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This tropical getaway scent is fresh with an undercurrent of torrid pursuits amid steamy rainforests and stretches of powdery white sand as the ocean crashes to shore in the distance...numerous water accords accented with sea grass, watery fresh-cracked coconut and a base of Indonesian teak. The unisex vibe is further accented with the addition of our exclusive OPEN WINDOWS pheromone mix - our most popular social blend! Works equally well for both Women and Men. Lends an air of friendly approachability and magnetic attraction. Mood elevating, makes people feel good to be around you. Works great in ANY situation, and our customers who work in service industries report that it help to increase their tips too!

WATER ACCORDS ~ Cleansing, purifying. Fertility, Goddess energy, fluid of life. Renewal.
GRASSES ~ Wishes granted, enhances psychic powers, protection.
COCONUT ~ Protection, purification, receptivity.
TEAKWOOD ~ Longevity, bonding, weathering all conditions, endurance.

 

Created by: Mara Fox

Description: Julie (luna65)

Label art: Mara & Jennifer

Pherotine Collection, February 2018

 

“Have you heard the singing yet?”

Now that was a hell of a question. Here I am, minding my own business, on vacation no less - and this creepy-ass inquiry is raised by some random barista.

“Singing?” I ask, attempting nonchalance as I am handed my coffee.

“At night, sometimes. You think it’s the rain, but no, they’re singing. Miles offshore.”

“Who? What?”

I looked behind me, but there was no one else in line. I suppose if one goes to a shack in the middle of the jungle for a latte or whatever, these things are bound to happen.

“The mermaids.”

I have to laugh, I mean, it’s so kitschy, right?

“Local legend?”

“They’re all over but, they sing here. We’re not sure why, but, if you do hear it, don’t go outside.”

“Do people just - what - walk into the sea when they hear the singing?”

“Sometimes.”

This guy looks like everyone else here, entirely casual and a bit weatherbeaten, but he’s serious.

“So if I hear singing in the middle of the night, I should just...turn up the TV?”

“You get TV reception at 3 am? Really? Now that would be a bonafide myth.”

This conversation has become too weird. I pay him and walk back up the path to the beach, snorting through my nose at the notion.

 

A cute taxi and its’ charming driver takes me up the road later on to the open-air market and the guy asks me if I’m having a good time.

“Sure, except for the part about the mermaids,” I reply.

He waved a hand while still keeping his eyes on the road, a consideration for which I was entirely grateful.

“Oh well, just put your head under your pillow,” he suggests, thinking he is no doubt all kinds of helpful to hapless tourists such as myself.

“Wait a minute, do you all believe there are mermaids out there in the ocean?”

“They sure believe in us,” he counters, “otherwise they wouldn’t come around here.”

 

Every evening, if the rain has not yet begun, is given to gathering around a large bonfire on the beach and the sorts of things people do around a fire.

There is singing.

It is particularly loud singing and I had previously wondered why but now I suppose I think I know. And while it seems wholesome fun to warble along with “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Cheeseburger In Paradise” I find myself straining to hear something more in the sound of the surf. This is not a thunderous recursion of water meeting its’ terminus but rather a soothing shoosh.

No one looks out at the water. No one but me. Everyone else has their backs to that darkened vista.

 

It rains every night. Something about how the tradewinds blow in this region, that the clouds move through in the night and there is a sudden torrent for a time. Those same clouds are far offshore during the day, gray cottony mounds on the horizon. The first night I awoke at the sound but then slipped into sleep once more, and dreamed of a long stretch of beach, waiting to meet someone. It was never revealed to me who that might be.

As that odd barista predicted, all I could pick up was static on the TV and then the rain began. I tried to read, as sleep was eluding me, but the sound was not relaxing now, I was still trying to hear something within the rain, within the surf which wasn’t too far off. But I was equally afraid I would, and that I should not try.

But I sat there, book in hand, as the rain dripped from the eaves and pattered upon the roof. And when it stopped I held my breath. But in the reprieve from the downpour the night seemed to exhale its’ usual sounds of surf and breeze and insects. Eventually I slept.

 

“Sirenia,” the dive instructor says, checking over a bin of rental equipment. “You do tend to hear things underwater. Sound travels far.”

“Why does everyone here seem to believe it?”

“You’re implying it’s some kind of mass hysteria?”

“Or a tall tale for tourists.”

He shrugged, pushing back a shock of sun-fried hair and something about his eyes made me think of how the water looked from the plane as we circled the island before coming in to land. The way the color changed, moving from dark to light.

“This isn’t the kind of thing people would choose to believe, even for the sake of oddity. You can’t ever assume that if something is curious about you it means to make friends.”

“If you hear the singing, while you’re diving, what do you do?”

He sighed, carefully placing a weight belt onto the ground beside the bin.

“You wait. You stop and wait for it to pass you by, like any other strange situation.”

 

I have no chill, as the kids say these days. I sit in my hammock and all the books I brought to read are ignored. I walk the beach in the mornings and consider that even mermaids have to sleep.

I visit Java Jungle every day but he’s gone. That mad barista, or whoever he was. I want to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, telling me that. An idea as pervasive as any melody I might possibly hear in the middle of the night, crouching on the floor with my back against a locked door, sweating and shaking and wondering what it means to admit to myself that I can hear something.

Am I even awake? Right now, in the daylight, standing on this beach, looking down the shore. For who? But there will be someone, eventually.

And tonight they may knock upon my door as I am curled into a ball, hands upon my ears, trying not to sing along.

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