May 2026 – Listen Here

The descent into Atlantis came quietly this year.

No ecstatic plunge beneath the waves.

No rum-sweet chaos.

No breathless dash toward the sea with salt already on my lips. 

Atlantis opened for me gently.

As though the sea itself had recognized my exhaustion.

One moment, I still belonged to the mainland – to fluorescent lights, obligations, calendars, unanswered messages, and the endless arithmetic of ordinary survival.

The next, I stood at the threshold of the drowned kingdom with saltwater curling around my ankles like attentive hands.

I was never truly one of them, of course.

Not an immortal daughter of the deep.
Not sea-born.
Not fashioned from pearl and tidefoam beneath lunar currents as the others were.

Only a weary surface woman granted temporary passage among goddesses.

Yet Atlantis received me anyway. Mercifully.

The transformation always began gradually there.

First, the loosening.

The shoulders unclenched.
The lungs relearning fullness.
The terrible vigilance of mainland womanhood dissolving strand by strand beneath the tide.

Then came the stranger alterations.

Sapphire curls endlessly harassed by playful currents.

Skin kissed and glimmering beneath moonwater.

Fingertips webbing as I am lured further from shore.

Pearlescent scales flickering down my spine and over my hips as Atlantis drew me deeper into herself.

The gradual and dangerous sensation that perhaps I had never belonged to the surface at all. 

By midnight, the courtyards of Atlantis shimmered with phosphorescent lanternlight while music wafted through submerged arches in drowsy hypnotic currents. Beyond the coral balustrades, the black sea rolled endlessly against the palace foundations, breathing like some vast slumbering god beneath us.

The sirens moved through those halls with sinful ease.

Barefoot.
Salt-jeweled.
Trading scandalous secrets over nacreous goblets while silver tides flickered across bronzed skin.

Gods.

Women become such extraordinary creatures when no world exists beyond the shoreline.

The sea life seemed equally fascinated by us.

Tiny bioluminescent reeflings gathered shamelessly near the palace windows whenever revelry grew too raucous, flickering back and forth in obvious obsession like scandalized old matrons collecting gossip. Once, I caught an octopus loitering suspiciously near one of the submerged columns while three sirens exchanged kisses in the corridor beyond it.

The creature vanished immediately when discovered.

Though not before releasing what I swear was an indignant puff of ink.

Even the dolphins behaved like relentless socialites in Atlantis.

Everywhere we wandered, sleek silver bodies circled nearby as though desperate for the latest intrigue from the palace. One siren insisted they carried rumors between the distant reefs faster than any messenger ever could.

By dawn, apparently, the entire sea knew who had slipped away from the banquet first.

And perhaps best of all:
The salacious mermaids themselves encouraged it.

They arranged themselves dramatically and with indolent splendor across coral puffs, exchanging observations in velvet murmurs while pretending not to notice who disappeared behind silk curtains together. One sea-born beauty actually lifted her goblet toward me with the knowing amusement of a siren who already knew precisely how the evening would end. 

I realized then that Atlantis possessed no true privacy at all.

Only varying degrees of theatrical discretion.

And somehow that made the kingdom feel even more alive.

I remember joy.
Champagne balanced recklessly near the lagoon’s edge.
Wet curls cascading down elegant backs.
The brush of sea-slick scales beneath starlit water.
A hand resting absentmindedly at my waist while laughter dissolved into the marine air.

No one hurried in Atlantis.

That may have been the kingdom’s most dangerous enchantment of all.

Time itself softened there.
Stretched.
Liquefied.

Moments ceased behaving properly.

A glance lingered too long.
Fingertips meandered curiously along bare skin.

A clamshell bra discarded over a coral shelf.

A kiss exchanged like contraband.

One siren tucked a damp sapphire curl behind my ear with such absent tenderness that my pulse stumbled outright beneath my ribs.

And somewhere between one breath and the next, I ceased feeling like a visitor.

I became something sea-shaped myself.

Not fully mermaid.
Not fully mortal.

Something in between.

Something the tide might mourn once surrendered back to shore.

____________________

Minutes and hours dissolved indistinguishably together until at last I found myself reclined within my great oceanic chamber where sunlight spilled across the enormous bed in molten ribbons like shipwreck silk eddying beneath shallow tides.

