Odd to think that Devi spent more time on beaches than at home. If she were a tad better at luring men to their deaths, then that wouldn’t be the case. She began to fantasize over the idea of having friends too. Although, she couldn't entirely say that her lack of friends was only a result of her never being around for socializing.

‘Amicable’ was not a word folks ever associated with Devi.

'Home', meant something completely different to mortals. For sirens, was the plane of existence Devi was sitting in now. All the structures were temporary, 'home' referred to a state of being, rather than a physical place.

With that said, Devi had joined her mother Fantine in her 'home' that she had likened to a fortress today. The grandiose creation was not unlike her usual style. Fantine was a goddess and treated herself as such. While there was nothing wrong with that, it wasn’t Devi’s idea of comfort.

Fantine, the Madrastra Immortale, she who feasts on the souls of men, and who Father Time himself fears. The original Siren Song. 

A starlet, among the dangers of the seas. And there are many of those. 

She sat at a long table overflowing with meat and fruit. Sirens did not need food like humans did. For them, it was the desert that followed the main course. An indulgence. Described as ‘sweet’ and ‘tangy’, Devi couldn’t taste it. It did have an interesting texture that she didn’t hate. 

The young siren wanted to forget the ‘battle’ she lost to the boy on Pancove Beach, but it continued to eat at her into the next week.

Finally, it bothered her enough to do something about it.

“Hey Fantine,” she pressed her hand onto her cheek boredly.

Fantine sat in the center of the room on a throne of autumn leaves. She swiped at her phone and scrolled through dating profiles carefully as two boyish men centuries younger than the eternal beauty fed her strawberries and combed her lavender curls. A recent experimentation by the divine goddess. If Devi were to be honest, she favored the woman’s natural coral curls.

“Yes, my dear daughter?”

Technically, all two-thousand and something sirens were Fantine’s daughters, so that title held little favor. Although, Fantine did like Devi over most of her children. For one, she wasn’t a complete ditz, and unfortunately Fantine could not say the same for the rest of her offspring. To add to that, Fantine found Devi’s constant sulking endearing.

“I think I found my ‘one’.”

Fantine’s attention was drawn away from her phone. She blinked her ridiculously long eyelashes and raised her thin brows.

“You don’t mean—”

“Yup,” Devi confirmed bluntly, bracing herself for the speech she knew she would receive next.

“Devi, I never thought that you out of all your sisters would ever come to me with this,” Fantine admitted, and she did so with a curious grin.

“I know.” Her daughter was making light of it, but if Devi thought too long or hard about it, she would start to have doubts. Despite her lack of talent elsewhere, she was very good at doing things on a whim without regard to the possible consequences.

“You know what that entails, right?”

“Yes, I’ve seen The Little Mermaid, Fantine,” Devi joked. 

“Oh, you know that’s not accurate, Devi.” 

“Except in the parts where it is!”

Jokes aside, she knew what she was bartering. In the rare situation that a siren falls in love with a mortal they believe is worth giving up their immortality for, Felicitas enacts protocol: “The One”. During which a siren has 31 days and 31 nights to prove it to the Gods that their love is true, so they can get a full mortal lifetime to spend with their “One”. Should they fail, the siren will cease to exist by the end of the 31st night. 

If it sounds like a pyramid scheme, it’s because it is.

The all-knowing woman cut in, “Well is it a pyramid or is it more of a cycle—”

“I hadn't gotten to that part yet.”  

Obviously, if all sirens were to become mortal, who would be left to feed our ravenous Mother? The trade-off for a lifetime with your loved one is your firstborn. 

Fantine’s purple eyebrows knit together. “When you say it like that, you make me sound like the bad guy. Did you have a bad childhood? Would you not want me raising your children?”

Devi grinned, “It was a lovely childhood, actually. Then I grew up to lure men to their doom.”

“Bad men, you forget an important part, we lure bad men to their dooms.”

“The definition of ‘bad’ varies siren to siren.”

“I trust the judgement of my children,” the woman hummed. 

“It’s a flawed system, Fantine.”

Her mother smiled warmly, already longing for her daughter's sense of humor. “I’ll miss you, Deviana. But I wish you all the world’s happiness.” 

And so she received the Goddess’s blessing, but… she was hardly convinced this was a smart idea. In reality, she knew nothing about the young man. She was curious about him, but like everything else in her life, she was going into this half-heartedly.

She figured in the worst case scenario, if she did die, she had lived a long enough life that she could accept it. A small part of her hoped, however. It hoped that this ‘curiosity’ would turn out to be something, because if it didn’t, then all of her life would have been lived in misery.