by Shy Mom
Note from JetBoy: In the midst of writing her much-loved story “Sheltering,” Shy Mom turned out this delightful short-short and passed it along to me. Needless to say, I immediately claimed it for Juicy Secrets. Read on and see why.
***
Evelyn and the Mermaid
Ligeia
A lot has been written about mermaids, mostly by men, mostly wrong.
For one, we do not sing to lure them. That is a fantasy, set down by male writers from Homer to Hans Christian Anderson.
We are alluring, though. Our waves of sea-green hair arouse a wildness in the soul. Our pale breasts appear impossibly soft. Our shapely tails stir imaginings of unnatural acts.
It’s no wonder sailors smash their ships onto rocks in their rush to reach us. They’d do that even if we didn’t sing.
But we do not sing for them. Fuck them.
We sing for our girl-lovers, our virgins. Our songs reach them in dreams. They are the only ones we will allow to come to us.
Evelyn
I hear her in my sleep. She sings. No one has sung so sweetly to me.
Of course, I know who she is, what she is. I’ve read about her kind.
I should be scared. I’m not. In fact, she excites me.
Ligeia. I go to her in my dream.
Ligeia
Weeks ago, I sensed her arrival in this place called England, an island not far from our wine-dark sea.
She came from the New World, an unfamiliar land, but her head is filled with the lore of our realm. She reads, absorbs, knows far more than most at the age of ten. Her imagination seems limitless.
She excites me. Evelyn. I call her.
Evelyn
She is breathtaking, this mermaid.
Seated on heaped rocks, surrounded by seafoam, her otherworldly beauty resembles nothing of the temptresses of men’s imaginations, those sirens of seduction and deceit. Her womanliness seems as wild and deep as the sea.
She beckons, and the waves roil, crashing about me, under me. But in my dream, I walk on water.
I cross the gulf between us.
Ligeia
She closes the distance. Her naked frame is slight, so much that the stormy sea should swallow her, but her steps are fearless.
I reach out, and she grasps my hands. She steps onto my rocks, unscathed.
Still a virgin, thank the gods.
She’s lovely. Not like my mersisters, whose preternatural beauty grows tiresome after a millennium. She is exquisitely mortal.
Ribbons of black hair fly about. Almond eyes flash with excitement. Fragile lips rush to meet mine.
Evelyn
I kiss her.
Awake, I would not have dared. I would have thought and rethought without leaping to act. But in my dreams, there is no why. There just is.
And the only thing that is… is my desire for this irresistible creature.
Ligeia
I drink her desire, and fill her with mine. She writhes like the sea around us as my tongue plunges into the depths of her being.
Evelyn
I have never had sex, but know what this is.
She is boring into me, impossibly deep, invading, loving.
The pleasure churns like waves.
I love her back.
Ligeia
I suck her tongue into the whirlpool of my lust. Rather than flinch, she dives in heedlessly. She surrenders all of herself, her loneliness and longing.
So entirely exposed, I could make her mine, a mersister forever.
Evelyn
She enfolds me in one arm, pulls me into her bosom, buries me in softness and warmth. With her free hand, she clasps my sex.
Ligeia
I tease her tiny pleasure bud. She quivers and mewls. I press the hot entrance to her fissure. It is leaking. I lubricate the flesh with her own wetness.
My intentions are unmistakable, but the choice is hers.
Evelyn
I shift my weight onto her finger, and she impales me.
A jolt of pain, a shock of pleasure, and then another, and another, as she fills and fucks me.
Ligeia
I make love the human way with my hand, as our mouths make love the mermaid way.
The child fucks me back, unabashedly. She has never known love, but instinctively senses how and where to touch. I have never known such passion.
I drop my other hand to her bottom, fingers probing for her starfish.
Evelyn
Oh, God, will it hurt?
No matter. I spread my cheeks apart, offer my last orifice to this Ligeia, this dream.
Ligeia
I invade her, all of her, fuck this divine child as only mermaids can, churn up a tsunami of pleasure.
Her wild abandon overtakes me.
We crest together.
Evelyn
I drown in a sea of bliss. I lose myself.
I am hers. I am her, and she is me.
Ligeia
I know her, like I know myself. She is unutterably beautiful.
I love her, but know that she cannot stay. I let her go.
Evelyn
I wake.
I can’t go back, she warned. I am not hers. I will find other lovers soon enough.
I weep into my pillow, wracked with sorrow. The strains of a fading song haunt me.
