Angela cringes. Her shoulders tense, as she continues to stare at the notebook with intent. Deaf, she rereads the word—once, twice, then seven times until she finds herself letting out an exasperated sigh, and grabs the pen in turn. Of course, she thinks to herself. Of course! Why did I not consider this before?

He was not using magic! He simply could not hear me!

She taps the pen against the notebook’s spine. She hums, though soon stops when a small squirrel tries to have at her by throwing itself against the bathroom’s windowsill.

Sometimes, Angela wishes she could sing in places where no one—not even small insects and mammals—are around.

Slow and careful, the siren presses the pen’s tip to the journal’s page. She begins to scribble down her message, under the watchful, and quite observant eye of her new acquaintance. ‘Why do you keep me here?’

The young man’s eyes widen. His lips part as he gasps. He runs off again—this time, to fetch another pen—before returning soon after, to kneel before Angela and the tub. ‘You can speak English?’ he asks her in writing, to which the siren scoffs.

Angela grasps at her pen. ‘Of course, I can: siren-tongue has too many syllables, we only speak it whenever we wish to scare a sailor.’

The young man pauses to stare at her. ‘But…’ His brows are knitted together in mild confusion. ‘How did you learn?’

It occurs to Angela that he’s not even bothering to ask her to spare his comrades. This, is rare.

Actually, it’s more than rare—nobody, not even the most libidinous of sailors, has ever taken a genuine interest in her like this. And now, she, too, finds herself sporting a frown. ‘I have been living here for over two hundred years. That is a long time, and definitely enough time, to pick up the local language.’

He smiles at her. It is uncomfortable. For good measure, because Angela certainly does not want to give him the impression that she is getting friendly with him whatsoever, she picks up her pen, then adds the words, ‘Peasant.’ to the end of her phrase.

And there it comes again—once the young man has finished reading the scornful word—his crooked laughter, that seeps into the air. A snicker that is all wrong, bent at its edges, yet one that still manages to make Angela’s heart flutter; in the way that it first did, once she realized how good she was at singing Siren Songs.

Deaf, the word echoes throughout Angela’s mind on repeat. She leans forward, against the notebook, the bathtub’s edge. ‘Were you cursed?’ she asks the young man.

He shakes his head. ‘Just unlucky.’

The siren purses her lips together. With a single finger, she taps at her first question again. ‘Why do you keep me here?’

“Ah!” He lets out a croak, and quickly scrambles to write his missing reply. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore that.’ The young man points at her head. ‘You were bleeding,’ he writes, ‘I did not want to leave you. I did the best I could to treat your wounds. I hope it was enough, I’ve never… attended to a siren before.’

“You helped me?” Angela blurts; truly, she cannot believe what she is being told.

The young man coughs upon seeing her speak. And like Angela had done earlier on, he taps at the word, Deaf, many a time.

Angela quickly finds herself apologizing—which is very much a first for her, during an interaction with a creature of human kind. She groans. Her grip tightens around the pen he has lent her. ‘I eat your people for breakfast’, the siren writes. ‘Why help me? You should have let me die.’

The young man scratches at the back of his head. He glances to the ceiling. Angela is expecting for something, anything to happen, but… there is nothing. Only silence. Only him, and her—together, alone, in this bathroom.

Eventually, he shrugs. ‘I felt like it,’ the young man writes, much to Angela’s dismay.

‘You do not fear me?’

He stops once more, to lean in and to observe her. When he squints, he huffs, as if out of breath. The young man’s shoulders rise, then dip again. And as his eyes fall upon her breasts, that is when he swiftly averts his gaze. His nose flushes a deep shade of red. And Angela does not tell him in this moment, when she notices the brief scent of sex linger in the room—a scent, that is coming from him.

‘It is not that,’ he writes. ‘It is more like… I could not leave you, no matter how much I was afraid.’

His words make the tension fade from Angela’s own shoulders. It is in this moment that the siren decides she will not make the same mistake that she did when eating the fisherman years ago. ‘What is your name?’ she asks him.

The young man smiles again, relief etched into the corners of his lips.

He replies with the words: ‘Francis. And yours?’