“Someone help!!”

This time it’s a female that Sylvaroth, or Sylvy, as I call him, has pulled out to sea, out beyond the swells and the pull of the tide. She’s kicking awkwardly in the water, with legs made for land, feet flat and thick for walking upon dirt. They do no good in the water, except for churning it up and creating bubbles. Sylvy holds her fast, for we have much more power in the water.

Our arms are muscular, but long and thin, and end in sharp talons, which extend almost a finger length beyond the ends of our three fingers. We look vaguely like a human from the waist up. I suppose it’s how we enrapture them. But along our spine sprouts a fin, which travels to the tip of our tail, several times as long as our human like torso. They used to call us syrens, back when my ancestors haunted the Gryk Ylses. I don’t know what they call us now.

“Please someone help…me…?” The human’s wails quiet down as Sylvy’s song begins. His voice is low, haunting and beautiful, but it holds no special appeal for me. The human girl slowly relaxes in his arms. Soon she’s fallen limp against him, and he flicks his tail back and forth while he sings, easily keeping them afloat.

Now is my chance. I summon a devilfish, and it wafts through the water towards me. I over power its consciousness, and send it off towards Syvly, who is slowly beginning to pull the human lower into the water. She doesn’t resist.

With a silent command the creature glides to Sylvy, and brushes against him once, twice, and then he howls in pain as the creature embeds its stinger in his shining emerald tail. The human starts to thrash again, the song and trance broken.

Normally an animal of the sea would not hurt us, unless cornered or threatened or protecting its children, but we can control the lesser beasts fairly easily. This is what I have done. I wonder idly if it hurts as much when I had been bitten by that land eel. I had been basking on the shore, and thinking it would react like any other animal does to us, I reached out a hand to touch it. It had been so pretty with the patterns on its back rippling and the muscles under the skin bulging and shifting. But when I had reached for it, it had reared back and struck at me. My syr had scolded me for letting myself be bitten, but luckily, he had said, our bodies naturally counteract poison. I had just had identical welts on the back of my hand that had healed in a few days. They had hurt though…

I stiffen as I smell blood in the water. While I was musing, the human had taken her chance to escape, and had hit Sylvy. The blood was seeping out of his nose and dissolving into the water. There was so much, and it was so strong that I feared one of the larger predators of the ocean would come to feed. The girl was still too weak after her hypnosis to be able to take care of herself. If a shyark or other creature came, she would die.

I jet forward, stopping only for a second to glance at Sylvy. I don’t want him hurt badly, just enough. He is my best friend after all. He doesn’t notice me; so intent he is on stopping the flow of blood from his nose. His whimpers of pain –is his nose broken?- grow quiet as I catch up to the human.

It is easy. She’s kicking awkwardly in the water, which is stirring it up more than propelling her forward. When I slide up against her, she gives a piercing scream. I wrap my arms around her and twist my tail. She flails against me, but I'm ready for it, and even though I'm years younger than Sylvy, I can still hold her easily. Humans are so frail, I can't imagine why they would venture out into an area where they're not stable.

Unless they're like this all the time? I shudder in horror. To be this... lacking in grace. Ugh.

Now I've forced us back in to shore, quite easily, even when she was kicking and yelling. I had half feared she would choke on the water. So far as I know, humans have no way to breathe underwater, so I tried to keep her head above the water, but I may not have been quite as careful as I should be. When I couldn't swim any farther in, I let her go, and she rolled away, coughing, water flowing from her mouth and nose. I push the water from my own lungs so I could breathe easily in the air. We can do that in both areas, you know, breathe in air and water. I don't know why, since there aren't any other creatures that I know of that can do so.

While she lays there trying to breathe (I didn't even try to help, because I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to begin with) I study her, in all her bizarre glory. Her skin is darker than mine, much darker, like the black sand around us, and her eyes are the same color. Her hair, cropped short at her chin, is plastered against her skull.

Then there is the strange covering she wears.

It's the dark purple of the feathery sea weed that attaches itself to rocks, but it stretches differently than her skin. I stare at it in consternation. Females of our kind and humans both have the mammary glands to nurse young, but our females need no covering. Why was she wearing it? Did it have something to do with her legs? The covering wrapped around her entire torso and then between her legs. Even the males I had seen wore strange poofing coverings around their abdomen and upper legs.

How peculiar.

