Nimuê

Every lake has one, it has to or it cannot survive. Nimuê is the lady of the lake. Without her, the lake loses it's connection between Gaia and humanity and becomes just a crater. A place of death, loneliness and dust. No matter how much rain falls a lake which is without it's Nimuê for long dries out and becomes a dustbowl. Dead. Being human, each Nimuê grows old and dies over time and the lake must choose another. Finding someone who is in touch with herself, grounded, loving and a mother. Qualities needed to support the lake and to herself live through time.

Once a lake finds a new candidate it lures her in, she doesn't know why but she is compelled to come to the lake. It interviews her and should it find her acceptable will entice her to enter its waters to enjoin with it and become Nimuê. The woman gives herself, but not freely, her mortal needs and loves hold her back to the ground. Her family. Her community. But the lake is powerful, over time and many visits, eventually she strips off her mortal human responsibilities and trappings to becomes Nimuê. On this day, at first the lake draws her in close and like a lover begins the caress with her feet, the small plant dwellers of the lake start to entwine and bring her in, making her feel not the slimy mud of the lake bottom but a warm comfortable soft place to step.

At first she tries to convince those with her to come too, she has yet to accept that as Nimuê she has only the lake, the symbiotic relationship has only just begun to form in her mind. She feels the water at this point is perfect, warm, comforting and supporting. The little creatures that would once have disgusted her now seem friends.

Slowly she comes to realise she does not need her human trappings any more and drops them leaving them behind, becoming one with the lake in their relationship. The plants take the trappings from her and pull them deep into the mud where they return to the earth they once came from enriching the lake and its creatures.

From time to time lucky fishermen see her in the water as the plays and frolics amongst the lily pads, reeds and grasses that sustain her in her time as Nimuê. These glimpses are always brief but powerful as she draws them down with her eyes. The lake needs sustenance, it needs to feed to support itself and its creatures. Those that escape report mermaids and return to the lake time and again until eventually she takes them.

If you see Nimuê so it must be, the lake will take you, but not always immediately, sometimes the lake needs to change the society of those around it to ensure survival. At those times Nimuê may seem to help someone in the population to power, but once the job is done, they return to be taken. Nimuê cannot be denied.

-- end --

The model in these photographs is my friend +Leigh Wheeler the images of which and the legends of Nimuê joined in my mind to write this story.