[Katya]

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.