“There is not one day that I find myself freed of boredom.” 

Angela swims further down the reef. The sea witch ignores the sick feeling in her gut. She focuses on her dear friend’s ramblings instead. “You do not like it here?”

“There is nothing to like”—Zoey says, as her flimsy figure disappears behind a giant rock covered in moss—“about a place that hosts man-eating contests. You’d think that, after four hundred years, we would have switched it up a little!” Her onyx hair dances to the rhythms of underwater currents. The sight of her is pure chaos, which causes Angela to grin, then chase her good friend in turn.

A school of fish brush past their ghastly tails. The two sirens come to rest at the ocean’s surface, next to a rather isolated beach. 

Zoey scratches dried sand with her sharp claws that are joined at her lilac skin. Angela, on the other hand, cannot stop thinking about him. “The other night—I was not able to seduce a man,” she mutters.

And Zoey immediately sits up. Her eyes widen. “What?” the word is blurted before she has put proper thought into it, it seems, for the young siren soon purses her lips together, then tries again. “I mean… a-are you sure he heard you?”

Angela’s dark brows furrow. Her eyes—blue as ice amid hot summers—fill with dread. Her shoulders slump. “He ignored me, Zoey...”

Zoey scoffs. “You have the best voice in the land; perhaps, you were too far for him to listen in on your song?”

“I was close enough for him to see me,” Angela’s head disappears into her arms as she holds both her elbows and sighs. “Had he turned around, we would have likely locked gazes.”

“And, he did not?”

“Not even once.”

“Nonsense!”

Rage rises to Angela’s face. She grasps at the sand by her sides. “It is true!” She exclaims; her lip twitches as she recalls the rather… humiliating incident. Her gaze narrows. “I think”—Angela pauses; she pouts—“that he may not be human.”

“Ah.” Zoey squints at the stray piece of seaweed that lingers atop the waves and knocks the white foam before them to pieces. A large gull swoops past their figures and gobbles up a tiny, miserable fish that barely has time to fight against the attack before it is swallowed, and making its descent into the bird’s belly. “Maybe…” the young Siren scratches at her chin with her claws; Angela truly thinks Zoey should retract them before taking care of an itch—drawing blood is much too easy, with the tools nature has blessed them with.

She tilts her head back to stare up at the sky. It is a rather lovely peach color, mixed with pastel orange, courtesy of the setting sun. “It would make sense.” Angela mumbles, with a hum. Though, she soon stops herself from singing any more of the quiet tune, once a ship across the ocean’s far horizon changes its trajectory and turns her way instead. 

The faded melody ends with a click of the siren’s tongue. Sometimes, Angela wonders if this voice may not be a curse, more so than the blessing her father made it out to be. She thinks back to the enigmatic stranger. “It is quite easy to find prey on this island,” she tells Zoey. “No one ever comes looking for missing victims. Barely anyone even knows it exists. We might not be the only ones to have figured this out.”

“Honestly—” Zoey picks up a large flower that has been dragged over to the shore by the rising wind, from within a nearby forest; she spins it around a few times, before she decides to braid it in her hair. “I don’t understand why there are still so many people here. If I were them, I would have long left this place.”

“Yes, well,” Angela huffs. “You are not them. Thankfully. Or else, we would have all run out of food by now. Gods, I don’t even want to imagine a life without those plump villagers. What a nightmare.” She steals the flower from Zoey’s hands—the swift snatch gets her friend’s attention once more.

Zoey blinks, casually; oblivious to the request that is about to fly out of Angela’s mouth. “What?” she asks.

Angela leans in, then tosses the flower into the ocean.

Zoey leaps past her in an attempt to catch it, but it’s too late. The small, pink thing is gone within seconds, and drifts away until it is picked up again by another bird, who throws it as quickly as it had taken it with discontent, upon realizing that the fauna is not food. “Come with me,” Angela says, as she holds onto Zoey’s wrist, that slowly comes back down to rest by her side.

“Huh?”

“To see him again.” Angela’s tone should not sound as enthusiastic as it does for a mere, pitiful livestock—not to mention, a rather disobedient one, at that, too. Yet, it does. She is perplexed. “Come with me,” she echoes. It takes two weeks of replacing Zoey on singing duty used as a bargaining chip, for Zoey to agree. 

And when Angela asks Zoey, “You do not mind?” for she is surprised to find that her friend truly does not enjoy her daily, musical tasks, Zoey merely shakes her head, then shrugs. 

“I was never any good at it in the first place.” The gentle breeze of the dying day brushes past their bare chests. The young siren tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “If I made the rules,” a bittersweet grin takes her lips, “I would never, ever, sing again.”

Angela wants to question Zoey’s odd words. What would you do instead? But the conversation’s subject quickly shifts to that of their plan to find the young man, who has not fallen for Angela’s usual tricks.

The two sirens make a promise. 

They will act once the moon rises in the sky tonight; rumors say it will be full, and that it will shed light on this tiny little island they call home. 

If all goes according to plan, the circumstances will be perfect for hunting, and Angela licks her lips at the mere thought of feasting on this man. I can’t wait.