The plain stretches endlessly, surrounded by hills of desert earth. Christopher advances, exhausted. He has dust inside his sneakers as well as all over his body. His face burns and itches from sunburn. His body shivers increasingly from the cold; he fears collapsing if he succumbs to hypothermia.

He moves against time, which has planted itself before him like a gale. He continues forward despite the ice that pierces his head and rattles his eardrums. He moves forward without knowing if he's winning or losing.

Sometimes, he seems to catch a glimpse of her amid the whirlwinds rising from the ground or hears her voice in the dust. Sometimes he dreams of soaring into the sky to touch her after a tail of cloud. Sometimes he appears to recognize a crimson shadow and a pair of ballerinas flats at the end of tight-fitting jeans.

He imagines walking down those streets whose meanings only they both know, and this helps him forget the cold. Suddenly, she turns a corner and walks along the trees on a sidewalk smelling of sharpened pencils, crunching leaves beneath her feet in the late afternoon sun. They turn and embrace; triumphant nervousness intoxicates him, but minutes later, he realizes it's a fantasy, and he collapses into exhausting depression.

Despite it all, an unstoppable force compels him from his chest, as if she is calling him and waiting for him. He feels like he's screaming her name in agonizing desperation miles away. A need to rush to her rescue overtakes him; he quickens his pace, looking around in all directions, but it's a call that bewilders direction. If only he could serve as her compass, he would know where to go.

This quest seems utterly futile to those who have never confronted the invisible coincidence. To mundane eyes, he's just a man wandering alone; but for those who can see the transcendent, he stands on the border of the unknown, a madman, some might say, a genius or a deranged individual.

Time holds him in the sands of a clock whose cracked glass is about to shatter, about to cause a depressurization that would eject him beyond the insignificant and the complex, beyond the darkness of the cosmos, into the void itself, into nothingness, into a heavy meaninglessness that doesn't comfort but kills, into a constant death without the solace of transformation.

Has the coincidence abandoned him?

He shields his eyes with his forearms and looks ahead with half-opened eyes. He thinks he will overcome them and find her behind the imposing hill in front of him.

His leg gives way due to exhaustion. His knees touch the lifeless ground, and trembling increasingly from the cold, he collapses. His cheek hits the ground. He opens his eyes and sees a distant silhouette approaching, wrapped in a cocoon of ghostly waters that drown her. The silhouette transforms, moving away from her original figure. No matter how hard he tries, he no longer knows if when he remembers her, it is she who emerges in his mind or if they are merely perfect remnants that have come together to form an immaculate yet imperfect invocation. The beautiful Mermaid is fading away.

He makes an effort to recall her movements, but the memories are sealed and elusive. He can only grasp a tiny sensation. He remembers her eyes, and her gaze is the vestige of a forgotten emotion. He remembers her smile, and it no longer soothes him. He remembers her voice, and her song is a silent vibration that no longer propels him to Neptune.

All he can remember now is perfection. The ragged woman vanishes; what he loves most about her slips away from him like dry water, like dust blowing from his trembling hands. He clings to those crumbs, clenching his fists, and amid unintelligible voices, he says to forgetfulness:

—"Where is the place where the mermaids sing?"

And he succumbs to hypothermia.

 

The object takes shape with each piece of mirror Christopher links together. The edges of each connection can be felt on the surface as it slowly rotates.

Christopher peers his head in for inspection, but the reflections return an erroneous image, like a fantastical veil that portrays her presence, radiant and joyful, as when she used to wait for him by the library window.

The object spins in the middle of the space enclosed by the cold concrete walls. The remaining pieces float motionless, shining like stars and celestial bodies in a concave sky, the pinnacle of which is that incomplete and enigmatic riddle.

Christopher's body gleams, covered in the red of his own blood, as if bathed in a thick layer of crimson paint. In his hand, he holds a piece of mirror, which he must place in the space where it fits.

The object begins its second revolution, and the mistaken reflection hasn't changed; he is forced to see her with each turn. Christopher is infused with an indefinable longing, trying to capture in his memory the recollection of his own face, which seems to be beneath her skin.

Christopher and the woman with the crimson beanie met every day, at the same time, at the back of the library to continue writing the story.

