the siren |peter parker x siren!oc|

Serenity: Part 2

Sister... where are you going?

I am going to the surface to retrieve sunlight for my bones.

Come back soon...

She had always preferred the surface.

All of her purebred sisters spent their days lounging on the depths of the ocean, remaining out of sight until unsuspecting humans intruded their home. A single finger over the perimeter of their territory and death became their fate. The farther she could get from her sisters in all of their evil glory, the better she felt. Even if the sunlight made her eyes hurt and her skin dry, it was the closest she could get to solace.

Existing was absolutely dreadful, and there was no delicate way of putting it. From the moment she was conceived, she was doomed to have a miserable life. Her mother had taken a risk by bringing her into this world, little did she know that the daughter paid the price for the mistakes of the mother. To be blunt, she hated her parents. She hated both of them. Their recklessness and stupidity had turned her into the shell of a seiren she had become. The only reason she was alive was because she did not have the means to change that.

...

Once upon a time, over half a century ago, her mother had fallen in love with a human male. The concept was an ancient one; every seiren from the beginning of eternity had a peirasmós. One human would tempt them to reject the ways of their sisters. If you were worthy, you would kill them as you would any other human. If you were not, you would be murdered along with them. Never once had there been one to reject their kin, until her mother discovered the shipwrecked man barely skimming the perimeter of seiren waters.

The seiren did not like to kill. Creating life was always more miraculous than taking it. Their secrecy was sacred. No one from land should ever have the precious knowledge of their existence. When men took to the sea, there was no doubt to their ancestors the path they would take. The melodic trance became a powerful weapon against the weak human mind, and eventually, the seiren became a whisper of a rumor. A legend. A fairytale.

She did not know why her mother failed the test, or how she spotted him before his presence was made known to her sisters. From what her own sisters had told her, she dragged his mutilated body to an island that night and laid with him, having no qualms regarding the ancient practice that had been brutally violated. Her terrible soul kept him well, nursed him back to health. She allowed him to know her from the inside out, rather than trick him to falling for her. She put the love of a man before the love of her sisters. Worst of all, she carried his child for 273 days, until she birthed in the spring. That was when she was finally discovered.

They showed her endless mercy by sparing the life of her child. For it was not the child who had sinned, it was her mother.

There was not a day that went by where she was not reminded that she was never supposed to have been born. It was drilled into her head that she would never follow the footsteps of her wretched parents. With thin rope they acquired from a ship they took down, they bound the base of her tail and the center, so that even when she dried and her form switched to limbs, walking would be quite impossible. It was so tight that the only way it stayed was a curse of some sort. Only an outside source could remove it. She would be punished if there was ever an attempt to walk.

Every evening, around the time that the sun was on the brink of going down, she breached the surface and stared at the sky. Her sisters never understood why she was so detached from them; To her, it was blatant their cutting comments would never put a dent in their emotionless shells. To them, they spoke the truth. Their intent was never malicious. Unfortunately, the human half of her was filled with intense emotions that a pure seiren only had to feel in the face of her peirasmós. She endured these human feelings at every hour of every day. She wondered if this was how being fully human was. Did they have a similar weight beat them down?

...

When she breached the surface of the water, the atmosphere was different. She looked into the eyes of a metal bird that she had seen before, but they never had been this close. The menacing birds had always minded their own business, keeping their distance and passing by. The longer she stared at it, however, the sooner she felt the presence of humans: two female, two male. If she were on the bottom of the ocean amongst her sisters, these humans would have gone completely undetected. Maybe that was their prerogative.

One human, dressed in strange red clothing, crawled along the side of the metal bird. Was this normal human behavior? She had never seen any move in that manner. She shut her eyes, hoping he did not see her and continued to float. If he touched the water, her sisters would be notified, but for now, she let them mind their business. Too many lives had already been lost, too many necks torn to shreds by her canine fangs. If she could preserve these four, she would.

Something was different about these humans. One specifically. A wave of intense feelings, one she had never felt before, crashed into her. She stared at the red one, the pulse in her chest growing quicker with every second. An image of her mother and father appeared, her eyes snapping shut. Somehow, she viewed them from an outside perspective, but the harder she tried to see the intricate details of her mother's face, the more she was only able to see herself.

When her eyes opened again, the red human was dangerously close to her and the surface of the water, suspended upside-down. She opened her mouth, almost instinctively, and sang a sea shanty, willing it to do as she instructed. She was almost certain that she was the first seiren to use her trance to keep someone from entering the sea, but the feeling sitting in her chest forced her to frantically keep it from putting itself in danger.

My heart is pierced by Cupid.

I disdain all glitter and gold.

For nothing can console me,

but my jolly sailor bold.

She stopped singing, and an idea sparked in her brain.

Do not touch the water unless you seek to be greeted with death.

She used a similar channel that her sisters communicated with, except it was a closed line between her and this strange looking human. It was in her native language, but somehow she knew he had understood. She continued the sea shanty, one that was hardly ever used. Generally, the melodies they sang were vowels, and the tune improvised. Centuries of listening to pirates and sailors had given them an archive of songs, but it was deemed insensible to use them. There was no need to use the human formed words that they had no way of understanding. Even though she did not know what she was saying, she liked the way they felt in her mouth and she progressed on.

It reached out its hand, trying to touch her face. It was under her spell, but she stayed at a distance, not wanting his hand on her. She pulled down the clothing item covering its face, knowing that it was the least of its concerns. Due to the way his jaw was set, she knew he was male. Lips, nose, eyes, then-

Love.

An insurmountable force felt like a boulder had been dropped on her, a connection so deep that now, all that mattered was him. It touched every nerve in her body, from the tips of her delicate fingers to the end of her tail. She pictured the endless possibilities, their great escape, their eternal life together. With one kiss, they could hold a bond unlike any other. The kiss of a seiren was the equivalent to eternal life.

But then, despair.

Her face convulsed, and she was unable to stop the tear from rolling down her face. There was no possible way that any of that could ever happen.

For the first time in her dreadful 63 years of life, she finally forgave her mother. The intense amounts of hatred she let carry her dissipated, and another tear just about rolled down her cheek.

Just about, if it weren't for the electric shock, and the plunge into complete darkness.