She finds help in the form of a young magician, and as they attempt to erase the princes’ longing, Peri herself recognizes her own yearning for what the sea has stolen - and given. The young princes enchant Peri and she begins to do what she can to grant their hearts’ desire and return them to their own worlds. Why? No one truly knows, only the woman hidden in the sea, and the king.' The sons were born at the same time, and when the queen died in child-bed, her human son was stolen away, and the sea-born son left in his place. 'Once upon a time, there was a king who had two sons: one by the young queen, his wife, and one by a woman out of the sea. Peri’s anger draws her to the water, and it is there that she becomes entangled in the story of the king’s changeling sons - one born from a mother of the earth, one from a mother of the sea, both bound to the water or land to which they feel they don’t belong. The sea-dragon brings Peri into a world of magic - magic she herself uses to hex the sea for taking her father and leaving her mother staring at the water in search of the land just beneath its surface. It washed to and fro in the water, its eyes like twin red suns hovering above the sea. It had a mustache of thin streamers above its mouth. The delicate brow fins over its great eyes flicked up and down like eyebrows.

It lingered, massive and curious, its bright streamers swirling in the restless water.

It was watching the only movement on the beach: Peri.

There it was, beyond the spires, rising up out of the stormy waters, bright as flame, with the sunlight itself looped around its neck.

The changeling sea