The sea is never quiet. Even on the calmest days, when the surface looks like glass stretched to the horizon, the water still murmurs. Waves shuffle against rocks, shells click and roll, and deep beneath, something always stirs. The fisherman knew this truth better than most, for the sea was his bread, his bed, and his companion.
His name was Elias. He lived in a crooked hut at the edge of the shore, where nets hung like tired curtains and the smell of salt never left the air. Each morning, before the gulls screamed their hungry chorus, Elias pushed his small wooden boat onto the tide. His arms were rope-thick from rowing, his skin leathered by sun, but his eyes… his eyes still held the brightness of a dreamer, even after so many years of routine.
Elias loved the sea, yet he also cursed it. Some days it gave generously—baskets of silver fish leaping as if begging to be caught. Other days, it held its treasures close, leaving his nets empty and his stomach growling. But he never stayed away. The sea was both his torment and his muse.
One dusk, as the horizon burned with the last embers of the sun, Elias cast his net for the final time that day. The water was unusually still, the kind of stillness that makes a man’s heart quicken. He rowed out farther, where the deep turned dark and the stars began their watch. When he hauled the net up again, it did not thrash with fish. It shimmered.
Caught in the mesh was no ordinary creature. Scales of emerald and sapphire glistened against the twilight. A tail, strong and graceful, flicked helplessly. And above it—shoulders, arms, a face framed with flowing hair that gleamed like seaweed spun from moonlight.
A mermaid.
She looked at him with eyes too deep to name, oceans inside them. She spoke, but her voice was more like a current than a word. “Fisherman, release me.”
Elias’s breath tangled in his throat. He had heard stories from old sailors, tales of half-women, half-fish who lured men into madness or riches. But to see one with his own eyes—it was a temptation sharper than hunger.
He whispered, almost to himself, “What would I give… to keep you?”
The mermaid’s expression hardened. “Careful, fisherman. Desire is a tide that pulls without mercy.”
But Elias, poor Elias, had already felt the tug. Days passed, and though he set her free that night, her image haunted him. When he cast his nets, he hoped to glimpse her. When he walked the shore, he searched the waves for her face. His dreams filled with songs he could not hear fully, only sense, like whispers through a seashell.
And one evening, when the sea swelled with a storm and lightning split the sky, she came again. This time not in his net, but rising from the water of her own will.
“Why do you seek me, Elias?” she asked, her hair dripping jewels of rain.
He reached for her without thinking, though she stayed just beyond his touch. “Because you are more than the sea itself. If I had you, I would need nothing else.”
Her gaze softened with something like sorrow. “You mistake me for a gift to be owned. But I am not treasure; I am the current. And the current drowns those who cling too tightly.”
Elias pleaded. He promised her shelter, devotion, anything she could name. And against her better judgment—or perhaps out of pity—the mermaid lingered. For a time, they met in secret places: caves hidden by tides, moonlit inlets where no fisherman dared row. She sang him pieces of her song, enough to keep him bound. And Elias, once a man of nets and patience, grew restless. He fished less, dreamed more, and spoke to no one of his secret.
But desire is a fire that never stays small. Soon, it was not enough to see her under the moon. He wanted her in the day, in his hut, in his life fully. “Come live with me on land,” he begged.
The mermaid shook her head. “If I leave the sea, I wither. If you leave the land, you drown. We are halves of different worlds. To force them together is to break them.”
Still, Elias pushed. His desire swelled into hunger, and hunger into desperation. He made charms of driftwood, begged old sailors for forbidden spells, whispered bargains to the sea itself. And one night, when the mermaid surfaced again, he cast his net not to fish—but to trap her.
Her cry pierced the stormy air. She thrashed, not with the helplessness of their first meeting, but with fury. “Elias! Did I not warn you? Desire is dangerous!”
But his ears were deafened by the roar of longing. He pulled the net tighter, dragging her toward the boat. “Stay! Be mine!”
The sea, however, will not suffer chains. A wave rose higher than any Elias had ever seen. It struck the boat with the force of judgment. Wood splintered, nets tore, and Elias was cast into the deep. For a moment, he thought he felt her arms around him, but whether it was to save him or to pull him down, he never knew.
At dawn, the tide washed broken planks upon the shore. The villagers whispered of storms and curses, but of Elias, no trace remained. Some claimed they heard singing in the waves afterward, low and mournful. Others swore they saw a figure, half-woman, half-sea, staring with eyes full of sorrow before vanishing beneath the foam.
And so the fisherman’s hut rotted empty, his nets hung unused, his name carried only in warnings.
Moral: Desires can be dangerous.
