The Last Nymph

Sister Amatheia

When Maera finally composed herself, she turned to Doc and paused, seemingly to remember more of her past.

"My sisters were much wilder than me," she said, as a faint smile replaced the sad face she had tried to hide from him. "And oh, how they teased those young men on the ships!"

"I'm sure of it, "Doc replied, more at ease now with Maera's change in emotions. "The writings, you know, are full of such stories," he went on, trying to avoid being pedantic. "You and your sisters had quite a reputation. Not as evil as the Sirens, mind you, but just as full of trickery."

"I know, Doc. It's true. But you had to see my sister, Amatheia! How she teased certain sailors when we came to sing to them . . . and then gave them so much . . . if not all . . . of what they wanted!"

Doc raised his eyebrows at this enticing prologue. He leaned back on the rock, finishing his morsel of bread and cheese, and only hoping she would elaborate.

"Of course, she was one of several of my Nereid sisters who always went further . . . in everything. But playing into what those men craved was her favorite hobby."

Doc nodded in anticipation.

"We all knew that she, and a few others, swimming along with us, would eventually come to enjoy the whole ritual of luring the men into the sea. And I swear, Amatheia liked it as much as the men did! Though we all made a pact to keep those adventures far from my father's ears."

Doc smiled. He was only further enchanted by the spritely girl before him, her dress now dry and fluttering brightly in the warm breeze.

"Amatheia, you see, had raven dark hair. She was shapely. And was one of the fastest swimmers of all my sisters. She could easily have gotten away from the clutches of those men . . . and their roaming hands! But many times . . . she did not. She allowed them to do things to her that . . . frankly I did not want to stay and watch."

Again, Doc's eyebrows went up in response.

"Sometimes this began under the sea, and it finished in a rock cave or on a sandy beach with both the handsome sailor and my sister Amatheia sleeping in an embrace with him that lasted half the day or night!"

Doc just smiled back at her now, himself feeling a little embarrassed by the vivid narrative Maera was telling.

"It always started when the stupid men would jump off the side of their ship. We tried to make sure the waters were calm and shallow. So as not to put those mariners in danger, as the Sirens always did. But once they were silly enough to join us under the waves . . . my sisters and I would size them up for which were the most handsome. Which we would allow to kiss us. And for Amatheia and a few of my sillier sisters . . . how much they would let them please them . . . in the ways those young men always loved."

Doc was thoroughly amused. But also surprised. He had firstly never experienced so much entertainment while learning the antics of Sea Nymphs through scholarly research. Nor did he ever truly see—through the visual cataloguing of paintings or tableaus depicting the sometimes seemingly erotic encounters between nymphs and men—how much more went on beyond the canvasses. For it was through this new edification that Maera described the Nymphs' interactions with men as, at times, truly pleasurable—if not authentically sexual, as she now suggested.

This was totally surprising to Doc, as it had existed through hundreds of years of documentation, that the Nymphs were not fully human, and therefore did not share in the carnal sensations of men or women. Hence, they were generally and historically believed to be not fully capable, anatomically, to couple sexually with men. Coldly and antiseptically to the contrary, it was believed these rarefied beings were mere morphological constructions of Nature. Generally, but not reproductively, like the subjects of their teasing: Mankind.

This notion of Nymphs being the 'asexual facsimile of young women,' was now being shattered by the professor's young primary source, Maera herself. It was all a significant moment, both for mythological research, and for Doc during that delightful afternoon of storytelling. And all especially in light of the fact that Maera, the fetching and eager representative Nereid, seemed to be willing to go on with even more bawdy tales of her equally fair, and sometimes bolder sisters.

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