Welcome to Gaia! ::

Today, I passed up the opportunity to go on a dinner date with the charming employee who works at the local bookstore, with whom I’ve been infatuated with for quite some time.

“Would you like to go for dinner next Friday?” he inquired in a rather quiet voice, so as not to disturb the silent people around me. “I know a good place–”

“No,” I deadpanned.

That was that. Without saying another word, he left me to my bivalves.
I thought it strange, my being so rude, but I decided not pay any attention to it. Perhaps I’d get the opportunity to accept his invitation when I was finished with my work. We were quite friendly on most days – a simple “no” would not change that.

Somehow, I could sense that this painting is going to be different. I could feel the recognition from this painting already.



Today, I declined an invitation to my dearest friend’s twenty-first birthday celebration.

“Pearl, why don’t you come with us next weekend?” she asked, some desperation in her voice. “You don’t go out enough.”

I hung up without saying anything. She should have known that was going to be my answer. She knows me well enough to know that I never go out when I have to work to do.

I let my brush dance across the underwater scenery.

This painting would bring me glory.



Today, I painted again. I let the brush glide across the canvas, forcing the hues to blend into one another. I had created a gorgeous woman with a crimson fish tale, a somber oyster that would not open, and a doomed ship, but they weren’t right. So, I changed their positions, modified their forms into something I wanted to be proud of. I’d created a mermaid that possessed an oyster and was swimming to a sunken ship. It was undoubtedly her home, but something was still off about my creation.

I could not point it out specifically, but something was definitely wrong with the picture that I had painted.

I gazed at my handiwork, morose colors bleeding into one another senselessly as the striking mermaid that I’d created cackled and reeled through the shadowy depths of the ocean, carrying with her an oyster that begged to die towards a ship that pled for life above the waves.

She whipped her tail up and down as she darted forward with her oyster. It appeared as if nothing would stop her from reaching her destination.
I held my breath in anticipation… and then she noticed me.

My heart raced. I let the paintbrush once again slither across the canvas to crush the head of the dastardly serpent-woman before she could do me harm. The oyster still begged for mercy and the ship still begged for life. I shattered the ship’s will by making it rot – it said no more as ravenous eels found refuge within the wreckage.

But the oyster continued to beg for death as it fell from the mermaid’s hands, so I cracked the shell open. The oyster was silent.

And on the inside was a pearl so brilliant, one almost could not notice the carnage strewn across the canvas.

My pearl was alive amongst corpses.



“It is with our deepest regrets that we lay Pearl Sanders to rest,” said the priest from his podium. “She was truly gifted in life. It is truly a shame that she has received recognition only in death.” His gaze rested on the crowd. “May she rest in peace.”

The hundreds of people clad in black nodded somberly, then dispersed. Most of them had come to honor the artist who had been mentioned on the news as “the woman who died doing what she loved,” which had brought her national renown, while a few had come to mourn the loss of a close relation.
Within thirty minutes, only a few close family members and friends remained.

“It’s such a tragedy. I had called her just a week before,” a woman lamented. “I should have visited. Perhaps I would have been able to help her….”

“She worked herself to death – I really do not think anything would have stopped her,” another woman comforted. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“I just can’t believe she forgot her medication two weeks in a row,” the first one sighed.

“What a shame. But what can be said of a woman who forgoes food and water and medication in favor of painting headless mermaids and decomposing ships?” scoffed a third person.

Perhaps he was being coarse, but it was difficult for him to speak kindly of the artist whose last word to him was an inconsiderate “no.”