Page 26 of Siren Sins
Do what she wants,he commanded.She can release you from your fin, and you’ll be returned to me restored. You should have told me you’d met a chameleon, but you are your mother’s child. Stubborn as always.
I ignored him and faced the blue flames that housed Vikki.What do you need me to find?
Vikki’s desire was something that even a muse couldn’t give. She wanted a sea pearl, and only a mermaid would have a chance in hell in finding one.
The ocean was a magical and mystical place. Water washed everything away and took it into deep, dark crevices of the sea unexplored by man or supernatural. Only the mermaids could go where forgotten magics gathered.
I dove. Power propelled me through the deep as my fin waved up and down. I kept my arms tight to my naked chest as I delved into the abyss.
Magic wound freely through me and even if I didn’t want to be a mermaid, I relished the freedom that this life could offer. I didn’t need to surface and I could go where no other supernatural had been.
When the gleaming blue of a mermaid city came to life, I couldn’t help but smile.
They welcomed me as I slowed my descent. I was one of them and they were free of emotions that plagued humans or supernatural. They shushed me and brushed fingers through my floating hair, assuring me that in a day’s time, I’d lose the last of my memories and I’d forever be free to swim and dance with them.
Mermaids were a peaceful race. They made love and stretched their long fins along cushions of magic and seaweed. There wasn’t a need to procreate, so the lovemaking wasn’t as I knew it to be. It was pleasure through magic and kisses and something deeper and sweeter than a siren’s song that thrummed through the waters.
I swept past the orgy of mermaids. Their call was strong, but I knew if I gave in to the song of mermaids and mermen, I’d never see the light of day again.
When I declined, they reluctantly let me go as I went past the waves of magical aqua pleasures and entered into the crevices of the earth’s crust.
The caves sparkled with energy and magic. The bottom gleamed and glittered with the treasure I sought, the tears of the ocean.
The blue pearls illuminated my surroundings and thrummed with ancient magic. It was a mixture of all the magic in the world that was forgotten and had sunken deep into the sea.
Guilt stabbed at me as I snatched one up. This was magic so pure that no supernatural ever got their hands on it. Tears of the Sea were legend. The mermaids collected the magic and put them here for safekeeping. They weren’t guardians, for no-one could ever find this place camouflaged by their magic. But they knew how to keep things hidden.
I considered taking more than one, but something in me knew that these pearls were impossibly precious. Taking even one was a crime against magic and my heart ached as I clutched the single pearl to my chest and swam towards the pull of my father’s memories of my mother, the only connection I had to land and love.
A Muse Reborn
Sarah
The closer I got to shore, the more I remembered who I was and what I had suffered. Vikki had taken my misery, but it hadn’t erased the memories. I held onto any that drifted up from my subconscious as my father filled me with images of my mother, and then of me as a baby in her arms.
It was the last memory that started to change me back to a land-bound creature. I pushed myself harder to blast through the icy layers of the sea as scales melted from my enormous fin. Flakes of magic scathed off of me as my father showed me why he’d left. Helen had arrived shortly after I’d been born and had given my mother what my father never had. She’d smiled, full of love, and when my father saw them together, he knew the right thing to do would be to leave. Even if she hated him, even if she never forgave him, she didn’t love him like she loved Helen.
And so my father had done the right thing and abandoned us so that my mother could live in happiness, and I could have a siren who I lovingly called Aunt Helen.
The realization shot pain through my lower body as my fin split into two and transformed into legs. The slices at my neck started to close and panic wound through me. I still hadn’t reached the surface and if I turned back into a human body now, I’d be crushed by the sea or drowned.
Use the pearl!Vikki’s voice encouraged me.It has more than enough power to get you home. Use it!
The glowing blue bauble in my fist glowed profusely as if angered I’d taken it from its nest, but when I reached my mind into it, I found the swirling mix of magic that made up its heart.
Ice glowed blue through my veins as the pearl gifted me a sliver of its power. I was its wielder now, and I had rightfully laid claim to it as a mermaid. It couldn’t let me die, not after all I’d gone through to retrieve it.
Black, sparkling dots cleared from my vision as my body filled with oxygen. Water was full of oxygen and the pearl extracted it with ease to lessen the strain across my chest.
I kicked, now having legs, and the last of my scales drifted into the darkened deep below. There was a sliver of light above me and I swam towards it as hard as I could, ignoring the tingle of needles along my limbs as I grew fatigued from the battle to reach the surface.
Vikki found me just when I was about to give up and drift back into the darkness. Her blue eyes glowed with delight. Her gaze twitched briefly to the ancient magic I clutched to my chest, but her grip wrapped around my arms and pulled me upwards through currents and schools of fish. She didn’t have a fin, but a shadowed cloud of power clung to her like an underwater fog. She moved with power and grace, likely the boon of having fed on my suffering and my death. Scales lined her arms and her naked body gleamed with threads of blue magic.
When we burst through the surface, I gasped in my first breath of air, reborn, and I lifted into the sky as the transformation took hold.
Where the ocean held mysteries of the deep, the powers of a muse were transcendent of time and space. A muse thrived off of passion and the wistful wonders that knit the world together. A smile lifted my lips as I was reborn, and the gift of a muse’s boon transcended onto my mortal flesh.
I was back, baby.
