My girlfriend has become a mermaid. Or she could have become a siren. Honestly, I’m not sure what she has now become, with her scales and claws and tail. I was never a fan of myths and legends in the past. I never saw their allure that could bewitch others and fill them with joy as they read them.

I am learning more about them now, and it breaks my heart more and more.

The transformation wasn't sudden. It was a slow thing as all things are when they grow and change themselves. Changing bit by bit, day by day. It started innocently enough, she just started to walk closer by the sea. She told me that she liked the smell of the sea air and the crash of waves as they hit the shore, she said it was peaceful. When I asked the first time I didn't think much of it, why should I? She was just enjoying herself so there was nothing to worry about.

But then she started to spend more and more time there. She started to stop by the coast and just stared out into the briny horizon, only spending a few moments at a time before she moved on. Then it was a few minutes, then 30, then an hour until she spent most of the day just looking out to the sea. That wasn’t the worst part of it. The worst part was that when she returned to our home, when we spent our moments together, there was some part of her that was missing. It was as if the sea had captured that part of her mind and spirit, stole that piece of her into its depths and left her body entirely.

It didn’t leave her body alone for long.

As her body began to grow scales, her hands became webbed and her legs fused to form a tail, I was there caring for her. I was there when she started to stay in the bath longer and longer, keeping her happy with the shower head and water. I was there when she wanted to eat nothing but fish and other creatures of the sea, each meal becoming more raw than the last. I was there when she started to speak less and less until the only sounds she made were the songs of the ocean, sounds that captured the wild beauty of the sea.

I was there, caring for her. I cared and loved her even as I took that final step and brought her to the sea and placed her in its embrace. As I watched her swim away in that salted water, I remembered all that I had done to help and care for her, all the memories of love I held for her before this transformation took hold. As I did, I did what I had always done when I bathed her or fed her or listened to her songs.

I cried and let the bitter tears fall into the sea.

I was becoming something different. Something more than the women I once was. The sea called to me in a way that could never be described with words or thought, it was something more primal and ancient than that. Older than all the creatures in this world, older than the race of man. Some primordial essence that was birthed when the sea and earth was new.

I tried to resist it for him, the man I love. When I had the will for it I would tear myself away from the briny depths that called me and returned to him and our home. I would try to talk to him about his day and what he got up to, made plans to visit friends and places that we loved dearly.

But I am losing sight of that now, more and more often. I am losing focus on our history and the life we had shared. I cry sometimes, when my mind is my own again to realize what I am now becoming and what he does to care for me. I cry for what I am losing as my body changes day by day with each new scale, but then it fades and the call returns.

It always returns.

As he brings me to the sea in his last act of love, I follow the call to the depths and leave him. Leave the life and love and past I had behind. Perhaps, when my mind remembers more than the bitter ocean and the raw flesh of fish in my teeth, I may return. I may return when I remember him and the house we had and the life we had in it. Perhaps I will go to him and apologize for what I had done to him. For the pain he had to live through while I turned into what I am now.

I don't know if I ever will.

BabyDino

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