Atomic Mysteries

As a child, Mira was told by her mother that humans never truly touch anything in their entire lives. Hand in hand, Mira stared quizzically up at her mother. How could that be? Her fingers were laced tightly with her mother’s, soft and supple skin cocooned against weathered lines. It simply didn’t stand to reason that her mother’s words were true.

A gentle kiss against her forehead. The brush of a caring finger against her cheek. A hug ever so warm and encompassing enveloping Mira’s small figure.

For Mira, the evidence was concrete before her very eyes and nothing in the world could convince her otherwise.

As Mira grew up, and the knowledge brought by middle school science classes cultivated an understanding of how atoms functioned. Formed as a nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons, each atom carried an electromagnetic barrier that repulsed the fields of other atoms. Each held ever so slightly apart. So close, but so metaphysically far from touching.

Mira came to understand the scientific principle, yet never settled for the realities of it. Her scientist mother stated resolutely that humans could never touch anything, but Mira felt the world and its emotions around her as surely as she knew how to blink. In fact, sometimes Mira felt she was so in tune with the world that she was at the cusp of unravelling a hidden layer of wonder; She believed that she could touch all the stars in the galaxy and change the way their axis’ spun to reveal a physical manifestation of all the wonder she felt.

So strong was this belief that one day she did it.

Mira had spent her afternoon watching the thrashing waves crest and plummet along the shoreline by her house. A languid afternoon had turned into a dusky evening, and soon the heat of the sun was simmering down into a temperate pulse as Mira savoured the entirety of those heartbeats on the sand.

It was precisely at the moment where the sun shifted below the horizon that a shimmering entity blazed across the sky. A star, winking brilliantly down at her. Mira’s eyes widened, her gaze beholden to the falling star trailing the remnants of the sun. Mira was never one to miss the blessing of a celestial emergence. She promptly intertwined her fingers and uttered a whisper that was ferried away by the wind.

“Show me the wonder behind the world”, Mira murmured.

Mira lifted her head, eyes straining as the last vestiges of the shooting star faded from view. She sighed in mild disenchantment as the beach remained stoic as ever, soon lit only by the faint beams of moonlight and pinprick of stars watching, waiting, listening.

A soft splash broke the rhythm of the waves. Small and tentative, merely a wayward ripple. Mira paid it no mind.

Another splash echoed throughout the night. Mira tilted her head. Perhaps a bird trundling along the shore.

The next splash came with a fanning spray of sea water, striking tall into the air before cascading down upon the stretch of sand before a shocked Mira. She sprang to her feet with a startled shriek, gasping at the sea’s sudden outburst.

There was something moving in the water.

As Mira crept inch by inch towards the beckoning sea, she squinted to catch the glints of the moon’s warped reflection cast against midnight waves. She inhaled sharply as the gleams transfigured into something wholly different from the crescent lantern in the sky. In the midst of Mira’s cosmic astonishment, there was only one word her mind could conjure to describe the being lying before her.

Mermaid.

Caught up in a tangle of marvel and utter bewilderment, Mira cautiously stepped closer until she was ankle deep in the churning ocean’s grasp. Time seemed to suspend itself as Mira drew nearer, towards the creature that couldn’t be.

The sight before her simply eluded the know laws of the world. Science defied by a force entirely unrelenting, wild, and free. It was as if the atoms had yielded to an incomprehensible power, rending apart the very fabric of the universe to deliver a mermaid to Mira’s insatiable worldly curiosity.

And yet, of all the humans to come before, this mermaid had arisen from the deep to encounter the singular soul accepting of its existence as reality. Mira, who had never been particularly bound by the science of the world, who rushed heart-first towards the wondrous and pulsating vivacity she felt in the air around her.

Mira moved closer, peering down in wide-eyed astonishment at the mythical being floating amongst the waves. The mermaid had a tail borne from myths, exuding of a thousand pearlescent hues. Her ashy grey skin was marred with deep-sea blues undulating in tides and shallows, and the gaps between her fingers were ever so slightly webbed. She knelt down and the world seemed to cease as Mira gazed into the mermaid’s eyes. She was met with a kaleidoscopic centre swathed within black orbs, just as a sole ray of sunlight would penetrate the depths of the sea.

Yet as the seconds passed, Mira realised that past the rainbow fractals in the mermaid’s eyes, there was an entire world of agony.

A deep, rumbling sound emanated from the mermaid, before it suddenly keeled over in a resounding spray of ocean water. Mira gasped in dismay and shock, frozen in place as the half-conscious mermaid bobbed on the shore. She was entirely unsure what to do with the anguished mythical being tussled by the waves by her feet.

“I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me”, Mira whispered as the mermaid’s thunderous rumbles continued.

As Mira observed the mermaid more closely, she noticed the murky flickers of dark matter clinging onto the mermaid’s side. Digging into the mermaid’s side.

In an icy wash of clarity, Mira recognised the dull sheen of monster jaws sinking its canines deep and vicious. Nets had ensconced the mermaid’s lower torso and tail in a rabid hold, scoring deep lines into skin and scales. Mira indecisively hovered her hand over one of the vicious hooks protruding from the mermaid’s hip.

The sound of another pained growl gave Mira all the encouragement she needed as she gently dislodged the fanged net from the mermaid’s body. One by one, the hooks were extracted with care as Mira worked them out in steady pulls and comforting hums. As the last hook was pried free, the mermaid’s deep calls subsided into softly-pitched shrills of relief. The mermaid stretched out a hand in resounding gramercy, which Mira took in her own. The slit of iridescent shimmer in the mermaid’s eyes widened, flooding the dark orbs with a galaxy of colours.

It was in that moment, at the border between the land and the sea, that the human and the mermaid existed within a moment that transcended the confines of their separate worlds. Webbed hands touched against human fingers. Gratitude met with eternal kindness.

A shared tenet of universal understanding.

With a parting nod, the mermaid turned around and slid back into the ocean. Mira held her breath the whole while, face lit in jubilant wonder as the murky figure of the mermaid moved towards the open horizon. With a last flick of a lustrous fin, the mermaid dove into the depths as its parting splashes were devoured by swirling waves.

That night Mira returned home to a fretful mother, and before long found herself eveloped in towels brimming with a parent’s love and concern.

Ever since that fateful day, Mira remained fiercely willed that the world was a live and tangible creature, as if all the forces and elements of life were bound to rush through her and into her soul. She was the girl who had transcended the atoms themselves for a moment in time, a chance encounter with the peculiarities of the universe around her. Her world was touched by the buzzing vibrancy of spirit and vigor; she felt the love in her mother’s touch, she felt the compassion as her friends bandaged her open wounds, and she felt the kindness in a stranger’s joyful smile.

Science had taught Mira growing up that humans could never touch the people and world around them. But in the end, Mira was touched by life itself in all the ways it mattered.