Lost at Sea

There were no words to describe the feeling in Eleanor’s chest. She could not see where she was swimming, as the image of Jasper screaming at her to leave him alone kept distracting her. Never before had she felt so much self-loathing, so much loneliness. She thought she’d felt it all, but the pit she was spiraling into was entirely new to her.

Wait, no. That wasn’t right. Eleanor had felt something like this before. She stopped and cradled her head in her hands as emotions flooded into her.

As a siren, she knew as well as the rest that everything they felt was stifled, muted. Even when they felt pain, their inhuman bodies coped with things differently. Eleanor had always felt as though someone was pressing a blanket over her face with all their weight. It was suffocating to her to be so numb all the time; part of her was realizing that this was never what she was meant to be. She was the type to run wild and laugh at every attempt to hold her down. She floated above the general population in her own little planet. And somehow, somehow, Jasper belonged there.

But Jasper didn’t want her. That simple fact was enough to tinge the edges of her vision black. She felt a sudden urge, then, to inhale as much air as she possibly could, because it was the same air that Jasper breathed. Irrational and freed from her mind-numbing prison, she went straight for the surface.

As soon as she broke free, the night sky captivated her. The rich, velvet black stretched out above her and it was then that she realized how long she’d been swimming away from him. The stars floated almost close enough to touch, and so she reached up one hand in an effort to cup the brightest there. She felt infinitely small.

Her heart slowed gently as she watched a single star streak through the sky at break-neck speed. It was then that she realized what she was feeling then was not the end of the world. It would still keep turning same as yesterday, and the day before that, and no planets would shatter at the news of her qualms. Someone else somewhere was dealing with something similar, or even worse, and she forced herself to recognize that the planet is bigger than just her.

Only then did she know what she had to do.

Despite his vehement rejection of her presence, she needed to go back. She wouldn’t let him die, and she needed to know things-- even if she had to resort to charming the answered out of him.

She turned away from the stars then and made for the cove, where a piece of her long-forgotten past awaited. She’d almost made it when a cold body slammed into her hard from the side. Eleanor, shocked and wheeling wildly through the water, could not retaliate against her attacker.

“Eleanor!” Lizbeth shouted. Her eyes were ringed with red and she was breathing heavily. “You’ve been lying to me.”

Eleanor struggled to right herself, but every time she almost got there, Lizbeth gave her another hard shove. There was nothing for her to hang onto, nothing for her to fall against. She was taken completely by surprise.

“Is this what you’ve been reduced do? Weak. Sniveling in corners where you think no one can see you. I can’t believe you’re a part of my coven. I am ashamed to have you as a sister.”

“It’s not what you think,” Eleanor gasped, separating herself from Lizbeth with one powerful stroke of her tail. She took that moment to settle herself into a more defensive pose. She studied her sister’s frame carefully for any sign of a threat, but Lizbeth had gotten still.

“I want so badly to believe you,” Lizbeth whispered, her face crumpling in. Eleanor hadn’t realized exactly how insane Lizbeth had been. It disturbed her.

“Then please,” Eleanor begged. “Listen to me.”

There was silence as Eleanor cradled her sore shoulder and Lizbeth considered whether or not to take the younger siren’s word for it. Finally, she looked up, purple eyes flashing.

“Fine. But if you cannot keep yourself from falling apart entirely, I’ll have no choice but to make an example out of you. The other women are plotting a sort of mutiny and I don’t want to have to kill you, too,” Lizbeth admitted. She turned and disappeared, the current caused by her tail fanning over Eleanor’s face.