23/07/2025
The Scales of Agatha
"Sometimes the sea keeps its secrets... and sometimes, it lets them go."
Agatha didn’t look like a mermaid. She looked like a girl who lived too close to the sea, salt in her hair, calloused hands, and a look in her eyes like she was always listening for something just beneath the surface.
She worked in the famous beach a small town of marangani, hauling nets, scrubbing decks, mostly keeping to herself. Nobody ever asked where she came from, and she never offered. But every full moon, she disappeared. The old fishermen joked she turned into a seagull. Some of the boys said she was a thief, or worse a mangkukulam.
Agatha was born beneath the sea.
Her mother had scales like sapphire and a voice that could still the ocean’s fury. Her father was human, a shipwreck survivor who had loved the wrong woman too deeply. At si Agatha ang bunga ng nabuo sa hindi dapat na pagmamahalan a child of salt and soul. At thirteen, she was given the choice the sea or the shore. She chose the shore, not knowing what it would cost.
But the sea doesn’t let go easily.
The scales began to return on her twentieth birthday. Small, iridescent flecks along her ribs, like forgotten promises. They itched. They burned. They sang to her in dreams.
At night, she’d slip into the water, swimming far beyond where she works, where no one would see. She could stay underwater for minutes now. Her legs would fuse in the cold, if only for a moment. The pull was getting stronger.
She tried to hide it. Wrapped herself in sweaters. Scrubbed her skin with sand and soap. But the more she resisted, the more the sea reached for her. People began to notice her strangeness. A girl named Elara, kind and curious, tried to befriend her. Agatha almost let her.
One night, the storm came early.
A fishing boat was caught in it, Elara’s brother was on board. The whole town gathered at the docks, waiting, habang si Agatha stood among them, silent.
She could hear them screaming. Not the people, but the sea.
So she ran.
She stripped off her coat, dove from the dock, and let it happen. Her skin shimmered. Her legs split and turned into a tail, silver and blue. Her lungs forgot how to need air. And she swam.
She found the boat splintered, half-submerged. One man clung to the wreckage. Another was gone. She pulled the survivor back to shore. They saw her just for a second. The tail. Na tila ba lahat ay nagulat
And then she vanished.
The town said it was a miracle. A ghost. A spirit of the sea. But Elara knew. She remembered Agatha’s eyes, how human they were, how lonely.
Weeks passed. No one saw her again. But Elara kept walking the coast, leaving letters in a bottle by the old jetty. And sometimes, just before dawn, the bottles would be gone.
Sometimes, she’d find scales on the sand, small, silver, and warm to the touch. But no one could say for sure if those scales were hers. Some nights, Elara thought she saw a flicker of silver beneath the waves, or a shadow watching from the shore. And sometimes, when the wind was just right, she could swear she heard a voice, half whisper, half song calling her name.
Was Agatha still out there, swimming just beyond sight? Or was it just the sea playing tricks on those who dared to listen?
No one really knew.
