And so, just as Clia and Aaron spent the rest of the week in their nest making love, so too did Eric and Anna. The experience was only slightly different for them: most of the other mermaids avoided Eric, which meant that they also pretty much ignored Anna. Frankly, that suited Anna just fine. She felt a little guilty about her brief tryst with Clia, but Clia never came back to the nest after that (because she was probably avoiding Eric too), and Anna was honestly okay with that. She really only wanted to be with Eric.
Just like Aaron, Eric discovered through his first merman mating cycle that his orgasms were only really intense enough to be worthy of the name during the middle of the cycle, when the moon was at its fullest; early on, and late in the cycle, the feeling was more "relief" than "climax". It faded in, grew to a peak, and faded out again.
Anna, too, learned that her mermaid body worked a little differently: that at the start of the cycle, when her body was full of eggs and waiting to lay, driving her to cum and get her eggs out was a bit of a challenge, but the resulting orgasm was earth-shatteringly phenomenal. As each day passed, her orgasms grew less intense but also easier to achieve, until, by the end of the cycle, even simple kisses could send low-intensity mini-orgasms pulsing through her body. She was basically cumming all the time, a constant and low-key feeling in the background of her brain, until the last day—when it just stopped.
On the third morning after the full moon, Anna and Eric awoke in their nest feeling fulfilled but not aroused. They were both content; and they could both feel that it was over. Unlike Aaron and Clia, they didn't try to force it or work against their bodies. They just kissed each other good morning, took a few last, wistful looks at their little pile of eggs, and left.
Eric wanted to show Anna his home first, so that Anna would get to see where she'd be staying from now on. But Anna was insistent. "Please, darling," she said, "show me the Tide Beds first? I want to see them. Very much."
Eric acquiesced. "All right. Anything for you, my love."
And so they went to the great flat sand-plains on the south side of the village. Here, the ocean floor was just an empty, level stretch of sand, with soft ripples that ran through it in a pattern that reminded Anna of miniature dunes. It was like an undersea Sahara Desert in miniature—except for the fact that the sand-ripples were broken up by small objects, hundreds of thousands of colorful starfish and little gold rocks with crystal facets, like iron pyrite, but not quite the same.
Upon seeing the Tide Beds, Anna gave a little cry of amazement and kicked her fins, darting out over the vast field. Eric was puzzled, but he followed behind her. Had Anna seen something?
Anna swam forward as fast as her fins could carry her, hoping, praying—but then again, maybe it was all just wishful thinking. Maybe her eyes had played tricks on her. Maybe she was imagining things. She thought she'd seen something… else. Something different, down among the rocks.