Sea Nympho (Underwater Neighbours)

4. In Which She Finds an Unexpected Source of Comfort

“I don’t see it.”

That, of course, comes from Rita, Gwen’s sister. We are in my house, speaking mentally to each other. 

“But he’s hot!” Gwen shouts at her sister, her gills flaring in excitement, the ends of her tail twitching. Rita simply rolls her eyes. 

“You’re just horny for anything that isn’t siren,” Rita tells me, before looking at her sister. “You need to have your eyes checked. He’s cute, he’s not hot.” This just goes to show that opinions on attractiveness vary from person to person. The continue back and forth for a while, arguing lightly as to who is right.

“We haven’t… done the deed yet,” I inform the both of them, interrupting their argument.

“Wait, what?” Gwen asks, looking incredulous. She is near to one of my windows now, the light coming in from the surface, illuminating the side of her face. She is perhaps the most beautiful siren that I have ever seen. Well, aside from my mother. I get why; I have quite the reputation of being promiscuous. I don’t particularly mind the reputation, though.

“He told me that I have to be patient if I am going to f**k him.” 

Gwen looks at me in surprise, while Rita looks at me as if I have lost my mind.

“You’ve finally lost it,” Rita tells me. That actually makes me laugh.

“Nope, not yet,” I respond lightly, “but speaking of the mentally ill, I have to visit my mother.”

They both fall silent.

“Megan… do you want company?” Gwen asks softly, coming over to me and putting one hand on my shoulder. They have visited my mother with me before, but I know that Insanim, the asylum, understandably makes them uncomfortable.

“Nah,” I say. “I would like to do this on my own. Besides, don’t you have to meet with some council members?”

“You’re more important,” she tells me. 

“Thanks, but my father will be coming with me,” I reveal to them. 

“When?” Rita asks.

“Later today. By the way, you guys still owe me a movie date,” I inform them. 

“You wanted to watch Lion King, at your house, right?” Gwen asks.

“Yeah, and maybe Tony can come, too.” I have come to realise that I enjoy being around Tony, even though we currently aren’t having s*x, and even though I do not know when that will happen.

“What’s he like?” Rita asks, and the expression on her face is almost as if she is struggling to understand how and why I entertain him.

“Charming. Very charming,” I tell her. I look over to Gwen, who is nodding enthusiastically. I don’t know what he said to her at the presentation, but whatever it was, it obviously had a lasting impression on her. “He’s curious, when it comes to the surface world. He didn’t understand convertibles and trivisions and cellphones and even clapping hands. He’d never tasted popcorn, and I don’t think that he’d ever worn shoes. But he has this willingness to learn, he pays attention to what I tell him. Oh, and he’d never heard of avian sirens.”

“What?” they both say incredulously.

“He was never even taught about it?” Rita asks.

“Apparently not,” I say. 

“Oh, well,” Gwen says, “it seems that he has a lot to learn.”

***

“Afternoon, Megan, Blythe,” says one of the asylum workers, a friendly, tall, dirty blonde, bearded merman, with shoulder length hair, and relatively thin, but easily visible, pretty pink lips, and a widow’s peak. His name is Nathan II of Outer Astra, greets us. We don’t have last names, at least, not citizens of Astra. I don’t know about the merfolk. We have our given names, followed by the part of Astra that we were born in. If we aren’t the first person of that name in that part of Astra, we have a number beside our name. I am Megan of Outer Astra; my dad is Blythe of Outer Astra; Rita is Ritalia of Middle Astra; Gwen is Gwendolyn II of Middle Astra, as there is a Gwendolyn from there that was born before her.

And my mother, the person who I have come here to see, is Aquina of Inner Astra. 

She wasn’t always like this. She was the best mother that I could have ever asked for. She taught me a lot of the things that I know about my world. When I showed interest in going to the human-inhabited island (rather than just the one with the avian sirens, where a lot of us go from time to time, as they do not mind nudity) she was very supportive of me, even though most sea sirens do not give humans the time of day, aside from the occasional f**k. She told me about how she met my father; she is from Inner Astra, the daughter of one of the council members, and met my dad, who was an apprentice fancy orb maker, learning the art of making orbs with fancy designs and inscriptions on them, or even the rare iridescent orbs, that are especially difficult to make. He was helping to decorate one of the council member events, when she took the initiative to ask him to go to the island with the avian sirens. There, she told me that he made her laugh until her side hurt. Then, about a year later, they had me. She told me, much to my discomfort, which part of the island they would mate in, while they were trying to have me; sirens must mate in human form to reproduce. All in all, she was an amazing mother. But eventually, she began to deteriorate mentlly. 

