Life, as far as she could tell, was nothing but a giant learning curve. She’d been happy in her old life, she had learned how to sing her siren song, had learned to lure unsuspecting travelers to the depths of the ocean, had learned to travel the world without worry. Until life ripped all that right away from her. And so here she is, learning how to live all over again. She was good at being a siren. She is terrible at being a mortal horse. It is nothing something she learns well, perhaps because she still does not want to learn. She wants to return to her old life, wants to return to her old powers, her old self. She wants all the things she cannot have.

Ah, but doesn’t everyone?

Instead, she tries. Poorly, but she tries, getting slightly better with each passing day. Slowly, those days turn to seasons, turn to years, as they are wont to do. How many miserable, freezing Frostfalls has she spent in this hellhole? Too many, yet here she is for another with no plans of leaving. Leaving does not return her powers, but staying gives her hopes of gaining a few of them back. The power Helovia offered was nothing, compared to what she could once do, but it was better than nothing.

Today, she finds herself restless. The pools of the Falls are beginning to ice over, and even she finds them too cool to laze about in all day. So she leaves, wandering toward the Threshold as if she has any business in the Threshold. Not because she doesn’t have a home to offer others, but because she’s entirely incapable of small talk or anything else that’s expected of her in the Threshold (or anywhere else, really). Maybe today would be the day for that lesson.

It’s early morning, the sun bright and somewhat warming, casting a golden glow through the trees of the Threshold. She pauses for a moment, closing her eyes, trying to think of all the conversations she’d mainly ignored here, trying to think of what they say, how they say it. Trying to remember what she might say, once upon a time when she’d cared enough to impress anyone. This was something she could be better at. Life, in general, was something she simply had to get better at.

After a moment, she dives further into the trees. It is quiet in the way winter always is, the snow-covered ground muffling the sounds of life. The trees are devoid of birds, all gone south or to some other land entirely for the winter. The silence makes the sound of a voice that much more obvious. A child’s voice, it sounds like, and Syrena instantly thinks of Bathsheba. She hadn’t seen the girl in quite some time, a thought that she finds actually makes her slightly sad.

The realization almost stops her in her tracks. Sad? What the hell is that. Sad? Maybe she is learning. Just not in the way she wants to. Why is she worried about a child she only knows from a few meeting?

Shaking her head, she keeps moving, dragging her feet and legs through the snow. Swirls of blue, purple and greens mark her legs as the snow melts against her warm body, and like always, she is pleased to be something other than gray. Before long, she finds a blue mare and a buckskin girl with fire dancing along her back. Syrena watches for a moment too long, the fire taking shapes of deer and lions and various other creatures. Well, wasn’t that different. Probably more exciting than color changing (it may be a parlor trick, but Syrena does love her parlor trick anyway). She arrives in time to catch the filly’s introduction, and finds she has little to add. What would someone else say here? but she has no answer to that. Instead, she nods, trying to a smile that may or may not actually look like a smile, but it hopefully brings a bit of warmth to her otherwise emotionless face. Her voice is still mostly deadpan when it comes, but there’s a sing-song quality to it that again, helps make her seem slightly less dead. “Syrena, from the Hidden Falls. Are you okay?” Because even graceless, tactless Syrena can see the girl is shaking and restless, though she has no idea why.


les words "chat chat"

Syrena

let the water take me