Syrena

let the water take me

It’s cold in the Falls. Like, cold enough she just needs to leave. Not that it’s warmer elsewhere, but she’s wandering south anyway, seriously considering visiting the Throat for a friendly hello. Because obviously, she’s one for friendly hello’s. Though maybe she could show up and meet their Diviner. But this thought is cut short at the sound of someone (or something, she never can be sure in Helovia) calling out about decorating a tree.

Alright, there was some weird stuff in this place, but this was a new level of weird. Decorating a tree?

Why does she go? Because she’s stupid. It’s the only logical explanation she can come up with for why she does anything these days. Why does she work for a herd she barely knows, or a God she barely knows, in a land she couldn’t give two shits about? Well that one she has an answer to. It is a means to an end; it is the way to become something if she’s stuck being not a siren. Basically, those were her options.

There’s, shockingly, a crowd already. She keeps to the edge of the group, ocean eyes fixed on the turtle who’s back gleams with all the stories she spends her days trying to collect. Could she simply watch his shell and learn the history of this place? The stories seem old, somehow, though she finds the move faster than she can learn it all. This, if nothing else, keeps her here. Though the promise of a potential reward that gets her trying to figure out just what she can put on the tree.

She wouldn’t give up the only item she has of any worth, and truthfully, she can’t get the charm out of her mane to give that up. These are the only things she has to give. The only items she calls her own. And it’s not like she was planning on decorating a tree when she left the Falls today, so she didn’t come armed with something. She could grab some snow off the ground, but that seems entirely like cheating.

Ah, but she does have scales. They seem so insignificant to others, perhaps. But to her, they are one of the only things she still has of the siren she used to be. They are a reminder every day of who she should be, of what she is worth, and why she works for herds and Czars and Gods. To be worthy of the sea, of her sisters, of her heritage.

Putting one of the tree, of course, means ripping it off herself, which she is less than pleased about. But she does it, grabbing a scale in her teeth and tearing it from the underside of her belly. She stifles a yelp, refusing to look weak in front of other horses. Instead, she places the scale on the tree. “A piece of the sea,” she says, because she cannot bring herself to say, A piece of my heart. It is close enough though, for her heart will always belong to the sea.

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