You happen to live with the most exceptional entity. A beauty rare and precious and ultimately fragile. Not only do you adore what you have, but you've spent years protecting this wonder from every danger, and you intend to do nothing less until you die.
But now what will you do when a second wonder unexpectedly walks into your life?
"In the peephole, a second shape was moving. I went to the kitchen window and looked at the derelict car again, and that's when I finally noticed the girl. She was walking across my yard. I took me a breath or two to realize that she belonged to the vehicle and the half-dead druggie. She was that different, that unexpected. I saw long red hair and assumed that the attached face would be prematurely old and wrinkled. But it wasn't. She wasn't. I'm not claiming that she would have stood her own among the finalists of a major beauty pageant, but then again, she might have. Her youth was obvious. Her beauty snuck up on me. Even after a long stare through the kitchen curtains -- long enough for her to come most of the way across my grass -- I was only beginning to appreciate the tiny nose and blue eyes and that innocent, lovely mouth, each feature combining into something just a little short of gorgeous."
Robert Reed is a prolific science fiction author -- an award-winner who sometimes writes outside the usual SF genre. "Mermaid" might be one those exceptions.
Genre: Science Fiction
But now what will you do when a second wonder unexpectedly walks into your life?
"In the peephole, a second shape was moving. I went to the kitchen window and looked at the derelict car again, and that's when I finally noticed the girl. She was walking across my yard. I took me a breath or two to realize that she belonged to the vehicle and the half-dead druggie. She was that different, that unexpected. I saw long red hair and assumed that the attached face would be prematurely old and wrinkled. But it wasn't. She wasn't. I'm not claiming that she would have stood her own among the finalists of a major beauty pageant, but then again, she might have. Her youth was obvious. Her beauty snuck up on me. Even after a long stare through the kitchen curtains -- long enough for her to come most of the way across my grass -- I was only beginning to appreciate the tiny nose and blue eyes and that innocent, lovely mouth, each feature combining into something just a little short of gorgeous."
Robert Reed is a prolific science fiction author -- an award-winner who sometimes writes outside the usual SF genre. "Mermaid" might be one those exceptions.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Robert Reed's Mermaid