Fishherdess

There's a scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the crew are looking over the rails of the ship, as they're sailing near the End of the World, and through the extraordinarily clear water they can see glimpses of a mer-kingdom spread out under them: mountains and valleys and castles and armies and hunting-parties and all. Reepicheep reacts to a king or nobleman shaking his spear at the ship, and tries to leap overboard, perceiving it as a challenge. But Lucy is fascinated to see a mermaid she guesses is near her own age, watching over a herd of domesticated fish.

I've tried to draw the little fish-herd before, and tend to generally focus on a more innocent or dreamy look. But I wanted to play with something a bit more alien this time, and really, I don't think that would be a problem for Lucy. She's been friends and fellow-soldiers with water-nymphs and tree-people and all sorts of Animals, some of whom don't have human eating habits or (probably) mating customs, and wildly-dancing fauns, and satyrs, and river-gods, and Aslan-knows-what-else. So I think she'd still have been interested and not especially bothered if the mermaid she saw wasn't especially human-looking....