The sea moved visibly beyond the towering glass arches of the palace, casting wavering bands of saffron across tangled sheets and bare skin alike. Somewhere distant, whalesong rolled through Atlantis in long, melancholy hymns, the sound carrying strangely through the water as seaweed curtains breathed drowsily within the marine current. 

The first siren swam to me with the languid confidence of a creature wholly unashamed of her own splendor.

Pearls of trapped air clung to the elegant curves of her body. Others gathered along the graceful hollow of her throat before disappearing sinuously beneath the swell of her breasts. Her aquamarine crests tightened unmistakably beneath my wandering touch while she regarded me with that devastating sea-born serenity peculiar to women who understand exactly what they do to the hearts of others.

Mother Ocean.

The sheer beauty of her nearly unmanned me.

Her curls floated lazily around her shoulders like dark ribbons suspended in astral water. I reached instinctively to brush one aside, only for her lips to part softly against my fingertips as though even the smallest contact between us deserved reverence.

Her chilled fingertips descended beneath the delicate starfish adorning my breasts, exposing my nipples. I shivered outright when her mouth brushed the curve where shoulder became neck.

Not a kiss meant to conquer.

A tasting.

A reverberating sea-born inquiry.

Her fingertips merely traced the inside of my wrist.

That was all.

Yet the caress traveled through me like a current slipping beneath a shipwreck.

I watched her gaze follow the movement of her own hand across my skin as though she found the sensation as mesmerizing as I did. Her thumb serpentined inexorably into my palm before she guided my hand upward – against the opaline rise of her perfect breast.

The second mermaid arrived moments later, carrying one of Atlantis’s stranger relics:
a tiny citron conch humming faintly in her palm like a captive tide-song.

Sunlight fractured against the shell in luminous gold.

I looked up to find the second siren watching us with dark, fathomless hunger, one hand rippling absently between her own apex as though witnessing my unraveling had become its own form of pleasure. 

She drifted down the shimmering length of my tail with attenuated, buoyant grace, sea-dark eyes roaming languidly over the two of us already tangled together atop the ghosting sheets. There was something perilously beautiful in her gaze. 

Magnetism. Admiration. Lust.

The luxuriant appreciation women sometimes reserve exclusively for one another when no outside world exists to interrupt them.

Her lips lowered.

Not shyly.
Never shyly.

Like some ancient sea-queen descending toward a sacred ritual, she parted my scales with unbearable patience before lowering herself between them.

One siren curled languidly around my body, her floating hair tangling weightlessly with my own while her mouth worshiped mine in tender, drowning kisses. Her tongue moved against mine with wicked patience, savoring me deeply enough to leave my thoughts in ruins while her hands loomed worshipfully over my breasts, coaxing helpless little tremors from my body each time her lips lingered upon an aching crest.

Even kisses behaved differently beneath the sea, lingering between us in slow suspension as though the water itself wished to savor every touch.

Meanwhile, the second mermaid nestled between the sweep of my tail with the serene concentration of a priestess, sea-dark eyes half-lidded with bewitchment as she savored every quivering reaction she summoned from every newly sea-born inch of me.

Poseidon, help me.

The unhurried decadence of her mouth nearly destroyed me outright.

Every broad stroke of her tongue sent shimmering currents through my body while the sea itself buoyed me helplessly upward against them. My fins fluttered uncontrollably around her shoulders. My fingers tangled desperately through floating curls and drifting ribbons of seawater while pleasure tightened relentlessly through me, rising higher and higher beneath my skin until I scarcely recognized the sounds escaping my own throat.

And all the while, the first siren continued kissing me as though she intended to drink every fractured sound directly from my mouth before the tide could steal it away.

I could feel them savoring every reaction they drew from me.
Every shiver.
Every fractured sound.
Every helpless tremor.

My entire body arched helplessly, weightlessly from the shrouded sheets. The siren’s fingers threaded earnestly through my hair, and the other unmade me piece by exquisite piece beneath the topaz marine light.

The moment did not feel earthly.
It felt oceanic.

Like the sudden pull of undertow around bare ankles.
Like heliotic tide rushing through open chambers.
Like drowning somewhere luminous and willingly refusing rescue.

