She has always remembered Mother's little escapes from the confines of their house, late at night, in the deepest part of night when the world slumber, dreaming the little people in their little lives each falling into oblivious sleep one by one. Sleep has never been able to hold little children firmly, they slip in and out of that dream state like agile gymnasts. So it was, that she had heard her mother's familiar shuffling, and the door click its secretive little cluck like a disapproving bystander to some scandalous affair. She had woken up full of an electric surge of energy of one confronted by a mystery. She watched the shadow of her mother slip down the house stairs like some night bird in its own element. She had looked beautifully bewitching, her hair untied, only the blurry shape of a shadow intermingling with the surrounding darkness. Slipping out of the house as quiet as night, the stars and time. She followed, finding that darkness and the quietness protected her like a shield. No prying eyes of the neighbors, no chatters of the day. Everything was sacred and magical in the stillness, the darkness.

She followed Mother down the winding streets, past the familiar places of the day, now transformed by the night into some foreign enchanted place which exists only at this magic hour of the night. They hurried, each in their own shadowy cloak, down down down the winding paths, past the shops, the little drinking places, the funfair which at this hour resembled an abandoned kingdom, past the dock, to the place where the sea joins the land. In the day time it is always full of tourists, children, elderly folks splashing at the water, picking shells, sun-tanning. Now, only the moon sang its silent song, illuminating everything, and the sea breathed its gentle rhythm. Mother stops, stands bathed in the silvery light, her hair glowing. Just as she had dressed herself in shadow like a trained dancer, she now uncloaked her shadows, she stood naked and glowing in the moonlight. Through her child's eyes, she sees mother jumping across the sand, a white bird as it takes flight, changing into a white dolphin as she dives into the gentle waves. Her mother's a mermaid. She sees her disappear in and out of the waves, dancing, teasing, fighting the waves. Now she is home, the place where she belongs and where she is truly free. When she finally reappears out of those black, purple and silver waves. Mother smiles at her, takes her warm hand, and in her silence shows her their kingdom, their place of birth. She remembers how the salt grains and the sand in Mother's hair had glowed like so many jewels on a royalty's crown. Mother teaches her the mood of the sea, and its music. They took a dive together in the hour when both the moon and the sun both claim the sky as sisters and friends in their hour of friendly truce. Adding a golden tinge to the silver glow.

But that is past. Mother has long returned to the Sea. And she now, an aging woman in her empty nest in the big city, dreams of the sea and of slipping out of her aged skin like a sea bird, and diving into that silver salt water, a mermaid.