By Donna Quattrone
ven as a young girl, Anjiya loved to collect shiny objects. She gathered bits of pearl, broken coral and polished stones flecked with silver from the playground of her ocean floor. She’d weave her newfound trinkets into belts or bracelets or string them into her hair. Often she would spend whole afternoons sorting through her piled treasures, mesmerized by the play of gleaming light as it drifted and spun, prism-like, throughout the water garden of her home.
It wasn't until her thirteenth birthday, though, that Anjiya discovered the shiniest object of all.
On that day, her sisters brought her out of the shadowy realm of the deeper waters for the first time. Anjiya was thrilled to see the many new and marvelous things that she had only heard about before. The warmth of the sun rippled its way across her skin and she languished happily on the surface of the waves long after her siblings returned to the twilight depths of the sea. Soon it grew dark and eventually the moon rose high in the heavens: framed against the backdrop of a pitch-black night, it glowed even brighter than the sun. Anjiya cried out in delight. “You must be the moon,” she said, and the moon turned and winked at her. Anjiya was so enthralled by this great shiny object that she sang out to him. The clear, pure notes of her song seduced the moon right out of the sky.
When it hovered just within her reach, Anjiya plucked the moon out of the night, cradled it gently in her fingers, and carefully brought it down, down, down. The moon gazed at all of the sea-wreathed wonders that surrounded him, but what he looked upon longest was the beautiful mermaid with the magical voice. And for the first time the moon knew love. Anjiya was just as smitten with the moon, of course. She tucked him close to her heart and together they slept.
