Maiden of the Sea

Charles McKinney dove from the cliff into the waters below, his naked body flashing beneath the waves with hardly a splash. Arcing through the water, he came up for air and brushed his hair from his eyes, gazing back up from where he had dived.

His lighthouse sat upon the highest point of cliff and he tended it alone, with no one anywhere near him. The nearest farm was a day's walk east, and the nearest village another day further. The beach near him continued up the side of the cliff and led to his home beside the lighthouse. He like this life, despite its lonely nature, with all the beach he could want to walk, and all the breaking surf to trudge through, and the deepest ocean in which to swim.

Blowing bubbles with his nose, Charles treaded water with his limbs, enjoying himself. He had never been afraid of the ocean, having grown up near it and in it, but had heard stories of creatures in the deep, coming up to feed on wayward souls who foolishly wandered into the water. He didn’t believe those stories, but he had seen something off this very cliff when he was a youngster, what looked like the vision of a pale naked woman half submerged in the sea, before she disappeared from his sight. He had never forgotten that, but he had never seen such a thing again.

Until today.

The blue water was mostly calm, with the occasional wave cresting, but he knew from the storm clouds to the west that in a while there would be a thunderous deluge in this area. He would swim a bit longer, then return to shore.

As he drifted with the swells, a woman rose from beneath the waves, her head and shoulders breaking the water's surface not six feet in front of him. Astonished, Charles lunged away from her, a surprised grunt escaping him as he looked at her.

Her skin was pale and her hair was reddish orange, sodden from the seawater. Her large eyes were green, and oddly clear despite the salty water, and she was wearing no clothes that he could see. Immediately his arousal affected him as he understood how close he was to a naked woman.

Her face was innocent; blinking at him curiously with luscious lips slightly parted in her curious expression before she craned her neck back to look up at the cliff he had dived from, then returning her eye to him. She smiled and raised her eyebrows, not speaking to him.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked her in confusion.

She cocked her head with another smile without answering, waving her arms beneath the surface as she treaded water easily next to him. A surge of water pushed him closer to her, which surprised her, causing her eyes to flutter and her face to fall.

“No no, I won’t hurt you,” Charles said earnestly, holding out his hand. Her face softened again and she grinned, taking his hand lightly. He smiled at her touch, which caused her own smile to widen, and when she slowly sank beneath the surface, he did not resist when she pulled him along.

Beneath the surface he opened his eyes, which burned in the briny water. The vision in front of him was worth the pain though.

The woman's red hair billowed around her head, framing a face which when catching the light from above water was the fairest beauty Charles had ever witnessed. Her torso was completely naked, a pair of healthy, full, perky breasts buoyant in the water's embrace, capped with puffy pink nipples. Her belly was lightly muscled and her waist slim, and below that…

Charles froze in the water, hardly able to process what he was seeing. Below that was a fishy tail, where her legs ought to be. It was just like out of the oldest sailor's tales.

A mermaid!

Expelling his held breath, and realizing that he had sank further than he had intended, Charles began to ascend to the surface, as quickly as he could. Fear struck him as he kept his eyes on the surface, not daring to look back and impede his progress to safety, which fueled his fear at not being able to see his pursuer. But then, he caught sight of her, lazily paralleling his path to the surface, her head cocked quizzically again.

Slowly the fear left him, but he swam to the surface anyway, the mermaid following. He gasped for breath on the surface, the sunlight strong and bright from the edge of the thunderhead approaching, and watched the sea-bound beauty break the surface very near him, within arms reach.

Despite her inviting appearance, the innocently curious expression she wore, Charles was wary of the stories told to him by his ancestors, of old sailors lured into the water from their boats by these creatures, and dragged down to the depths, never to be seen again by their crewmates or family.

So he flinched back when the woman reached out to him. She blinked, but kept her arm out until he would let her touch his chin and lips. Then, her lips voicelessly formed the words that he had spoke earlier.

“No no, I won’t hurt you.”

A whisper carried these words to him over the water between them, and he was entranced by their soothing timbre. His fear began to melt, but before he could speak again, distant thunder rumbled in the west, simultaneous with the covering of the sun as it sank behind the weather front.

The mermaid looked toward the horizon with apprehension, then looked back at Charles. She leaned forward and before he could react, pressed her lips against his, kissing him for a brief few seconds. Then, she drew back, and gently but firmly pushed him towards shore.