Beyond the palace walls, Atlantis continued breathing around us, wavering bands of lambent warmth lapping endlessly across our tangled bodies. 

The tide.
The whalesong.
The distant chatter of gossiping dolphins.
The endless pulse of the sea itself.

As though the kingdom had witnessed women worshiping one another this way for centuries untold.

And then I traded places with the other mermaid, lavishing feverish devotion upon the intoxicating curves of her body, drawing the delicate nipple of those dusken coral crests between my lips, the helpless arch of her spine when I lavished another slow caress over her.

Meanwhile, the other siren had discovered the clever citron conch once more.

The relic hummed softly in her palm.
Almost innocently.

Until she pressed it against the gate of her lover’s sensitive seam. 

Pleasure overtook her instantly, and she writhed beneath us.

Not all at once like lightning.
No – like an underwater eruption.

Like volcanic heat blooming beneath miles of black sea.

Her entire body jolted beneath us while a shattered little cry escaped her lips, and I swear even Atlantis itself seemed to pulse in answer. The citron shell sang louder. Wavering amber light fractured across rainbow scales. My own pulse turned catastrophic watching her come apart beneath our ministrations. 

Eventually, the shell was withdrawn from the quivering rainbow junction, the shell now coated in the unmistakable traces of a mermaid’s unraveling. Around us, the sea purred with ancient conspiratorial amusement, honeyed currents slipping languidly across our tangled bodies like a goddess pleased by the triumphant ruin she had arranged. 

That was the true atmosphere of the chamber.

Three mermaids worshiping one another free of shame, urgency, or sorrow.

For a long while afterward, none of us spoke.

We simply swelled together beneath wavering currents of honey-gold light while the palace hummed softly around us. One siren remained curled against my side, tracing idle little patterns along my abdomen. At the same time, the other floated nearby with salt-glittered curls suspended weightlessly through the water, their expressions carrying the dazed serenity of someone beautifully undone. 

The weary little instrument rested abandoned among rippling sheets and strands of sea-silk.

Beyond the towering glass arches, the teal ocean rolled endlessly onward.

Knowing.
Immense.
Conspiratorial.

And for one suspended impossible stretch of time, I truly believed the sea might keep us forever.

____________________________

The final morning arrived far too mercilessly.

Atlantis is elusive in that way.

The drowned kingdom reveals itself only briefly and only to women carrying exhaustion too heavy for the surface world to soothe. Then, before the heart can fully adjust to its splendor, the currents close over it once more.

There was no dramatic farewell.

No lament from the heavens.
No grieving chorus from the sea.

Only the quiet desolation of dressing again.

Of fastening oneself back into civilization piece by piece.

The chamber still carried traces of the evening:
discarded goblets,
saltwater drying against tangled sheets,
the faint citron hum of that curious little shell abandoned near the pillows like evidence of a fever dream.

The goddesses of Atlantis did not mourn openly. Instead, they bestowed tiny echoing caresses in passing, fingertips drifting slowly along my arm or waist with unbearable delicacy, their sea-dark eyes carrying the quiet sorrow of creatures long acquainted with impermanence. 

Somewhere nearby, dolphins erupted into suspiciously timed chatter the instant I floated past, as though the entire kingdom remained delightfully committed to gossip until the very end.

And perhaps that was the cruelest enchantment of Atlantis.

How effortlessly life continued there after it altered yours forever.

Soon enough, I returned to motherhood, grocery lists, deadlines, traffic, and the dull mechanical rhythm of ordinary womanhood.

Yet something within me never resurfaced.

Even now, during the weariest hours of evening, I sometimes catch myself pausing beneath the shower with my eyes closed, remembering the sensation of sacramental hands wandering indulgently across salt-damp skin.

The unhurried worship.
The velvet-toned mirth of women briefly freed from the world above.
The catastrophic sweetness of being desired without performance.

And by the blackwater gods – 

the way those sea-born women looked at one another.

Not hungrily.

Not possessively.

But like sacred things briefly illuminated beneath empyrean surf.

Sometimes I still imagine Atlantis waiting below the blackened waves, alive with gossiping sea creatures and immortal women draped across coral lounges, giggling into shell-pale goblets.

And somewhere in those submerged halls, I am certain the citron conch still sings my name.

Until next time, XO. Elsie