Peter

Peter was a scientist, known more for his conscience than his obedience.

One evening, his chief summoned him and placed a photograph on the table.

It showed a mermaid—half woman, half sea—her eyes gentle, her face untouched by cruelty.

“She lives in these waters,” the chief said. “Bring her to me. Alive.”

The chief had tried to capture her himself, but failed.

So the task was passed to Peter.

“I won’t do it,” Peter said quietly. “She’s innocent. She belongs to the sea.”

The chief’s voice hardened.

“Refuse, and you lose everything.”

Cornered by fear, Peter accepted.

Peter went to the shore where the sea breathed softly against the rocks.

He lay still upon a stone near the water, pretending to be unconscious.

After a while, she appeared.

As the mermaid rose from the sea, the water slid from her body—and her shimmering tail slowly transformed into human legs the moment her feet touched the shore.

She walked toward him carefully that innocent girl not even care about her lower part, unsure of the world above the waves. Her beauty was not sharp or dangerous—it was gentle, almost childlike. She knelt beside him, touching his face with worry and innocence.

That was their first meeting.

They began to meet often.

When she came ashore , her tail would always turn into legs, allowing her to walk beside him under the open sky with bare bottom.

Peter brought her small gifts—shiny metal, glass beads, things that caught the light.

She brought him shells, pearls, and smiles that made his chest ache.

He spoke to her of the world above the sea.

She listened with wide eyes and unbroken trust.

Slowly, without meaning to at first, he made her fall in love with him.

And somewhere along the way, he fell too.

But the order still hung over him like a curse.

One day, with trembling hands and a breaking heart, Peter gave her a drug mixed into her drink. She smiled at him before taking it, unaware of betrayal.

Moments later, she collapsed into his arms.

He held her as she slept, tears falling into the sand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He took her to the laboratory.

There, he placed her inside a massive glass chamber filled with seawater. As her body touched the water again, her legs slowly changed back into a tail.

She floated unconscious, trapped between two worlds.

Peter stood before the glass, knowing he had completed his mission—

And destroyed the only pure thing he had ever loved.