She's recovered, I think, and is looking wildly about. her eyes pass me over once, and she freezes, staring at me.

"Quelle êtes-vous?" She looks confused, but I can only guess at her words. We don't speak the same language of course. We only use our vocal cords to sing, or to laugh, or other real sounds. We communicate through our minds. When new young are born, parents open their minds after a set amount of time. They then learn to communicate by projecting thoughts, and receiving them in turn. Our children 'speak' from a very young age.

This is not something I look forward to.

Using the momentum from a larger wave, I push myself forward, catching her wrist before she can roll away. She shrieks and yells more nonsense words at me. But even above the water I have more raw strength than she does. I pull her face towards mine, and bracing myself for it, I press my lips to hers. I hope for a moment that the brief contact would be enough, but her mind is still closed to me, so I force her mouth open with one hand, careful not to hurt her. Suddenly she falls limp, and I let her drop to the ground. Her eyes flutter for a moment before refocusing on me.

I test her, projecting my thoughts to her. "Kissing a human is utterly revolting. I have no idea why my ancestors were so fixated on it."

Her eyes flare up, but then panic fills them as she realizes that my voice was in her mind, not her ears. She speaks again, but humans, like most animals, think what they say, enough so that I hear the thoughts behind the words and can understand her.

"What did you do? What are you?!" Belatedly, she scrambles away, and the muscles of the legs I so scorned flexed and pushed her up against the gravity that has me pinned to the ground.

Jubilance blasts through me for a moment. She's sentient! The feeling immediately dissipates as I realize that means that my entire species is guilty of mass genocide. I hiss out through my small, sharp teeth angrily.

She's shuddering as she backs away, and I realize she has the wrong idea. I feel a bit bad about that. I could have been gentler. I try to take on a nicer tone, like when my Daym was alive. I had only known her for a few years before she disappeared. My Syr still missed her, I knew, because he had not gone to find another mate yet. I digress.

I try to infuse that into my tone as the words come bursting forth. "Please, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. That was just so that we could communicate. I mean, a kiss like that opens myrs' minds, and now we can talk. I just, I promise I won't harm you, I just want to talk, please."

She shakes her head and backs away. "I'm sorry, no. I just can't take this, I can't handle it. I just need to forget this ever happened. Just a dream, just a dream." She turns away and starts to stride farther up beyond the sand. Frantic, because I couldn't, would loose her, not after all this, I call out to her.

"Please! My name is Astaerys! If you say it while in the ocean, I will hear you, and I will come back, if you ever want to talk."

She pauses, a length or two away from me. "Astaerys, huh?"

"What's your name?" I know I'm pushing my luck, but I want to know at least something about her.

She can't help but glance over her shoulder at me. I know in a heart beat what she must see. Some half human hybrid, lanky, with purple hair curling over a shoulder, crimson and violet fins extending from my back and tail. I realize then what her fear must be and feel a pang of regret until she fully turns to me.

"My name is Rachelle." Then those strong legs, so bizarre in the water, gracefully lead her through the sand, and she soon disappears behind a hill.

Ra-chelle. Hn. It's a pretty name, I suppose, different from any other name I'd ever heard. Then I realize that because she shared this information, there might be a possibility of seeing her again. I smile to myself as I shuffle backwards into the water, away from this cursed sand. Sighing happily as I twirl in the water, it falls away, and my content mood lasts until I've drifted back past the swells. Sylvy is there in front of me, face deeply lined with his frown, his pale eyes filled with anger and confusion. Larger and stronger than me, he’s got my arms suddenly pinned to my sides, and his face is inches from my own.

“Asta… What in Hades did you do?!” He hisses at me, his teeth bared at me, sharp as shark’s teeth, but able to be wielded far more effectively. A slight tremor of fear runs through me. I try to shift away, turn away from his face. My plan regarding Sylvy had never gotten beyond actually contacting a human. Fish guts.

Sylvaroth looms over me as we sink slowly down. He truly is terrifying when angered. Fully grown, the epitome of our kind, lithe and strong and beautiful. The spine fin along his back is tinged deep green and silver, nearly the opposite of my own red and purple. He shakes me slightly. I cringe again, and even in anger –for it is nearly unforgivable to steal another’s meal, especially when one does not yet have the song- I see apologies flicker in his eyes. His grip relaxes a bit, but he does not let go.