I will never hear it again.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
The End
So Beautiful!
so lovely and so poetic-like, a nice change of pace
reminds me of several mermaid themes:
the song from Sinead Lohan “I am no mermaid” 1998
the Russina film- “Rusalka” [Mermaid] 2007
and a few poems from:
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alexander Pushkin and this one from Yeats:
A man young and old; III The Mermaid
————————————-
a mermaid found a swimming lad
picked him for her own
pressed her body to his body
laughed; and plunging down
forgot in cruel happiness
even lovers drown
Shy Mom, After Sheltering you have managed to stir my juices once more with a beautiful piece of writing. PLEASE, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, keep writing as I just love your work.
That was inspired. The concept was so charmingly original and erotic. The bittersweet ending of one door opening to a young girls sexual future, and another door from her sexual awakening forever being closed really left my feelings conflicted………..and I loved it.
Bravo
Shy mom, this is poetry, not just a sex story… the cadence, the words you use… pure erotic poetry, worthy of praise! Thank you you for allowing us into your world! Xxx
Yes, Shy Mom, just what the others have said. Very enjoyable and different.
Kim & Sue
Thank you all for your warm words. I did not know how this vignette would be received. I am glad it delighted.
I hope you all have a mermaid who sings to you, or an Evelyn to sing to.
Shy Mom
Shy Mom, you are a poet. Albeit a very naughty one.
A story so beautifully woven, enchanting.
I am in awe of your way with words.
Maria
Thank you, Maria. Your words mean a lot.
Wow, very different but very erotic Shy Mom. Short, sweet, loving and very hot. I loved it, and look forward to reading more of your stories.
Hopefully you will write more.
Interesting…admittedly not quite what I expected (or hoped for?) from the one-liner description of the premise (I was thinking more sweet bubbly pop-culture-y conceptualization of mermaids with a more conventional narrative and less true-to-mythology with experimental prose tbh), but this story is intense, certainly, and very well-written. The slight but sharp “edge” and overall nature of the sex scene isn’t really my cup of tea, personally, but I can recognize quality, evocative writing regardless and must give this writer her due for that. This piece has a distinctly “literary” quality one doesn’t see terribly often in even the best stories of this niche (or in online erotica period), one that hints at a highly promising underlying talent.
I can’t help but feel like there’s so much more that could be done with this premise (of a girl and a mermaid) from many other angles, it’s a tantalizing concept that deserves to be more fully fleshed-out (by someone, someday…) in perhaps a different and softer, more standard sort of fashion, but this story is a splendid start and I commend the authoress for even attempting to take such an original approach to such a richly fascinating template on and do something with it. Feels ambitious, and it’s powerfully poignant for what it is–the ability of a story to move me in some emotional way is my main criterion for determining its quality and impact, and this is strongly moving, even if much of the emotional range it evokes is mixed and a little disquieting. One phrase that comes to mind is “exhilarating ambivalence”, for whatever that’s worth, haha. A good reminder, I suppose, that not every story needs to be a sunny wish-fulfillment fantasy to be good, worth reading, somehow resonant or all of those things. I felt breathless after reading it, like I’d just had an unexpected ethereal edge-of-your-seat encounter with something or someone of the kind that makes one wonder, head swimming, if what one experienced was entirely dreamt-up in a flight of fancy or even partially in some sense real. The dreamlike quality adds a lot to its impression and seems to lie at the story’s tonal center. Quite an atmosphere it creates! I also tend to judge stories by their memorability, how much they stick in my mind and how likely I’ll be to remember them in detail long past the initial reading, and this is one I won’t soon forget, that’s for sure.
Anyhow, this piece stimulated my imagination and really whetted my appetite to see this theme done well in another context, so kudos. I can’t necessarily say that I “enjoyed” reading it, exactly, but I…appreciate it, as a creative work and on an artistic, stylistic level (though I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first), that’s a more accurate description of my reaction. Thanks to Shy Mom for submitting and to JetBoy for deciding to publish this piquant little sliver of thought-provoking writing.
Confined to bed not very well. (Nothing serious hopefully). I have time to revisit stories I’ve read before, like this one.
Two people have inspired my own writing, my search for quality and style. ED was the first, then Shy mom … both have since become my friends.
I read what VerityVioletViola has to say above. My initial reaction was to strongly disagree, but I read the comment again, more slowly, and I saw what she was feeling. I still see it differently though—I find it a masterpiece.
Shy mom is a highly skilled writer … just not used to writing fiction.
Hope your feeling better soon B
I also adore this piece, though I admit it’s more of a tone-poem, or a dream duet, than a conventional story. Hey, underage lesbian erotica has room to be a big tent, if you ask me.
I hope you feel better quick!
Hm…honestly, I’m a little confused, I’m not sure how or where we would disagree about this story on the surface, based on my original comment, if you consider it “a masterpiece”. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but my comment above was uniform and unequivocal in praising the quality of this story on a literary/artistic/stylistic level and noting the talent of the author.
