Once upon a time there was a mermaid who wanted to marry a prince so much that she traded her voice away for the promise of beautiful legs that would carry her into a dance and into his arms. Though she would be mute, her legs could do the talking, and if he declared his love, her obligations to the Evil One would fall away, she could forsake the oceans forever and live an earthy life with him.

You remember this story?

She was granted her legs and every step was as though on blades; the agony and the silence and her smile and the way she tossed her hair to win him – all this i remember. I must have been very young, and the moral was: Suffer For Beauty To Win Your Man.

Then I grew up and realised that she traded her voice not for legs but for the painful pleasures at their junction, and left the sea not for dryness but the promise of a humidity the ocean could not offer her. And I wondered, when she came to part her ways for him, how her joy felt, ocean-scented and reverberating mutely in his ears?