“Now I know why you leave your tribe to the mercy of a sika! You, who are their true queen. Once again, a mermaid of great talent turns from all responsibility, from timay, from her own potential, for the worthless love of a human male!” Nausicaa shook her head, black hair gusting in the drafts that leaked through the cave, the glow of her skin reflecting in harsh glints on the water. Luce gazed at her and knew that denying it wouldn’t help. “I know this story, Luce.”

“So what if you do!” The words lashed from Luce before she could stop them. “So what if you think you know everything already, and all the stories are the same, and you’re mad because it bores you?”

Oddly, Luce’s outburst seemed to soothe Nausicaa’s fury. She was even smiling, though there was something morose about it. “Perhaps this boy has the shimmering around him, and you thought of how he had suffered and how in justice he might be considered one of us?” Nausicaa watched steadily as Luce jerked with surprise. They gazed bleakly at each other. “You see, Luce? I can relate those things that occurred as well as you can.”

Stunned as she was by Nausicaa’s words, Luce still thought the older mermaid was missing the real point. She scrambled to find a way to explain her feelings. “But Nausicaa? That doesn’t matter. If you can tell me how it happened, I mean.”

“It doesn’t prove to you that I have witnessed this story too many times already? And that since I know how it starts, I may also know how it ends?”

“But I don’t know this story,” Luce objected. The words came out in a feverish rush. “It’s new to me! And it’s not some story, anyway. It’s my life.”

“Your life. Of course. Your pardon, Luce.” There was still something deadly crawling through that low voice, even as Nausicaa’s smile became a taut grin. “Though I have seen the same thing happen three hundred times at least and seen every time the mermaid destroyed by her forbidden passion, I should assume that your case will be different. Because with you it is not a story.”

Luce was ready to rage back at her, but something in what Nausicaa said stopped the words in her throat. Every time the mermaid was destroyed? Nausicaa gazed hard at Luce and nodded as if to acknowledge her stunned silence.