It was on the pebble bank of Lake Neuchâtel that he first found me, half-frozen in the crystal water with shoulders barely above the surface, fixed on the sight of the mountains. He stood with socks in his huge sandals, monitoring my shaking frame with great care and an irrepressible hint of amusement.
​
How it happened didn't matter much to me. I was at the end of what had been an unnecessarily long road, the boundary at which I now stood the final chapter in a series of events I will only once, for the purpose of transcription, care to recall. I had unceremoniously tumbled through the turmoil that garnered in me the aspiration to entirely abandon the pursuit of temporary pleasures in favour of a simpler life. It proved to be a difficult task, and I needed a teacher. One who not only knew and loved his matter intimately, but who also had the tender flair and wisdom to impart the fullness of its nuances even to the most stubborn of spirits.
​
I had tried many other ways before that moment. Most notably giving myself over to discipline, that sleek yet heavy creature who knows no other argument but preying on the most delicate tendons of shame. All other conceivable virtues had trotted into my living room, sat down briefly in the frayed armchair and pointed out an interesting facet of the furniture arrangement before indefinitely disappearing via the back door. Most never even finished their tea.
​
So it was from him, midst the unfolding of my most secret sorrows, masterfully exerted through methods he had wholly made his own, that I learned the strained and burning effort of lifting fingers from that which I held on to most. Both the desires, whose pursuits consumed my every hour, and the staged history of memories in which I was such an eager actor to play.

It is early, and I have already deceived you. By no obvious fault other than that of a self-preserving defense by myself, from myself, as even a reflection on the reason for my barring these memories recalls them. And I care not to transcribe for the purpose of mere storytelling. The events preceding him and the life left thereafter remain stretches of stormy seas treacherous to navigate. 

(I embark not to deceive again, for it would be folly, and for you to know the truth is the only sensible reason. No full truth exists and all truths passed through human minds descend diluted and stirred with the flavour of particles of that particular mind. This you know well and not even I can solve it, but only endeavour to leave as short a distance between the vision and its dictation.)

I had about me the sole will to descend further, sensing already my head disappearing in the purity of the resting mountain dew, the eternal mermaid of the lake, existing only in myth and therefore, even if real, protected by the disbelief of those who would hear the stories from those who truly saw what they claimed to have seen. My feet had already tossed the lake bed into motion, my shoulders casting rings into the unbreakable surface and my senses dulled by the cold.

What I heard was not a voice, or a call, or any one thing that could be named or even a thing that could be heard, but felt, and I turned, finding him a figure framed in its entirety by the forest beyond, holding out a hand towards the water in a silent scold of my rebellion. I had known no friendly faces and no words more than enmity in many preceding weeks and so took him as no other for the same reckoning, willing in me the reflex to fight. I detected the grin under his faded nose and that set me on an entire new track of anger, both willed and accidental, in being witnessed at this most vulnerable final moment. And my thoughts on becoming the mermaid of the lake dissipated instantly at this not being able to go into my transformation perfectly, last words whispered (with a drama reserved for the dying) under my dampening breath.