we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea

He is so different from Ivar, although she knows that could both be categorized the same. Monsters. Beasts. Creatures that are so deeply unlike her. Ivar though, is so certain in his ferocity. He has no qualms of his brutality—even though it likes so prettily hidden beneath all of that beauty. She is lucky, she thinks, in that she has never needed to be convinced of it. She does not mind the danger of putting her life beneath the sharp teeth of the kelpie and has never tried to tell herself that she feels anything more.

She has never thought that she was capable.

But Jamie—he is different.

His teeth are sharp. His darkness profound. But he does not seem to savor it. There is a weakness in the halted breath that rattles his lungs and, were she a predator, she would be turned away by it—or enticed by it in all of the wrong ways. Instead, she finds that it doesn’t matter to her. Not at all.

Instead, she is fascinated by the theoretical questions he poses to her like he cares about the answer that she might provide him. It stretches her imagination in ways that it has not stretched since she was a young girl. It forces her to think, to consider, to wonder at what is beyond the shadows that tie around her legs and pull her closer to him. To the strange nothingness of being tangled with him, to the weight of it.

He pulls away and she wonders how she can miss something that she can barely feel at all.

“Evia,” she says easily, not knowing that there are those who may not want to answer.

“My name is Evia.”

She studies the darkness of him, the yellow of his eyes.

“Can I see you again?”

How would she find him? She has no idea.

we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea

She feels a strange sensation at the idea of being able to summon him again—at being able to find him so easily by just thinking of him. She doesn’t tell him that she will be always thinking of him. That she will return to the islands and the beaches of Ivar and be thinking of him still. That she will shield the thoughts of the man made of shadows as she lives amongst the kelpie—as she bears him sons and daughters.

It feels impossible to think he would always come.

That he would be a constant companion.

(Would anyone else see him? Or would he exist only in her thoughts?)

These things plague her, confuse her, and she shifts suddenly, redistributing her weight as if to try and get more comfortable. “Okay,” is all she says instead, flicking her silvery tail against her scaled, sleek haunches. They feel dry, her body thirsting for the water—more specifically the salt water of the sea.

She wants to stay, she knows.

Wants to be here with him and his sharp smile, but even that cannot override the primal ned to return to the ocean. She grows irritable, uncomfortable, and she does not hide it well from her pretty face.

“I will think of you then.”

She realizes she does not have a name to call him by and chooses to not ask.

She prefers him like this—in the shadows, in her thoughts. Hers and just hers.

“Think of me too,” she says with a silvery laugh, with a flash of white teeth.

And then she turns from him, returning to the water, walking into the depths and leaving.