AT A young age, Mai Mai married Telso, the fisherman. At first she was happy to live with him by the ocean, away from her overbearing family. Telso was often gone for many days in a row on fishing expeditions, and she had freedom to wander the coast and collect flowers, and to work on her paintings and sculptures. Mai Mai was an exceptional artist and her husband encouraged her to develop her talents.

But Mai Mai was restless by nature. She resented the times her husband was away. She would get lonely for him. However, she strongly disliked his smell. She was married to a fisherman, but she hated the odor and taste of fish. After being on the boat for weeks at a time, it was difficult for Telso to get the smell off no matter how much he bathed. A year into the marriage, Mai Mai insisted Telso sleep in a separate room, which hurt her husband very much. As time went on, they grew further apart, and she refused to even cook the fish he caught.

Mai Mai’s loneliness deepened. Once, when Telso was gone for a whole month, she worked on a sculpture of a perfect man. A fantasy husband, who never left her and who had nothing to do with the sea. She cast him from clay not far from her bedroom window, and when he was finished she painted and dressed him so that he looked almost alive. That was her secret wish, of course, that a mysterious man would come for her and sweep her into another life filled with excitement and magic.

The night she finished her statue there was a terrible storm, with much lightning and thunder. People in the nearby village said it was the worst storm in the last sixty years. Mai Mai spent the entire night with her heart pounding in her chest, cursing her husband for being away when she was scared. Not once did she stop to worry how his ship was faring on the high seas.

The next morning the sun burst bright and clear. Mai Mai was hurt to discover that the storm had washed away her sculpture. Even the clothes she had draped over her clay-man were gone. Her heart broke; the statue had been her finest feat. She wondered if she would ever have the strength and vision to create another such work.

That afternoon, while hiking the cliffs that overlooked the sea, she saw a man. As she approached, she noticed he was alone, staring over the water. He looked familiar to her, although she knew they had never met before. He did not speak until she said hello. Then he turned and smiled, a wide white smile, and in that moment she felt her heart swell with love. He was younger and more handsome than her husband. Best of all he did not smell like fish. She asked his name and he laughed softly and said that he was a mystery man and did not have a name. But he called her by her own name and she wondered who had told him about her.