 Sometimes they lay on the floor, facing up, and when the blood rushed to their heads, they ended up writing nonsensical things that made them laugh until their abdominal muscles couldn't take it anymore.

Like when Christopher said that the poet would need to eat during the journey and that the only option in the middle of the sea would be fish, but she said that wouldn't work because it would bother the Mermaid, and Christopher insisted they had to eat something.

"How is a mermaid going to eat fish? You're sick! Sick! That would be cannibalism!"

"So what then? Are we going to starve?" he replied. And she hit him on the shoulder with her notebook.

Sometimes they stopped writing to consult books and walked through the aisles reading titles. Once, struggling over a book they both wanted, they started trying to pull each other down like in a wrestling match and ended up testing who was better at throwing a kick. Other times, they had books spread out on the floor that helped inspire them.

The sky displayed a clear blue and splendid sun. The Mermaid and the poet sailed at the sailboat's maximum speed, causing the boat to sway strongly, and sometimes, it would jump as each wave was overcome.

She sat at the bow, with her tail breaking the surface of the sea. She felt the breeze with closed eyes and open arms. On her wrist, she had tied the black bandana that the poet used to wear around his neck. She had taken it off, claiming that he would be more comfortable in the weather.

The poet opened the lid of the last barrel he had yet to examine. It was the cargo that the pirates had on that sailboat. All of them had been filled with clothing for smuggling. When he uncorked it, he let the contents spill out: there were a series of brushes, paint jars, and metal tools, including a sword and a flintlock pistol with three bullets, gunpowder, wads of paper, and a ramrod. None of that was what he was looking for.

He held onto the ship's ropes and timbers and approached the Mermaid.

"What do mermaids eat?" he asked loudly to overcome the sound of the waves hitting the hull.

She turned, looking serious.

"You wouldn't want to know."

"Well, in what this boat had, there were no provisions or food, not even something to fish with."

"I'm not going to bring you fish if that's what you're trying to tell me."

"So, what then? Are mermaids not eating anything?"

"I feed on a particular kind of..." She paused for a moment, looking at the horizon before continuing. "It's not that I'm herbivorous, but for some reason, I fancy some roots with seaweed." She caressed his chin. "Wait for me here," she said before diving perfectly into the sea.

Christopher clung tightly to the ship's ropes as he scanned the horizon with his eyes. A salty breeze refreshed his face when his attention was focused on something in the distance. He searched among the tools and grabbed a spyglass. He stood at the bow and extended the monocular to look through it. There was a three-masted vessel with a swarm of dark crew members, armed with swords and muskets. He aimed at the flags to determine their identity. They were black with the image of a skeleton holding an hourglass. They were the pirates.

He moved towards the helm and hesitated to turn it. He knew he had to escape but didn't want to lose sight of the Mermaid. He watched in horror as the pirates approached closer and closer, while his mind struggled to find an alternative. He made up his mind and turned the helm all the way, adjusting the sails to maintain control of the ship during the maneuver. However, the pirates were closing in rapidly, despite its imposing size.

The poet looked out to sea, waiting for the Mermaid to return, but all he could see was the shimmer of the water.

The pirate ship closed the distance and sent eight men in a sailboat. They were approaching rapidly because six of them were rowing. Christopher stirred the things he had taken out of the barrels, raised the pistol, loaded a bullet with gunpowder and the ramrod, and grabbed the sword, preparing himself by taking cover behind the boat's hull.

He stuck his head out to see how far they were. He saw a pirate pointing a musket at him and fired. Christopher ducked instantly, and the bullet struck the edge of the hull, shattering it into splinters. He heard more shots, and two ropes with hooked ends flew through the air, tangling in the rigging of the sails.

He glanced through the hole the projectile had left. The pirates were just a few meters away. The poet aimed the gun, resting it on the same hole, and fired. The bullet hit a pirate in the shoulder, and two of his companions rushed to his aid while three others returned fire. The shots collided with the wooden hull and mast.

Christopher grabbed the small bag of gunpowder, poured some to reload the gun, and covered the projectile with paper. He was about to insert it into the cannon when he felt a jolt in the boat, and then, a cold iron at the nape of his neck.

"Stay still."