He was dazed, but backstroked to the beach, able to keep an eye on the enchantress from the sea as she watched him go. He stumbled out of the water, able to see the rainfall out to sea, and watched as the woman held his gaze a bit longer before diving beneath the now-choppy breakers.

That night, with the rain hammering at his roof, he wondered if it had been a dream. His uncles in the hills had once shared dreamy mushrooms with him, which made him see things where they ought not to be, but he didn’t experience any flashing colors or shifting shadows when he was in the water. No, it had to have been real, and Charles vowed to return to the water every day until he found her again.

The rain continued through the next day, and drizzled through the afternoon and evening, and was still sprinkling when the sun once again retired beyond the horizon. Every hour, Charles would put his raincoat on and trudge to cliffs edge, gazing downward, hoping for a glimpse of the compelling creature from yesterday, but seeing nothing the entire day. He slept restlessly that night, but when the following day dawned bright and warm, he rushed through his daily duties, and by time noon had come and gone, he was tearing his clothes off.

Rushing to the cliff quicker than before, he leapt grandly out to sea, forming a perfect dive in midair, and knifing neatly into the water far from the shore. Shooting below the waves, he opened his eyes and saw the bottom slowly falling the further out to sea he looked, but could see nothing initially. Coming up for air, disappointed, Charles turned more toward shore, intending to dive again to look around, he saw her.

Hair plastered to her head and neck and shoulders, the mermaid was grinning not thirty feet away. She glanced up at the high cliffs from where he had dived, then back to him, and her shoulders shook as she giggled to herself.

Excited, Charles swam towards her, his face reflecting her innocent curiosity now. Well, perhaps not completely innocent. She was no less naked, and this idea caused his manhood to swell no less than when it did two days prior in the same situation.

When he got near her, she allowed herself to sink until just her eyes were above the water, then as he prepared to dive, sank entirely. He dove down and saw her in all her glory once more, completely unashamed at her exposure to his roving gaze. Aware of his limited time, he swam toward her, and righted himself when he got near, drifting up to her as she watched him move.

She reached out as he came within range, and grasped the muscles of his arms and shoulders, her eyes flickering as they shifted from contour to contour. Her mouth opened slightly as she looked down past his flat stomach at his crotch, wisping public hair half hiding his genitalia.

Charles saw where she was looking, and allowed his gaze to leave her impressive chest to seek out her own crotch, but since she had no legs, he had to look closer to see that there was a cleft, fleshy layers that looked like they opened up to admit something.

No motion is arrested underwater, and he drifted towards her belly, trying to make out further details. With her hands, she pulled apart her folds, which opened like a two-lipped flower, exposing pink flesh within, a complex system of musculature that he couldn’t make out.

He looked back up at her, thrilled and thoroughly aroused, as she sank down to his depth, looking into his eyes before looking down at his now throbbing reproductive muscle. Reaching out, she gently caressed him with a couple fingers, around the crest of his purplish head, mouth open in an appreciative expression.

He would have loved to stay in this position longer, but the need for air was too great. He looked up and kicked for the surface, but the mermaid was on him, pulling him against her, and pushing her lips against his as their bodies came together. He grunted at her assault, feeling her force his lips open with her tongue, and suck against his mouth. Unconsciously, he breathed out into her mouth, and she sucked the bad air from his lungs, only to breathe out into him what tasted like pure air from above the surface.

He found that he was sated for air.

He looked at her in surprise as she drew back slightly, just enough look into his eyes and give another smile. He grinned in wonder, feeling no need to return to the surface.

Close as they were, Charles felt his body push up against the mermaid's, feeling the irregular flesh of her cleft against his member, and her beautiful breasts pressing against his chest as she put her arms on his shoulders and looked at him coyly. He glanced down between their bodies, and saw her folds open and ready to receive him, so he succumbed to his arousal and grasped himself, aiming at her orifice.

Her body accepted him readily; her could feel her flesh give way for him as he slid inside, feeling a fleshy tunnel which routed him into her and upwards. He had to spread his legs to give him room to penetrate her hot interior; he watched her face morph from a grin to slowly change to one of slight distress as he invaded her body. Her hands now gripped his shoulders and her brow was creased, her wide eyes staring into his burning ones.

He felt his body come up against hers as his member slid completely inside her, but she wasn’t done. With a slight smirk, the mermaid pushed her lower half forward, and Charles could feel her cleft open wide beneath where it gripped his shaft, and to his surprise, his balls were engulfed by her folds, sinking into her warm embrace, where he felt them cuddled by the softest of flesh imaginable.

