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We all know the Songs of Sorrow. The chronicles of unimaginable cruelty from the humans who bound their own kind in chains and filled the hulls of their creaking vessels to bursting with fledglings and the grown. When in desperation these prisoners would cast themselves to the sea, our kind laid their bodies to rest in Neptune’s robes, horror-struck and confused. What terrors would tempt men to abandon their lives to a sea that could not heal them?

I had once asked you, Mother, what had marked them for such treachery. “They were not light-skinned,” you said.

Benigno’s skin, though lustrous, is dark. Thus, when he spoke with distant eyes of seeking a harmony that would accept him, I assumed his appearance was the only reason such fear lived inside him. Imagine my dismay at learning humans would also condemn him for the tender leanings of his heart! His willingness to sing for my comfort surprises me less having now heard how generously he gave his affection to a companion who understood not the exquisite pearl Benigno had cultivated for his keeping.

“Estupido,” he called himself for being afraid when he shares his meals with me , who had exploited my first moments alone with him to strangle him. Can he not see how valiant an act his protection is?

Benigno is braver than I. With every seashell he gives me, I long to meet his courage with a shell of my own. And yet, though the desire to give him more of myself rises each day like a tide, when Benigno asked for my name, I could not share it.

I told him revealing his truth can be learned like swimming. What I did not say was that I am learning as well—to tread the waters of a truth more frightening than anything I have learned about humanity.

Something in his nature calls to mine with music both familiar and strange. Despite the wisdom of my harmony, despite everything I believed possible, my heart is cultivating a pearl. For a human .

And the more I learn about Benigno, the more he teaches me to swim.