The Twin Sirens (Re-edited)

Chapter One (Re-edited)

18 years later.....

Sea Whisper

It's another night at the sea and the gray-white moon had already risen on the horizon.  Its silvery light reflects upon the surface of the water and make it sparkle like dark sapphire.  So much like my sister's eyes.  Speaking of my sister, she is by my side bobbled up-and-down like a ship upon the waves in the water as we watch the rising moon since we were always fascinated by moon-rises and sunsets and sunrises and all that.  Everything above the sea and underwater is very colorful and beautiful when it came to that;  the way the sun or moon shone off the rippling water, its golden or grayish-white light warped in the twisted, glassy waves. No description can truly capture its mysterious beauty, yet only a few words can express its majestic colors.  

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It's been eighteen years since our parents gave birth to us and they had moved on without us since we're old enough to fend for ourselves. They're elsewhere in the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea.  They plan to visit us soon and will perhaps find us suitable soulmates for us. We're on a small island in the middle of the sea between the Great British and France. They really loved us and cared about us but since the laws of sirens had demanded that once a siren child became fifteen years old, his or her parents are to teach her or him the laws and way of sirens before then separating from each other; our parents only can see us a couple of times a year and help us get our soulmates.

It was remarkable rare for twin sirens to be born into a family of sirens. In fact, there are no twins that had ever born for hundreds of years and we're one of those very few twins that had been born.

We had this twin bond between us and it helps enable us to sense if each other is in danger or injured.

We're never naked and only wore pearl-silk (they're weaved from oyster pearls and some corals) tunics. We had our dolphin-like tails so we don't need to wear breeches or dresses but only to wear them if we wish to walk on drylands. We only lived on inhabitable islands that no humans had yet lived there.

It's been few days since the last storm and we had sung over twenty souls to death while few survivors were able to swim to safety. I almost never forget that lifeless eyes that stare at me as their bodies sunk to their watery grave at the bottom of the sea. I even look away as some sea creatures like sharks feast upon other bodies. It was an unforgettable sight and I had been shuddering about it every time when I had to ease drowning souls to their deaths.

But once sometimes at night when there are shipwrecks; I would disguised myself as a dolphin and had rescued some souls that can be saved instead of drowning to their watery deaths. They only see me as a dolphin at night because my tail is like a dolphin and my skin is like the skin of a dolphin. So it enables me to fool them so they won't be aware that I am a siren; the murderer of the sea. If I did it during the day, they would notice something's out of place with me but still, they would do think dolphins are magical or some sort of mythical creature that saved people and some of them would look different.

I'm mute so that's why my mother named me Sea Whisper since she always knew or sense that I'm mute but can able to whisper like the winds when I can sing. My voice is like the sound of waves crashing upon the shore when I sing and only the female humans can hear my whispering songs.

Sapphire's voice is like a nightingale or a canary, this I know because some men had them on the ships that were transporting them across the sea to another country. I even learned parrots can be very annoying and rude when they are squawking those cuss words (which we hated and refused to speak) at sailors.

I'm very protective of my sister and would ward off any seductive male sirens or mermen who only wished to cause her great harm than make her a mother of their offspring and his soulmate. She, in turn, did the same thing to me which I was grateful for because she had protected me from one female siren who is like a black widow because she killed any male sirens after they had wooed and mated with her and get her with the child. She even killed her offsprings if they're not what she truly wanted. She had to be executed for her actions because according to the laws of sirens that sirens must not kill each other after mating or killing their offsprings unless the offsprings are too dangerous to keep alive.

I and my sister stick together and we had traveled frequently all over the ocean world (not really since it's huge and deeper, and we only stay in one place longer each time.) We sometimes were seen by sailors on the ships who mistaken us for merfolk (Yes, there is merfolk and they are very shy of people and they lived really, really deep underwater that it was almost impossible for us to meet each other. I had recently befriended a mermaid who is like a sister to Sapphire. But we were unable to be soulmates which devastated us.) because she lived too far away underwater and I had to sing every time when more drowning souls come along. So it never works out for us and she couldn't live too close to the surface because of what mankind had caused to her kind.

Something about a selkie-like story that had truly happened or not yet taken place in merfolk. One of the female merfolks had visited the surface and had felled in love with a human man but it seems to occur that something went wrong and the mermaid did went back to the sea, heartbroken. And she is with the child, a hybrid-infant. What we could obtain from her that her husband had died or remarried but nothing more from her. So we assumed that was the truth or half-truth of what had to transpire between them. 

But anyhow, there was the incident with the child. He was born with human legs like his father, but it can turn into a tail when only in contract with the salt-water. And he had to come to the surface to breathe as any human does. But his presence had alerted mankind to the merfolk. They ensnared him in a fishers net and thus hauled him aboard the ship while merfolk looked on helplessly. They almost never saw him again. They wanted revenge upon humankind for taking away one of their own. So they requested us to sing to stop mankind from taking him abroad or get one of them. But corresponding to the laws, we cannot sing in vengeance upon humanity but solely in self-defense or if they seek to capture one of us. If a man or a woman saved one of us, we spared them in return. But if they betray us or killed us, we had no choice but to slay.      

But my great-great-grandmother had a way to bring the child back. She rescued the child from mankind since she had seduced them into handing over the infant to her. The child was uninjured and frightened after a nightmare from being separated from his family. We knew that to prevent it from happening again to him or everyone; they had to retreat to the deep sea where they had been living there since then. But the youth had to live with us since he requires to inhale the air to survive. And it permitted us of sheltering him from humans. He and his offsprings had been staying with us for centuries since that incident. So his mother had been visiting him from time-to-time when its safe. Only Sirens and Mer-siren (half siren, half-merfolk) had stay close to the surface because were the sirens and were more dangerous than merfolk; the mankind almost couldnt harm us or seduce or abduct us because of our deadly voices. Thats why the child is safe with us.

But we were never able to fell in love in with merfolk anymore because its risky for them to live close to the surface because of their desires to wander the dry lands and to fell in love with men or women. (We all are heterosexual.) And mankind can capture them and taking them away like what had happened to selkies.

Selkies are like us, but in their seal form and like us, they turned into mortal when theyre on dry lands, but they had to shed off their seal skins in order to turned into humans. But tragedy happens when men would try to get seal maidens skins so they can have no option but to wed them and have their babies with them.

But alas, some selkies maidens have already wed to selkies husbands who spent decades close to the places where their absent wives lived with their human husbands. Sometimes it would be years before finally selkies maidens would found their skins or when their husbands or their offspring gave it back to them so they can rebound to the sea and frequently into their overjoyed husbands arms.

Thats why our lives end tragically when it concerns humans in our lives. But only few, so few could have a good or joyful marriage with those humans or have a decent relationship/friendship with them.