He groaned, bubbles coming from his mouth and nose before remembering to not breathe. His entire package was inside this mermaid, and she began to move around him. Adjusting her grip on his shoulders, she moved up and down relative to him, his organs slipping up and down inside her cleft. Charles could feel her insides caressing and stimulating him, not just with the motion, but as though her reproductive organs had a life of their own, squeezing and stroking him as he moved.

Again, she kissed him, breathing in his bad air and giving him breathable air. He grasped her head as they kissed, weaving his finger through her silken hair, and when they broke apart with a string of little bubbles, he let his hands roam down her body to grasp her breasts, each of them more than filling his hands.

Charles began to gyrate his hips in time with the movement of her body, making sure to keep his package from pulling out of her. She closed her eyes and arched her neck back, her mouth opening as their bodies moved together, her insides massaging his sensitive organs as he moved inside her.

Since he had never had sex in his life, it was not long at all before he began to orgasm, which she seemed to sense. Her head came forward, looking down at Charles’ body and then back up to his eyes in gleeful anticipation, holding his shoulders as if to keep him from getting away. He had no problem whatsoever with staying precisely where he was at the moment, as his internal organs produced his fluid and sent it rushing; the caressing flesh surrounding his balls made it more stimulating.

With a grimace of effort on the mermaid's face, Charles felt some sort of fleshy ring inside her slip over the end of his shaft and settle around it, which pulsed with warmth as he began to ejaculate. He flexed into the mermaid, his fluid shooting deep into her body, which she obviously felt; her whole body shivered and she smiled as she looked down between their bodies again. He groaned aloud before remembering that he was underwater, letting loose a group of bubbles before the mermaid to could clamp her mouth over his and resupply him.

As his climax fell off, they kept their mouths together, kissing and sucking on each other's tongues, their respective reproductive organs pulsing and twitching. When the last spurt of his seed had left him, Charles felt the mermaid's insides begin to disengage from his organs; her cleft opened and the tissue surrounding his balls retracted, but the ring around the end of his shaft stayed right where it was.

The mermaid broke their kiss as she pulled her hip region away from him, and they both looked down to watch him emerge from her. A red muscular appendage was attached to the end of his shaft, which pulled partway out of her as he left her flesh, but it soon slipped off of him and slowly slithered back into her folds, a tiny vestige of white fluid slipping out of the muscular organ before it clamped closed on itself.

The met each other's eye again, and the mermaid’s face expressed earnest gratitude; she brought one hand from his shoulder to rub her belly above the cleft, squeezing his shoulder with her other hand as a slow smile spread across her full lips.

Charles was fascinated, drained, and definitely in love, and gladly accepted the next kiss from the mermaid, which was slow and meaningful to him. He hadn’t even realize they were rising until his head broke the surface, bright sunlight greeting their return. He didn’t know how long they kissed, he was so enamored and infatuated with this creature, but it was a tragedy when it ended.

She slowly let her lips slide from his, her hands from his shoulders, as she backed away from him, her long hair covering her shoulders and her expressive eyes wet beneath outward slanted brows, a goodbye implicit in her actions. Charles held his arms out to her in a plea to stay, but still she backed away. She disappeared beneath the waves in a slow dive, her tail snapping at the smooth surface of the waters like a whale's as she descended.

Charles dove as well, intending to swim after her, but her tail was disappearing rapidly out to sea, scales flashing in the vague light, following the descent of the sea floor into darkness.

She had left him as suddenly as she had found him.

There was a reason why, he just didn’t know what it was. And it devastated him.

The day waned and the next day dawned, and she didn’t come back to see him. A week passed, with every afternoon finding him in the water, alone. Months passed, with no sign of a woman with a fishy tail. His feelings waned and calmed, but the hole they left never filled.

He was able to move on finally, moving the encounter to the back of his mind, allowing him to live his life without pain, but still able to open the memory every so often and remember it fondly.

The years passed and he tended his grounds, keeping the lighthouse shining brightly, swimming in the ocean, fishing and farming for himself. He began keeping a little bookshelf of tales and reference that interested him.

But he never married. His passion had been given, and he never saw the need to take a wife. Sometimes he would find himself staring at the sea, which was a maiden in its own way to lonely sailors; the mere sight of it was a balm to his lonely soul.

The day dawned when he was old, and he accepted it. His joints began to creak on his journeys down the sand beach to the shore; he had stopped diving from the cliffs sometime earlier. His hair had receded and faded in color, wrinkles were spreading everywhere.

But he could still swim strongly, and he made sure to practice.

