"If we bury her here on land, then she's gone for good, with no hope left at all. But if we bring her to the sea," Viola turned to look at the gathered werewolves, "there's a chance, someday, that she could come back, along with the dead mermaids."
It took a while to convince them, especially Matt, explaining the ways of the sea to people who'd never trusted it. Mermaids didn't reproduce the way land dwellers did, and their numbers depended entirely on the Child of the Sea to sustain them, to stop death from thinning them out completely. Every mermaid who had died without her here to intervene still had a chance of returning, as long as their body was preserved, and there was still hope that another Child of the Sea might one day be reborn.
"We have nothing to lose by taking this chance, Matt. I want Zoe to... to have a grave with her name on the stone, but... I want her somewhere there's still hope." She said, her voice trembling by the end of it.