This story reminds me of a piece I’d read in a literary journal (in the more mainstream, non-erotica/non-genre-niche sphere)–I think the authoress has real talent that could flourish beyond even this niche. If she’s “just not used to writing fiction”, then that speaks all the more to a remarkable natural aptitude for it, because as fiction this piece definitely, stylistically succeeds in many areas. It could potentially, conceivably even be published as “transgressive fiction” somewhere outside of the fringe age-gap erotica realm (might be tricky given the subject, but I wouldn’t be shocked to encounter it in that arena)–which is nifty, kinda neat as that’s something that can’t really be said about most stories in this niche/genre (which, of course, isn’t at all a knock or negative reflection on them, just the nature of how the literary world is set up and how fiction is classified).
So we have no actual disagreement there–I wasn’t questioning the overall “quality” of this story or the ability of its author; I was simply expressing that the way the sex scene unfolded and the way that whole encounter at the heart of the story was approached and portrayed wasn’t what I was expecting (which is not always a bad thing, certainly!) and didn’t personally “float my boat”, you know? But that’s just my individual taste–I greatly prefer extremely gentle, soft, romantic/loving contexts for the sexual interaction in these types of stories, to the point where even the f-word being used to describe a sexual encounter between an “older/adult” and a child character reflexively rankles my sensibilities a bit.
By contrast, the sex here is swift, situational/contextually sudden and ephemeral (sadly so, hence the ending), and slightly brutal (described with words/phrases like “jolt of pain”, “will it hurt?”, “invade/invading”, etc.). Which, generally speaking, isn’t really my cup of tea–but again, that’s not at all a negative reflection on the story itself or the author (I really want to stress that, as a lot of my critiquing comments here on this site come down to similar issues, and I mean no offense whatsoever by them).
Still, the sheer amazing literary quality, the evocative and appealingly ethereal nature of its prose and the starkly vivid albeit emotionally complex/multifaceted picture it paints in one’s mind render this story a favorite, nevertheless. In fact, it has a place in my personal collection/archive of very best/favorite stories. 🙂
(Especially upon rereading it now, I like it even more and it chafes my delicate sensibilities a little less–I suspect that my preconceived expectations about what a mermaid story in this niche would entail distorted or biased my view somewhat going in, when I read and commented on it the first time. “Masterpiece” or not, as good as this story is on its own terms, I just wish there was a mermaid story along the lines of what I was describing there–more bubbly-sweet and based on the contemporary (Disneyfied?) “wholesome” image of mermaids, rather than taking this sort of narratively-experimental, mythologically-consistent, more primal/feral/untamed/almost savage and thus tonally “edgy” approach, that’s all. Maybe I’ll write such a piece myself, though it would be in the distant future as my plate is more than full with working on several other stories I plan to submit ASAP at this time…)
All things considered, “She is breathtaking, this mermaid”, and so is this story, even though it has a heavier/darker, more nebulous, complex sort of tone or vibe and rougher, more aggressive elements to the sexual encounter than I usually prefer.
Upon rereading, I actually think this piece is an excellently illustrative example of how it’s possible to, how one can, incorporate that kind of darker, more haunting, momentary and wild/fierce approach to the physical dimension of the characters’ sexual intimacy without crossing over into dubiously (quasi-)coercive, “icky” (by my standards/perception, anyway) territory or what the JS submission criteria summarily describes as “creepy”, and so forth. (If that makes any sense…) For me, this story pushes the lines a little bit, draws me in yet takes me aback (it’s a very edge-of-the-seat, holding-one’s-breath sort of piece, suspenseful in a way I struggle to explain) and flits around the boundaries (of…IDK, “wholesomeness” perhaps? Decency? Preferential acceptability?) so to speak, and it’s that very aspect, the way it’s “challenging”, that adds to its special “literary”, genre-transcending quality, attribute or nature that I noticed originally.
So wonderful to revisit this story – I’m glad not everything was swallowed with the collapse of SS and Leslita. When I read this dreamlike dialogue, I can’t help but hearing that old Cream song
“And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing in the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea
And when her fingers find her
She drowns you in her body
Carving deep blue ripples
In the tissues of your mind
Tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter…”
I miss Shy Mom — an even lovelier person than she is an author, which is REALLY saying something. And despite my enormous site-related work load, I hope she writes for us again some sweet day.
I wrote a very short piece – The Mermaid, more in the style of what VerityVioletViola talks of. It was published on SS and it was that story (and our friendship)that inspired Shy Mom to write this story.
I haven’t submitted my own piece here because I feel it’s too short.
We are unlikely to see anything else from her. She is paranoid about safety and one unpleasant individual frightened her away. It was the saddest thing.
Please do submit it, kinkys_sis. If it’s half as good as your other work it’ll be a treat to read.
Like beautiful poetry, they are joined, each aching for the release they find and the joy of it all!