STACH Short Story Contest #30: 199 words, 5 winners, 15SB prize pool!

On the seashore, a man was walking and a beautiful and fragile mermaid caught his attention. He approached her and realized that she picked up the starfish and returned them to the sea.

Why do you return to the sea the stars that drag the waves? Asked the man to the mermaid.

She looked at the man with her violet eyes and answered with the sweetest and most serene voice he had ever heard:

If I do not make this, when the sun is higher, it will dry them and they will die.

The man thought he was doing something useless. That night, the man had a nightmare in which he saw a sky without stars, a dry and cold world. And it is that every time a starfish died, another one was extinguished in the sky.

The next morning, the man ran out to look for the siren. She was already on the beach returning the stars to the sea. The man approached her, took a star and returned it to the water said:

"One more that in the sky will continue to shine".