The Mermaid Variations, originally published in Portuguese as
A Sereia de Curitiba, is a 2007 novella by Rhys Hughes. It follows the mermaid Caroline Moreira and the traveller who falls in love with her as they travel from Brazil to Wales to the Moon.
The Mermaid Variations contains examples of:
- Bathtub Mermaid: When the traveller meets Caroline, she's staying in a glass tank at a carnival in Curitiba.
- Dedication: "Dedicated to the real Caroline Moreira of Curitiba, Brazil."
- Don't Try This at Home: When Caroline greets a walrus, the author notes, "When meeting a walrus for the first time you should always shake it politely by the tusk, but only in a story, never in real life."
- Fish People: Merfolk live in the lunar seas, but because those seas are dry, lunar merfolk are the reverse of earth merfolk - they have the legs of a human and the upper body of a fish.
- Flying Seafood Special: The rain in Wales is so dense that Caroline can swim right up through it into the sky.
- Love at First Sight: The traveller instantly falls in love with Caroline in Curitiba. When he returns to Wales, all he wants is to meet her again.
- No Name Given: The protagonist is only referred to as "the traveller."
- Underground City: The lunar cities seem to consist of individual above-ground houses, but each house contains a stairwell that leads into the communal caverns where the merfolk actually live.
