The billboard on the rural highway still advertised mermaids at the Gatlinburg aquarium, though summer was over, and the mermaids were gone back home to Atlantis.
The wonder of the children, in the soft darkness and blue glow of the aquarium, had been edifying to see, when corruption and jadedness comes for birthright innocence sooner and sooner.
A little boy had watched the mermaids swim, and listened to them sing, with rapt and devouring attention, held in his mother's arms, against her hip, everything gentle in this kingdom of water.
II
The billboard was out of season, and after an Indian Summer, the cold of October had come, and the beautiful mermaid with her aquamarine tail was a sparkling of color on a grey day.
Wars come with winter, and they were all happening all at once, and would mermaids, and dark and blue aquariums be lost, in another worldwide spasm of violence?
What would happen to that little boy, so enraptured of the mermaids and their singing, that pure hearted soul? What would happen to him, and what would he become?
III
The beautiful mermaid and her aquamarine tail, the color of joy and love bright against a slate sky, as I head to what be the last good times before the fires and the fury.
Would that I could join the mermaids in Atlantis, the sunken kingdom that had already paid for it's sins of hubris and conquest, and leave the scars of the heart that are the curse of being a man.
Little are sweet and love beauty and cling to their mothers, but corruption and cruelty come for them and steals their birthright innocence, and they forget they love the songs of mermaids.
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