youngest, embodied pufferfish, codfish, and all types of freshwater fish.

As to where you all came from, none of you were certain. Lizzie claimed to vaguely remember a blinding blue light, and Sally remembers a glacier, but for the rest of you, your earliest memory was meeting everyone else.

You see, you weren't blood relatives. None of you were. You'd awoken washed up on a beach with flotsam in your hair and Lizzie leaning over you, Sally watching scared behind her. A few days later, the three of you had found an unconscious Jimmy tangled in kelp. Since then, you had bonded with your now adopted sea-blings and learned a variety of skills.

Lizzie was your favorite sibling. She had light pink hair the color of her axolotl friends and sea-blue eyes that lit up when she smiled. She was an adept at spells and summoning things and was forever making anemones and coral wreaths appear out of nowhere.

Jimmy was your second favorite sibling, the one everyone couldn't help but love. The youngest of your family. He loved stonecarving and armormaking and always had some light, airy armor on his shoulders or fastened to his fins.

And then there was Sally.

Your least favorite sea-bling.

Ah, why hate her? To start, she was loud and obnoxious and had a strange sense of humor and never got along with you and was forever getting into trouble and was messy and never got anything done and procrastinated on everything and was forever yelling and had an obsession with making potions that only sometimes work and she was always testing them on you without your permission.

So yeah, you kinda hated her.

->->->->O<-<-<-<-

"Y/N!" Jimmy screamed as he bowled you out of your hammock. It took you several seconds of violently flapping your betta fins to right yourself, then you grinned at him.

"Ayup Jimmy! So, you've moved out of waking people up with electric eels from Lizzie?" The pink-haired sister was quietly sitting on a rock, reading a papyrus scroll she'd gotten from a fishing village.

Your younger brother grinned. "Lizzie took Flicker away from me after I accidentally shocked her."
"'ACCIDENTALLY'? YOU HIT ME IN THE HEAD WITH IT!" Lizzie shouted from her rock. Jimmy smiled guiltily.

"Where's Sally?" you asked, narrowing your eyes through the cloudy water. The group had strung up their hammocks next to a large underwater hill clouded with corals and fish, so it was understandable that you couldn't see her, but she should still be somewhere within shouting range.

Jimmy flicked his fins, shooting over your head in a cartwheel to get his hammock. "Sally left this morning after she sensed a group of salmon not too far from here. She wanted to study them." He untied the hammock from the branch of fan coral it was tied to, starting to roll it up.

Jimmy had short dirty-blond hair and brown eyes with a pufferfish-hat messily draped over it. He had green fins extending from his forearms and on his heels. Unlike Lizzie, he had no ruff behind his ears, axolotl, pufferfish, or otherwise.

You frowned, glancing over at Lizzie, who was busily rolling her scroll up. "Are we leaving already?"

Your older sister paused to look up at you, hesitating. "I mean, we didn't really plan to stay here for that long, remember?" She tucked the scroll into her seapack. "For now, we're waiting for Sally to get back. She promised she'd be here by 11:30. It's currently..." Lizzie glanced at her watch. "11:25. Five minutes."

"If she didn't forget," you mumbled crossly. Across the way, Jimmy snorted, then promptly shut up as Lizzie glared at him.

->->->->O<-<-<-<-

Turned out she forgot.

Nobody was surprised.

Not one.

It was around 1:15 P.M. when Sally returned, strangely giddy and yet annoyed to see you. And once again, no one was surprised when the first thing she did was complain about being hungry.

"Great Sea Spirits, Sally, didn't you even think about grabbing food on your way back?" You pulled a sheaf of dried kelp out and handed to her. Sally wrinkled her nose.

"Ugh. Got anything else I can eat?" she said, staring suspiciously at the kelp.

"Nope. Eat it or starve," Lizzie called as she swam towards the surface to double-check the time. Sally looked at the kelp in disgust before tossing it out towards the coral. "Your loss!" your pink-haired sea-bling yelled back one more time.

Sally tossed her wavy red-brown hair and darted towards her hammock. Calling after her, you shouted, "TAKE DOWN YOUR HAMMOCK, WE'RE LEAVING!" Sally gave you an annoyed look but didn't argue.

Swimming over to your own sea-green hammock, you popped it off of the violet bubble coral and furiously began rolling it up. A hand touched your shoulder as Lizzie came over, helping you stuff the hammock into the bag and put the bag in your seapack. Across the way, Sally was angrily stuffing her own hammock into her bag, muttering curses at something.

Five minutes later, the entire camp was packed up and Lizzie started leading the four of you north.