Mermen’s Lore

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A townsgirl was stepping lightly along the shoreline, through an outcropping of trees.

The stand was imposing with new and mature evergreen and deciduous varieties waving within a fine mixed of sand and soil. She appreciated the wildlife that hummed steadily above and below. Yes indeed she marveled at the poetic life... Caterpillars crawled, butterflies and moths took flight, in fleeting haikus... Leaves floated across like Tanka impressing thoughts upon Life's canvas... unidentified micro-writes whittled limbs and roots, and decompressing nonviscera. Elaborate vines of budding thoughts essayed for the canopy of tree tops... lyrics sung with and without rhyme.

She heard birds, but she sensed something else, too. A calling... was it a whispering through the trees? All the branches seemed to beckon so welcomingly: Come here, rest a meter, lean with me.... The wind was playing some kind of mental tricks. She would have swore the surround sound spoke with mostly one voice. And that it was directed at the listener. At her, to be specific. She peered around each trunk. She tried to speak to it, but confusion settled in with the obscurity of long and dark meandering shadows and the real obstacle of underbrush. The path itself took pity on her, and ended, as she followed to the edge of the water. The wind picked up. The sound was lost to the incoming tide.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She turned around and saw the distant woods, after walking awhile. Suddenly she heard it again, unmistakably, but now coming from one direction.... Behind a towering ridge of rock. Curious, as ever, she made the precarious climb and peered over the top.

There, at the bottom of the other side was a person playing an instrument of many voices with just one underlying haunting tone... In its own distinctive way, potent and beautiful... echoing passed the rock, in a deceptive swirl of sound. Her breath caught when she saw the person adjusting his fish tail scales and put the instrument down... Arrested eyes now fully locked.

"Hello"

"Hello."

"I heard you playing all the way through the forest... I thought the trees were singing in chorus..."

"Haha. ... disappointed?"

"No. Not at all... I had the feeling it was something more... orchestrated. Mm... what is that?" He hesitated, and she pointed to the instrument of many buttons, eyelets, buds and mikes.

"A recorder."

"Oh."

...it didn't look like the flutes used to practice on in grade school. It seemed somehow vintage and simultaneously newly minted. She gave ample wait time, while he adjusted his tail.

"It's special. It has ancestral history. My own... Invention. It reaches quite far..."

"Recorder," she mused attentively, "Does it... work both ways?"

"Yes. Yes, it does," he said ...pressing Play

04.05.2023

Water, wind, and sea challenge @adiii_starry