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+--- Thread: Siren (/showthread.php?tid=796)
Siren - Katya - 09-23-2019
My heart is pierced by Cupid,
I disdain all glittering gold.
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold.
His hair, it hangs in ringlets
His eyes as black as coal.
My happiness attend him,
Wherever he may go.
Should he return in pov'rty
From o'er the ocean far,
To my tender bosom
I'll press my jolly tar.
Come, all you pretty fair maids,
Whoever you may be.
Who love a jolly sailor
That ploughs the raging sea.
While up aloft in storm,
From me his absence mourn.
And firmly pray arrive the day
He's never more to roam.
My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold..
(John Ashton, 1891)
And in an instant, somehow, she was back there.
Enveloped in the eternally welcoming embrace of the sea. Her sea. There could never be another one like this one. Endless stretches of open ocean, as far as the mind could fathom.
Shallow waters, turquoise-blue and sparkling in the sun, carpeted with silken white sands. Stormy seas with waves higher than the tallest mountain a mortal could dream of; oh, how she remembered riding those, and touching the clouds in the sky above.
And the Deep. Black, cold, haunted. Full of white, blind things that writhed and hunted. Where the ancient ones slept, and Dreamed. To hear them was madness; to see them, death; but ah, how sweet their voices were.
She was singing. She always was. Always the Foremost Siren, while her sisters looped intricate, frenzied circles around the tall ships of the surfacefolk.
Minthe was the prettiest of pictures. It was her calling, after all. Her fins were onyx, dark as night, absolutely unique amongst all the Mer she’d ever encountered. White gems, formed into the shapes of the strange and wild constellations of her night sky, sparkled from between her delicate scales.
She reclined atop a wide, flat plateau in the center of the tiny coral atoll, her amethyst hair blowing free and wearing naught but her gems. She was amidst a sparkling pool, just a few inches deep, and she sang.
Listing dangerously to port, the tall ship drew nearer; mast half-furled. A massive crew of corsairs, the largest she’d ever seen, hung over the sides, eyes glassy and mouths agape. The helmsman had long leapt overboard, the wheel spinning freely in the whipping wind that so efficiently carried her voice to them.
Child’s play. How she hated it.
My heart is pierced by Cupid,
I disdain all glittering gold.
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold..
She stretched languidly, fully displaying the dazzling beauty of her scales with coy grace. She didn’t – couldn’t – stop singing.
The men were silent; their cries of alarm turning into whimpers and panting moans long ago. A dropped lantern burst into a thousand tinkling shards, the only sound in existence beyond Minthe’s song.
Until the flames reached the powder magazine.
Sound, and then no sound.
The bejeweled fins of her sisters churned the water around the remains of the ship to a crimson froth, and she turned away.
And she was staring directly into the wide, frightened, unfocused eyes of the captain.
She knew it was he – his bedraggled, elaborate hat and ornate cutlass marking him the way they always marked them. He clutched an empty, splintered chest that floated high above the waterline; blown by the heat and force of the blast to her side.
Minthe opened her mouth to begin the song, as she always did, and…
She couldn’t.
Because he was. Or at least, he was trying to. One hand held up in a bleary, pleading motion, he roughly began to hum a few bars of the shanty that the crew had been dancing to the moment before she had ensnared them.
A feeling she did not understand washed over her like the jagged, smoking ice of the northern seas. This could not happen.
She cut him off abruptly, averting her own sapphire eyes from his wide, dark, frightened ones.
My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold..
All remaining traces of fear left the captain’s eyes. He was at peace, and he reached for her more boldly.
She had him.
His eyes fell closed, and she took his Dreams into herself. If one was watching closely, and their wits were unbewildered, they might have seen a small, sinuous, misty stream of silver fog escaping with the man’s shuddering exhales. But no one was watching.
She closed her eyes, as well, and allowed the shimmering mist to surround her. Minthe breathed deeply.
His Dreams tasted of lust and blood and cruelty and terror; harsh, unyielding, but… something else, something beneath. She shuddered.
The man’s body was now limp, slumped against the razor-sharp coral surrounding Minthe’s pool. She was unsure if he yet lived. She was unsure if it mattered. Deftly slipping into deeper, more comforting waters, she made to join her sisters.
And then she woke up, back in this strange, new place. The shop, where she’d been graciously allowed to sleep, was dark. Nothing remained to Minthe of this life before, of her life, but her voice. And her Dreams.
All of them.
RE: Siren - Katya - 10-08-2019
The ship, it swayed, heave ho, heave ho
On the dark and stormy blue
And I held tight to the Captain's might
As he pulled up his trews.
"You haven't slept," he said
In many suns and moons."
"Oh, I will sleep when we reach shore,
And pray we get there soon."
He said, "Now hush love, here's your gown.
There's the bed, lantern's down."
But I don't want to go to sleep; in all my dreams, I drown.
The Captain howled, "Heave ho, heave ho,"
And tied me up with sheets
"A storm is brewing in the South,
It's time to go to sleep."
His berth, it rocks, heave ho, heave ho
The ocean gnashed and moaned
Like Jonah will be swallowed whole
And spat back teeth and bones
He said, "Now hush love, here's your gown.
There's the bed, lantern's down."
"But I don't want to go to sleep; in all my dreams, I drown."
"Captain! Captain!
I will do your chores
I will warm your cot at night
And mop your cabin floors
Scold me, hold me
I'll be yours to keep
The only thing I beg of you
Don't make me go to sleep.."
The sky, it flashed, heave ho, heave ho..
His pillow toed to the brink.
The curtains ran between my legs as we began to sink..
I closed my eyes, heave ho, heave ho,
As the ship was rent and fell
Eddies in the water headed to the mouth of Hell.
"Hush now, hush love, here's your gown.
There's the bed, lantern's down.."
"I'm begging you, please wake me up.
In all my dreams, I...."
--Jessica Lowndes & Terrance Zdunich
It was so close. A return to the Deep.
Floating, falling, flying. Everything and nothing at her fingertips.
She couldn't remember how long it had been since she danced. Or if she ever truly had.
She could remember, however, the stories. Painted in her mind. Curiosity devouring them, faster than they could be told. The songs. Not her own, but one that flowed into her. Took her, body and soul, to look down from high above and not only watch them unfold, but be one with them.
The freedom to forget the boundaries, the hunger and fear and purpose that unconsciously had driven her for many long decades. The fear, lingering at the edges of her mind, that even a moment of release, of distraction, of sleep, even, would bring that hunger back to the forefront.
Her bonds had become her release.
And for that, she was thankful.
RE: Siren - Katya - 10-19-2019
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge
Thirst.
It wasn't something that seemed to be much of a concern for many, here. Nothing more than entertainment, or idle partaking to take the edge from the physical need.
They all joked. A fish out of water. Often. An expression. Nothing more, really.
If they only knew.
She was born there, in the Depths. Water around her, within her -- it wasn't only a story that the seas eternal ran in the veins of a Siren.
Born there to die there.
This was the furthest away from home -- from her water -- that she had ever been. And how she longed for it. She'd taken it for granted, perhaps, that it would always be near, a part of her being. What did it mean now that she had lost it?
And so she had taken to the docks, as of late. She watched the sea, the ships, the mortals pass by. Never touching the water (could she come back from that?), but always watching. Longing.
Painful.
And it was; suffering from a thirst that she'd found to be unquenchable.
She could not return to the water; not really, not in the way that she was meant to return.
Could the sea come to her?
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
Quench me.