lupo

shitgaze:

     If human beings are not drowned, asked the little mermaid, can they live forever? do they never die as we do here in the sea? Yes, replied the old lady, they must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours. We sometimes live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love. We have not immortal souls, we shall never live again; but, like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see.
Why have not we an immortal soul? asked the little mermaid mournfully; I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day, and to have the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars.
You must not think of that, said the old woman; we feel ourselves to be much happier and much better off than human beings.
…so I shall die, said the little mermaid, and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun...

The Little Mermaid Hans Christian ANDERSON