He pushed off the sinking bottom with his feet, stroking forward and knifing through the water, his form as perfect as it ever was. He was in the embrace of his maiden, and all his cares melted away.

Then a form flitted through the water beneath him as he swam forward, his eye catching it briefly.

Unsure of what it was, and wary of whales and sharks, Charles came up for air and arrested his movement, treading water while he gathered breath and prepared to dive. But before he could do that, the surface of the water broke in front of him, and up rose the mermaid from his memory, as flawless and youthful as he remembered her being.

Her green eyes were as big and curious as he remembered, her hair as red and her skin as pearly. Her luscious lips smiled at him, and the thrill inside his bosom was as thrilling as he remembered it being.

It was her.

He kicked towards her and they embraced, tears flowing freely from his eyes as he was reunited with the only woman he had ever given his passion to. She held him, and kissed him, her own passion seemingly undimmed in the time intervening their encounters.

He got ahold of himself and they parted, keeping their hands entwined as they looked at one another.

“Oh, how I have missed you,” Charles spoke aloud. The mermaid's smile broadened, and her hand left his to wetly caress his cheek, her gentle motions a medicine to his soul. Her lips parted, forming voiceless sounds that whispered to him his own words, just as imbued with meaning.

“Oh, how I have missed you.”

He could have stared at her until the end of the world, and he would have been content.

The surprises weren’t over, however, and the mermaid turned away from him, gesturing underwater.

Behind her and further away, another redhead broke the surface, and Charles gasped at the sight of another mermaid, her skin just as fair and her tail just as shimmering green.

The new arrival, with his longer than the first, which covered her obviously bare breasts, looked at him timidly. Her face was surprisingly similar to the firsts, with subtle differences, like her jawline was sharper and her brow a different shape, and her eyes… her eyes were a pale blue, which was surprising, as they were the exact same color as his own, and the very shape that he saw in his mirror every morning.

Like a hammer blow, the realization struck. Charles turned in the water to look at the first mermaid, who was watching him in barely contained joy.

“She’s your daughter!” He said aloud, and looked back at the younger mermaid in wonder. Their union had come to fruition all those years ago, and he felt like crying again for a whole new reason.

“She's your daughter,” came the whispered words from his old mating partner from beneath the waves, and she kissed him on the cheek.

Charles, aware of his muscles burning from treading water for so long, reached out to the younger mermaid, who smiled cautiously at him before returning his gesture, their fingers touching and their hands entwined. He came close and wiped some droplets of water from her fair cheek, and some strands of hair from the other, gazing with pride on the young woman before him, his daughter.

The girl looked like she laughed, and hugged her father quickly before drawing back and looking at him once more, her exuberance affective and joy -inspiring.

Charles leaned over her and kissed her forehead, tears leaking from his closed eyes as his strength began to fail him. He gasped a breath as he slipped beneath the waves, slowly sinking in twenty feet of water. His former mate was beside him in an instant, her brow creased in concern.

He rubbed his legs and shook his head as he sank. He had not been out swimming as long as this, not since many years prior, when he was still youthful and powerful. Bubbles slipped from his mouth as he smiled sadly at the only women he loved as they came close to him.

But he was not about to drown as he had expected. For all he had known, that’s how the mermaids got you, keeping you far from shore until you died from exhaustion, trying to stay near them as long as possible. But this was not to be,.

The mermaids got on either side of him and pulled him to the surface, where he gasped for breath as they slowly dragged him towards the shore. He finally felt sand beneath his feet and stumbled out of the water, their arms leaving his arms and sides as he crawled out of the surf.

He looked back, tired, to see the pair of redheads next to one another, watching him as he sat up in a couple inches of water. He was sad he couldn’t touch them, but even laying here and seeing them smile in relief at him was enough food for his soul that he would sit there for eternity were they to stay.

But that was not to be either. All things must end.

For hours they looked at each other and frolicked in the sea in their own ways. But the mermaids had to return to the ocean, and the man to his lighthouse, and they did. The years wheeled on, and the sea was a further balm to the old man's heart as he became enfeebled with age, and his few friends buried him out to sea when he finally passed away, a smile upon his elderly features as he lay in bed facing the large window to the west, the straight watery clear horizon in mid-afternoon color as his final view of the world before he closed his eyes for the last time.

The tales were told that he now lives with his mate and their daughter, forever swimming along the coasts, returning to cove where they first met every few years, but never leaving the sea again, true to Charles McKinney's final wish. Who knows, it might be true. You never know with those old stories.

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