It began with paranoia. She didn’t want me leaving the sea, as she thought that someone was going to r**e me, specifically one of the avian sirens on their island. She would let my father go there in search of avian siren feathers, which look beautiful and shine spectacularly when placed inside orbs, but freaked out when she found out that I snuck out to go to the avian siren island with Rita and Gwen. Then, she began to talk to herself. We do not know what triggered it. It got worse and worse until she became so unstable, we couldn’t care for her. She didn’t eat the way we should have, and began attacking anyone who would come by to visit with jets of boiling water. Afterwards, both my father and I moved into different houses, as that house had too many painful memories. 

We are led down the familiar passageway, the way being lit by bright orbs. The water is cold, almost as if it has absorbed the sadness and pain, and insanity, that the residents have. I have never liked it here, and I have always wished that I could take her home, but I can’t. I am tempted to warm the water around me, but I do not, as if the warmth spreads, it might disturb the residents; perhaps, because of their mental state, they prefer the cold.

As we swim down the hall, I feel something hit me on the cheek. I look to the side, and see a piece of coral by my toe. I look up, and realise that one of the residents, a merman with a crazed look in his eyes, grins at me. It reminds me of that scene from Silence of the Lambs when one of the prisoners threw something at Jodie Foster’s character as she walked by.

“I am so sorry, Megan,” Nathan, says. “He got his sea magenta late,” he informs me, speaking of the one medication that they give the residents, which subdues them to some extent. The mentally ill of our society have never been treated with much care by the general public. 

Finally, we get to her cell. She has her back turned to us, her long, golden hair flowing in the water. Her body is completely still, as she gazes in the direction of her window, but I am unsure as to weather or not she is actually looking out of it.

“Aquina,” Nathan calls to her, and she turns her head to the side. “Your family is here to see you.” She turns to face us, and I feel my stomach fall at the sight of her. Her once beautiful features now look sucked in, and faded, even though a hint of her beauty still left there. Her once vibrant, amber eyes now look dead and hollow. Every time I leave, I close my eyes, and imagine what she used to look like, so that I remember her the way that she was before this happened. I even have some photographs of her, on the beach, that I took with a Polaroid camera. They are in my house, on Hulder, and I even took pictures of them with my phone and emailed them to myself. But that is how I want to remember her when I am not here. So every time I come here, I am gutted by her appearance. 

“Baby,” she says, with a slight smile, to my father, subdued by the medication. “Meg,” she says as she swims over to us, reaching out a hand and cupping my face through the grill. 

“Move back, Aquina,” Nathan says softly, “I need to let them in.” He presses one palm over one of the bars, grasping it. It has been enchanted to open at his touch, so when he moves back, the door swings open. I go over to her, and embrace her in a tight hug.

“Happy to see you, dear,” she says. “I know that we can’t trust people. I am just glad to know that you’re okay. You haven’t been to the siren island, have you?” she asks.

“No, Mummy,” I respond truthfully. Ever since she freaked out over me going there, I have had an aversion to the place.

“Well, I am glad. So how is everything going?” she asks the both of us.

“Same as usual,” I tell her. “Daddy makes orbs, and I frequent Huldra.”

“Yes, yes… you have always liked that island, haven’t you?” She was never afraid of humans harming me, because they are not as strong, or as durable as we are.

“Yes, I have,” I say with a slight smile. I know that she isn’t completely gone, that some part of her is still here, but still, this is so f*****g painful. And when we are done, I leave my father behind without a word, but he is used to me doing this after seeing her. I go straight to the trench on the outer border of Astra. No one comes here. The water from the trench is cold, but not as cold as the asylum. I know that I will go back to the surface to look at those pictures. But not yet. I need to release my emotions first. Here, I can cry in peace. The tears are not visible under water, but still, they leave my eyes, mixing with the salt water. My gills flare as I cry, cry about the state that my mother is in, at how little I can help her, and that for the most part, the citizens of Astra don’t care. But as I sit there and cry silently, my throat vibrating, making a soft, sad siren song, in a minor key — somewhere between E and E♭ minor — I hear a soft voice in my head.

“Mi amor?”

I turn to look at Tony, as he approaches me cautiously. I do not ask why he is all the way out here, and I am not annoyed by his presence. Instead, I embrace him when he comes over, and he holds me quietly as I cry.