The Last Nymph

Awkward Introductions

By now it was late afternoon and Doc contemplated whether the two should take the ferry back to Kalamos, or continue on with the excursion with Maera on the mainland into the night, as he had suggested. Looking with enthusiasm through the various shop windows, selling both tourist souvenirs and Mytikas' serious attempts at summer fashion statements, Doc took serious stock of the trip thus far. He could see his companion was full of adventure and had lost all signs of trepidation about a world she had literally never explored out of the sea.

"Look, I know you're never hungry, but right now nothing sounds better to me than a Greek salad, some fresh baked bread, grilled octopus in basil and olive oil, some fried calamari and a simple house white wine. Can we go find those essentials in a taverna before we go hunting a place to stay for tonight?"

Maera smiled back. "Food. Traveling in ships, swimming . . . very little . . . and making love. Is that all you humans ever want to do?"

He smiled. "Well, since you put it that way . . . I would say . . . yes. There's truly very little else."

"I guessed right." She lit up with pride.

"Well, there are a few crazy ones like me that find studying things like mythology also exciting."

"Mythology and such things . . . I don't know them . . ."

"You wouldn't, Maera. Trust me. Like most of my species, it wouldn't interest you. But let's just say that subject, crazy as it sounds, is actually . . . about you."

"Is that why you care so much for me, Doc?"

He looked out from Mytikas beyond Kalamos, over to the large, towering island of Lefkada in the distance. The sun was just setting behind it and soon to be lost for another day.

"Well, it originally was, I guess you could say."

"Originally? What about now?"

Maera lifted her new sunglasses off her face. She turned to him and posed, just like the girls in the adverts posted in the shop windows.

"To be honest?" he went on carefully, "I do have a new opinion of you. Stronger feelings, you might say."

"So then . . . do you love me Doc, like I love you?"

He had to think about the question a moment as he led her in the direction of a seaside taverna widely known around Mytikas and beyond for its delectable seafood.

"You didn't answer yet," she reminded him, as they took a table at the water's edge.

"I know," he said, trying to look preoccupied with the menu.

She waited patiently.

He could sense her persistence. "I guess I really can't say. See . . . I'm not really sure how I feel about you," he suddenly said, looking up, over the menu. "You could call it a kind of love, I suppose. I'm not sure if it's your kind or not, but yeah. Love works, I guess. With some other feelings in there too. Confusing ones, really."

Maera never took her eyes off his. She seemed truly trying to decipher his human feelings for her. All her other encounters with men on the sea were easily categorized, and as Doc had learned from her own sad testimonials, they had always been uneventful in the end. Literally for centuries.

"Well, when will you know?"

"Know what?" He was now getting uncomfortable with the approaching intimacy.

"How you really feel about me?"

There it was again, he thought, Her Nymph DNA coming out. A force to throw men off balance. To seduce them at all costs. So persistent, so female—and yet not truly female at all. Something other-worldly. A creature with the innate power to charm, then ruin, just as his studies had taught him.