I'm swimming from a shipwreck. For who knows how many hours, in the bleak, endless, fathomless ocean. Finally, exhaustion. Going down.
Eyes open, underwater. Determined to fight to the limit of my last breath.
Then, out of the distance... a form. Surely a final hallucination of my oxygen starved brain. Because no... it can't be.
A woman. Naked. More beautiful than even the most desperate dying imagination could conjure. With a sinuous, seemingly endless tail where legs should be. Shimmering, undulating.
I have gone mad, I say to myself. She swims closer to regard me with animal curiousity, as if she is wondering how I taste. I am terrified. Her eyes, however, though iridescent and strange, are seemingly both kind, and merciless... like the sea itself.
I am mesmerized by the sight of her. Her outrageous tail, her sleek, slender torso. Her features, refined and noble, yet so strange... like the bust of Cleopatra, a deva of Hindu mythology, a goddess from a Mayan frieze. Her impossibly long, brilliantly blonde mane waving with the motion of the current.
Suddenly I'm calm. I feel her arms stripping me naked... the gossamer of her tail caressing, sliding, enfolding, wrapping around me like a snake, an indescribably erotic sensation. I take in her hypnotic gaze, the elegant, dramatic sweep of her cheekbones, her full lips, as her face draws near to mine. And I surrender to her kiss. To death... for surely this is it. I have heard the tales, and know there is no escape.
But as our limbs and tongues entwine, I find myself breathing. And curiously, I am breathing water. It is a kiss of life.
I return it avidly, and pull her into me with all the desperate force of a drowning man. She slips away with a sly smile, a bubbling giggle - a high pitched, unearthly sound. Her tail whipping her away through the water. I follow, fast. So fast... how? I look down... My legs... where are my legs???
They're gone. In their place, a tail. Like her own. Long, shimmering, magnificent. For a moment, I panic. Then channel it into resolve. I put on a burst of speed. You are not getting away from me. In a flash, I realize I have been searching for you, all my life, through all the oceans of the world. Although I have coupled with many women, my only love is the sea... and you are the sea itself, made animate. I've explored you, adored you, plundered you, begged your mercy. I've seen you in dreams, and lost you. I won't lose you again.
Come what may, live or die, I am leaving the cruel, hard surface world of men - iron grey, brutish, mercantile, exploitative, crushing all with inescapable gravity - behind. Forever.
And as I follow, down, down... a new world opens. Forms and colours, freakish and unrecognizable, but beautiful beyond the imagining of man. Your world. Your kingdom.
Determined, I put on speed, just in time... I see your tail, vanishing into a crevice. And follow. Through a narrow passageway. Darkness. Then up, and suddenly, light. I burst through the surface and take a great heaving breath... of air.
As my eyes adjust, i look around. The strange werelight seemingly emanating from the coral reef below me, shining like bioluminescence: blues, greens. Illuminating the walls of a grotto, reflections of the water dancing everywhere. Before me, stairs rise from the water. Leading to a throne carved from a single, vast shell - and seated upon it...
She who i have sought through all the oceans of the world. My queen. You.
Wearing a glittering crown, thousands of spines of crystalline gold radiating from your head - waving slightly, a living thing. A delicate tracery of green seaweed barely obscuring your breasts. Taking me in with your regal, impassive, inscrutable gaze. I am transfixed. Until you bid me with an unspoken thought: Rise.
Powerless to resist, I obey, standing on my... Legs? Yes. There they are. Too confused to even question this bizarre turn of events, I look up at you, questioningly. And see that you suddenly have them too. And what legs they are. Toned, endless. Slender, strong. Human, and yet, more than human. Perfect.