The existence of the mermaid overshadowed all my thoughts for the following hours. What was she? Where did she come from? What was her civilization like? Questions like these kept me so intrigued that sleep was not among my activities. I would lie if I said her beauty hadn't captivated me. By that point in my life, I had already experienced attraction to some of my classmates, but I had never felt as crazed as I did for the mermaid. Her face, her hair, her body, her voice. I wanted to see her again, hear her again; I fantasized about her more than I care to admit.
After many sleepless hours, I questioned if I had acted correctly in front of her. Pride and fear had allowed me to proceed with dignity and reserve, but our interaction had been so friendly that I regretted not having acted more enthusiastically. She spoke with joy and exuded curiosity. I regretted not having jumped into the sea to be with her from the beginning, but then a concern subdued my intense passion for the mermaid.
What if it was all an illusion?
The next day, I approached her as we had agreed. She said she was satisfied with the book I had offered her and offered me her friendship in return for the gesture I had made. Since then, we spent more time together. Her only condition for meeting was that it be at times when we could be alone, which didn't seem like a bad idea to me. Her charisma eventually enchanted me, and soon we conversed with as much passion and enthusiasm as old friends would.
Our chemistry was such that she asked me to give her a friendly nickname that I could pronounce. "Syphil" was the one I chose based on what little I could hear and understand of her real name.
Syphil never wanted to answer my questions directly, but the flow of our conversations allowed me to gather more and more data about her underwater world. Thanks to that, I learned that the mermaids' civilization was older than human civilization, that they were already on Earth when "the great reptiles ruled the oceans," and that their ancestors had migrated multiple times to the depths of the world to hide from "cyclical catastrophes." Additionally, I made her admit that mermaids and humans had a common ancestor, although I'm not sure if her words mean what I think. Moreover, Syphil admitted that they had powers that could be considered magical, as they had the ability to understand any species and invoke illusions like those that enchanted sailors since ancient times.
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My fear for her was completely behind me. After a few weeks, I dared to swim with Syphil, and she allowed me to touch her body. Out of respect, I limited myself to squeezing her soft hands and caressing her beautiful face, although for a long time, I fantasized about being bolder in those moments. My encounters with Syphil were extremely satisfying in more than one sense but also very fleeting.
Later, I learned that mermaids were not interested in humans, but there were exceptions. Some, like her, were curious about our civilization. Others, the rarest of all, felt a morbid physical attraction to other species like ours, and this explained what happened with the old folks on the beach.
What she said was already strange, but what she admitted next shook me completely: there were mermaids who liked to hunt humans.
On this kind of behavior, Syphil didn't want to talk much. Her curiosity about humanity fascinated me, so the idea of mermaids devouring humans disturbed me. When talking about her opinion on the matter, Syphil replied with another question.
—What do you think about humans eating cows?
We debated the differences between her situation and ours because our meat didn't rival that of other marine creatures like whales. I felt during our conversation that she was omitting information about her people. I tried to push her to reveal what she was hiding, but she ended up explaining it to me in the simplest and most ruthless way she could conceive: humans were like an exotic food. They didn't eat us for our taste or appetizing appearance but for the sheer satisfaction of doing so. She reprimanded me for some human behaviors that would not be well-received by any other species, and though she didn't mention what she meant, I couldn't help but think of all those videos of people eating live animals or torturing them for no reason.
I felt ashamed to continue defending my species and accepted her words with a bowed head. The rest of our conversation jumped between various topics about the "surface culture" until one of them prompted her to mention a secret. We were talking about upbringing and its differences between species until she had to admit that even she had grown up under the influence of a "parent." I asked what she meant because until that moment, I had never heard her mention anything about a family. The topic made her uncomfortable. She said it was "The Sea King" and that he was the father of all mermaids, then abruptly ended the conversation as she disappeared into the depths of the waters. That was the first time I heard about what lurks beneath the waters, but it wouldn't be the last.