To Be Reborn on Europa

Neomermaids create a new home among the stars — this time, on their own terms

Angela Acosta is a bilingual Latina writer and Ph.D. Candidate in Iberian Studies at The Ohio State University. She was recently nominated for Best of the Net and she is a 2022 Dream Foundry for Emerging Writers finalist. Her speculative writing has or will appear in On Spec, Eye to the Telescope, Radon Journal, MacroMacroCosm, and 365tomorrows. Her speculative poetry collection “Summoning Space Travelers” is forthcoming with Hiraeth Books. She enjoys rock climbing and biking in her free time.

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Hope kept them openhearted, pumping oxygen
from gilled generation to finned generation,
smoothly sinking their coveted knowledge
into troves buried deep in Europa’s ice.

It all started when gravity alone
could not sustain their ambulatory needs
and their circulatory system around Proxima Centauri
could only last six hundred orbits, or twenty Earth years.

They were weary of their own flesh,
such were these bipedal mammals who were finally thrust
into the bodies of sirens subjected
to the trials and tribulations of medical interventions.

All too familiar with testing, tubing, and stunted growth,
this was a chance at aquatic movement,
a new tale for posterity to tell when
the risks of human biology proved too great:

thin skin to protected scales,
short bones to extended cartilage,
quiet lungs to capacious gills,
horizontal footsteps to lateral strokes.

Disinfected rooms housed experiments
led by scientists stitching sinewy people
into new possibilities when their lungs failed,
breathing life into neomermaids.

Misunderstood by the majority unwilling
to see the possibility of a mermaid metamorphosis,
they huddled together, basking in their own potential,
destined to find home and hearth where homo sapiens never could.

Not content to live in the shadows,
they welcomed their cure and tail.
It was their chance at breathing fully
among the stars that shined a billion future homes.

In interstellar space, the calm hum of artificial gravity
patches serenity into the unending night.
The once experiments glide across aqueous habitats;
with radiation-warped gills they too breathe among the stars.

They command vessels packed with tools and goods,
finally able to escape the captivity of their human forms.
Once told they would never leave Proxima Centauri,
neomermaids channel their gifts into a voyage to Sol.

They used their once bipedal skills of navigation,
kelp photosynthesis, and other onboard alchemy
to float through gravity itself on their homeward voyage, 
bubbles popping as waves push rockets across four light-years.

They seek a birthright for their kind on Europa,
the abandoned moon in Jovian orbit, 
unwanted for the fright that haunts its icy depths,
a plunge only neomermaids are willing to take.

No welcome ceremony marks their arrival,
nor any radio signals to disturb other living beings.  
Bioluminescent rhythms surrender a once closed portal,
opening a hatch into a near-endless sea cascading in light.  

Impressive geometries greet neomermaids into her sharp depths.
Siren dwellings coil around her icebergs,
reclaiming a culture of sensory art and science
as full triumphs of physics.

Europa’s new sentient species gets to work
building communal spaces for motley company,
creating relays to communicate like the Incas of Terra,
and developing launchpads to one day seek worlds beyond.

Years grow longer as metabolism slows,
securing neomermaids’ home and tomes for generations
with statuesque commemorations of past hunts and haunts,
a place to live authentically
until centuries change human morality.

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