I light a candle with a taper as smoke from insence spirals high into the candles light, forming the figure of a mermaide, but only briefly. I sit down across a table from my mother Sirona and begin to tell her the story I had heard from a shell today. Out at sea on a large ship a captain stitches a small hole in one of the sails. A scruffy cat bats a bait fish around that he just snatched from a fisherman's bucket who was to drunk to reel in the fish that has been tugging at his line.
Clouds roll in, darkening the sky slowly.
There will be a storm soon but not a bad one from the looks of it, noone is to worried. A few drops bounce the deck of the ship and touch the face of the incoherent drunkard, but do not phase him. The cat runs off into the hull with the bait fish in his mouth. The captain pulls his hat over his brow, walks into the bridge and closes the door. He goes to the wheel and looks out at the ocean.