the sea seemed to contain the worlds secrets, fears and wonders. people confided in them, it's lapping waves and stormy seas were temperamental in an imperfect comforting way. of course, no one really knew that the sea actually listened. the sirens listened, to the weeping, the laughing, the screaming. they saw the biggest flaws humanity had, and like most things in life, the bad inevitably outweighed the good.

the sirens saw the rotten, the awful and the insidious in humans, and took it away. they ripped the malice out of their souls and dragged them deep into the depths of the ocean. there just wasn't enough good in them to keep them afloat.

the aquatic beings had a closeness to the gods, their divine blood entwined their fates together, occasionally crossing paths in myth and legend. the siren neraphina, found her path meeting with one god in particular. the god apollo and his dazzling smile, she found herself besotted with him. she sat on a rock every day, watching as his chariot crossed the sky like a shooting comet, her own personal wishing star. no matter how long she watched him from her watery domain, it was never enough.

the plan was simple, but it put everything she had on the line. neraphina didn't care, she was drunk on love, rash and careless. when it came to it, she did it so boldly her coven banished her. but her love blinded her from the bad, the rotten and the malice from before. she could see why humans loved each other in this way, how she would so easily give up breathing for his wellbeing, how carelessly she would throw away her entire soul just to be with him.

neraphina died for her love, her unrequited sentence she had carried out for hundreds of years. her song had been her freedom and her torture, the song of the sea carried many lives's endings within its tune. the song of the sea became a warning to all merfolk alike, how a siren's dangerous gambit for love had gotten her knocked off her pedestal completely. neraphina had a slither of success, before her soul was mercilessly trawled down to the depths of a bottomless ocean by the very god she had so easily given it to.

...