The Merman, My Man
With the moonlight refracting into the sea, I noticed the hull of a ship floating nearby, from which a black object with two speakers dangled—which I immediately recognized to be a sonar.
Since it must have been the thing that messed up my bearings, I prudently swam away from it and slowly surfaced. Poking half a head out of the surface to observe the ship, I realized in surprise that Mary was on the bow.
She was dressed in a white kimono and playing the flute without a care, as if she was dwelling within her own world. The song of her flute unfurled over the sea’s surface in tune with the waves, a picturesque scene of Shangri-La that left me spacing out for a moment.