“Explain yourself, little brother.” His tone is gentler, this time, coaxing. I can feel the layered sound of his song imbued in it. He can’t force me to say anything, but he can relax me and cloud my mind to make it harder for me to think.

He continues, “Astaerys, listen to me.” I fight to keep my mind clear. “Tell me why you stole the food. And not just anyone’s, but mine, your closest friend’s. Are you that anxious to eat human meat? If that’s it, you should have simply told me. I would have sung someone to you. It’s not really permitted, but no one would have found out.” Smiling alluringly, he casts the full power of his song on me. His arms loosen their grip and instead twine around me, as does his tail. As much as I try to fight it, I find myself relaxing in his grip, letting him hold me.

“And besides, you wouldn’t have needed to attack me with a ray…” His voice is smooth as an eel’s skin, lulling me.

“So, Astaerys… tell me why you did it.”

“I- you…. The humans…” It’s useless to fight. His hair is drifting around us, a silver halo in the light of the shallow water. And his eyes are so close, his voice so sweet. He kisses my forehead softly, lips brushing in comforting circles, a sign of our close friendship.

“Sylvy…” I don’t want this to hurt you, but I can’t help but want to tell you.

“Yes? Go on.”

“They’re like us. They’re sentient.” My heart is nearly breaking. This wasn’t how I wanted to tell him. I wanted to include him, but not in such a way that it would hurt him if he truly understood what I meant. If he realized that he was killing, eating, beings as intelligent as us…

“What? How do you--” He glances wildly around, and the spell is broken. I gasp, as the veil of calm slips away. There’s a sudden slice of pain as his control is torn out of my mind, before it fades, leaving me floundering momentarily. When my vision clears, I see he’s staring at me, pale as the white sand of the beaches.

“Sylvaroth…” His pale eyes are filled with horror.

“No…” He whispers softly. “This isn’t how it--” He grabs me and pulls right up next to him, his mouth at my ear.

“Do not say anything about this to anyone. Now follow me.” He spins away, spiraling down into the depths of the water. I flick my tail and swim after him. We skirt the outside of our living areas, instead heading into the lower trenches. I follow through a forest of kelp, which seems to go on forever. Suddenly, I burst out, and with a yelp of surprise, smack into Sylvy. His fingers clamp over my mouth, and I see his wide, pale eyes looking to and fro.

They narrow at me. “Don’t speak till I tell you to.” Then, when the hurt flashes across my faces, he smiles apologetically and pulls me into a quick hug. Then he’s off again, hurtling through the water. We only swim for a few more minutes before he stops at a large overhanging shelf. When he starts to pull at its seaweed covering a school of brightly colored fish swim out. They swirl around us, and I hear their instinctual thoughts.

swimsiwmfoodswimpredator!swimawayswimawayfoodfood

On a normal day I would have caught one. They’re delicious fish, and hard to find, but today… Sylvy gently grabs my wrist and pulling me in front of him, tells me to swim forward. He follows close behind, and my tail brushes against his hair occasionally. The tube we swim into narrows down, so much that I have to relax my spine fin, let it lay against my back, and I draw in my side fins as well, feeling vaguely claustrophobic. I don’t realize that I’ve slowed till Sylvy speaks.

“Keep going.” Sylvy’s order echoes around the cavern. So I continue, shuddering, because there isn’t any place to turn around, what if I get stuck in here, where are we going… I feel a thin film of panic start to fall across my mind. I take in a shuddering breath of water, but it’s stale and doesn’t help. Then, suddenly, the tunnel opens up into a cavernous room. Light filters from above, and I realize that we’re in part of a lake on an island.

He answers my unspoken question. “Yeah, this place used to be a fire mountain, we swam through a tunnel that the liquid rock went through, and this is where it collected to form an island. No one ever comes here cause of the small tunnel, and no one lives on the island. We can talk safely here.” Then pursing his lips, he pulls me against his chest, chin resting on my head. “You’re so young.”

I can’t help but protest. “I’m almost old enough to start looking for a mate!”

He snickers, and his arms tighten around me. “I’d wanted to wait a little longer before you had to know this though. It’s a hard thing to bear.” He sighs heavily. “As you know, our race is a vile moldering thing. We kill people, eat them. It was not always so.”

He pushes me away for a moment, looks seriously into my eyes. “None of this leaves this place.”

I nod.