I.

Father put his palm to the shoreline, an upwelling of salt and crabs undertow. He runs into the current, the waves
pulling him under into fallen clouds, fish scales, shipwrecks. Coldblooded and gilled, he returns with seaweed so
Mother can taste the water’s depths. He tells bedtime stories of the seals he dives with. Sleek tails and dark skin,
fast and lovely.

II.

Mother’s shoreline ballet starts with arms raised, hands shifting the horizon. Slowly, her legs bow, pointe, repeat,
gathering momentum and spinning into a gyre. As she swirls she is held in each moment by the air surrounding
her body, the gravity tactile.

Father finds his daughter hidden behind the sedges in a clumsy attempt to imitate Mother’s dance. Kneeling
beside his stumbled daughter he explains that only when in the ocean, buoyed by seawater, can they feel the poise
that Mother carries always. She is of the earth, he says.

III.

Rock erodes into sand that builds into dunes, orchestrated by the wind tilting the earth. Waves like stanzas. An
andante lull or an allegro of storms, a staccato of sea nettle tendrils.

Father’s disappearance fell into this song. Nothing jarring. The echo of a conch shell and then a hush that sunk
into his last footsteps down the beach to the water edge until the evening tide soothed away the last hint of his
existence.

Everyone leaves, Mother sighs. The village sailed away to forget the beauty of the ocean's ebb and flow. Father left to
remember where he came from.

IV.

Everything in nature is distinctly one or another.

Taxonomy: Clamshell ridges curl, layered crescents, versus scallop lines stretched into vertical rays.

Architecture: A spider tightropes outwards on a safety line strong. Spinnerets cascade silk spirals, adhesive
snares.

V.

Our village’s story is like sea glass, mysterious, made beautiful by years clouding its origins. Translucent, but not
enough to see the truth through its frosted surface.

In the beginning though, the story was clear. Freshwater filled the ocean and hundreds of mermaids and mermen
wove through seafan filtered sunlight beams. Underwater there were no words, only the crepitating construction
of coral reef castles. The currents directed the mermaids’ and men’s fates. Whenever hunger, sadness, or apathey
found a place in their lives, they knew that with time, the ocean would dilute the emotion and wash it ashore.

Aerwyna, in the dark of the new moon, mistook a man of the mainland for a lover. When she felt the two kicking
feet in her womb, she cried, leaving the ocean filled with her salted tears. She nestled her child, Muirfinn, in the
shallow seagrass beds. Upon abandoning her child, all the mermaids and men morphed into fish, hovering in the
brackish inlets.

The descendents of Muirfinn lived along the ocean, content to sing and run. Whenever worldly troubles brought
pain though, the salty tears reminded the village that they still had the blood of Aerwyna. Only once a descendent
of her son chose life within the ocean, would the inlet fish swim to the open ocean and transform back to
mermaids and men.

VI.

Father fulfilled the story. Mother attempted to continue as usual, collecting rainwater and weaving nets. The
daughter found signs of the extraordinary; Mother found the explanation, her trepidation apparent.

The first sign: A whale eye, risen from the deep, heavy from its sleepless existence guarding the village from
afar. In the bay, Mother shows the daughter the beached whale, sinewy carcass. Mother places the eye back
in the black hole.

The second sign: A sea serpent at dawn. Mother identifies the synchronized movements, a dolphin pod,
dorsal fins like hands skimming piano keys.

The third sign: Sadness, etched into the daughter’s movements. A void too large for currents to move, for
Mother’s reasoning. Mother wavers at the precipice of her daughter’s abyss, the balance of her ballet shaken.

VII.

One morning, Mother feels the sadness dissipate. Running to the shore, she sees her daughter’s silhouette
flickering in and out of the view among the waves until the shadow slips entirely below the surface. Whispers of
a conch shell’s song, a hymn for Mother’s dance. Tear streaked and weathered, Mother remains, landbound. A
mangrove tree, gnarled roots exposed.