Landed Lover

Photo credit: Joel Filipe via Unsplash

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With gentle hands, you yank me back and forth, laboring on stilted, grounded legs, and call it dance.

Me, who can glide and slide with the fish, propel myself through silky waters with an exhalation, swirl among sparkling visions beyond your ken.

How could you imagine I would stay?

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Written for this week’s Three Line Tales prompt, over at Only 100 Words.  Click on the link to see the other stories and poems written in response to this photo.  Thanks for the inspiration, Sonya!

Eneana world-building note: so, who is this narrator?  Lynn has already guessed it’s a mermaid — which makes perfect sense — so I’d better clarify.  There are myths of merfolk in parts of Eneana, but (ssh, don’t tell anyone), they’re not real.  That doesn’t stop them from showing up in various myths and legends and poems, of course, but they couldn’t be the narrator of a story.

Water nymphs do exist, but again, the reality differs from the myth.  Nymphs are often perceived as female because of their slight form. But up close, they barely look human, and do not share the same primary or secondary sexual characteristics.  When Kakika designed them to be “like humans,” she misunderstood several key details.  Also, they’re Kakika’s Fey, so… Well, take my word for it and don’t try to dance with them, much less anything more intimate.

That leaves humans who are divines / clerics / priest(esses) of one of the true water religions.  The deity goes by many names, and is male in some cultures and female in others, but one common thread is that favored divines are granted the magical ability to breathe underwater, and some of them can take the form of various sea creatures.  And apparently for the narrator, once you go water, you never go back…

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