This was all some sort of sick, twisted coincidence. 

Hah! Coincidence, what irony. Valeria always had to laugh at the ideas of coincidence and karma, “getting what was coming to you” or whatever people called it. She thought of herself as above falling victim to such unpredictable things- she was too stable, too forward-thinking to ever get side-swiped by something like that.

But, still. This had to be the worst bit of irony she’d ever experienced, no matter if this whole situation was the result of a bad drug trip or not. This just aligned too dang well for it to be just fate, but not quite well enough for it not to be. Reading The Odyssey in class was expected, as was the essay assigned afterwards that seemed too simple for her grade level. Pick a creature encountered by Odysseus in The Odyssey and do an analysis on the impact it had in the story and what impact it might have in the modern world. It was almost like a research paper, except on a fictional character. 

So, she’d sat and listened, packed up her things and left when the bell rang, stared at her book with a frown on her face as she trusted her feet to take her somewhere outside of this god-forsaken school. What she could possibly do for this assignment. Scylla? What about Charybdis? Or, maybe even harpies… there were too many possibilities, and none of them especially appealing to her. Unconsciously, her face formed into a scowl. This sucked. 

But Valeria knew that she had to do it, and there was a deadline of next week to have it in by- but who was going to turn it in early- so she’d eventually have to buck up and spit out some sort of word vomit to hopefully make her teacher happy.

But not today. Not yet. Valeria didn’t think she could force herself to do any work on the essay right at this moment, especially not when she was just wandering through the school’s parking lot. She instead dragged the hair out of her face and tweaked her course ever so slightly, now facing towards the woods that edged out the parking lot of the school- a regular haunt for her. Some people did drugs, some people drank alcohol bought with fake IDs. Valeria, on the other hand, was the most punk of all. She walked through clearings and climbed trees.  

Away she went, through the trees and over the roots and rabbit holes, ducking every so often to avoid wayward pine needles making their way into her eyes and so that the worst of the sap wouldn’t find itself cemented into her hair. She was already a mess- why make it worse? 

Valeria smiled to herself quietly, mind wandering as her feet followed a well-worn path through the woods, finally coming out into a respectably large clearing. Vines of golden flowers knotted their ways up trees, and the grass blew gently in the warm wind. If Valeria squinted, she could just barely make out the cave on the other side of the clearing where she’d discovered little shelves carved into the sides and the remains of fabric on the ground. If she was to go by the evidence there, Valeria would have to guess that somebody had lived here once- a long time ago, certainly before the school existed. There were some things in that cave that she’d only seen in her history textbooks, which really made her wonder whether or not she should have been poking around this spot in the first place. Then again, nobody really seemed to care about this place, so it wasn’t like she was hurting anybody too much. And, besides, this place was too beautiful to ever stay away. Even now, as she looked out into the center…

By far the centerpiece of this clearing was the enormous lake in the middle. It seemed to mix with the horizon as it extended outwards, water a million different shades of blue mixed together and shifting in the light. A few times, Valeria had caught glimpses of some larger fish swimming around in there- darting in and out, chasing after the smaller creatures that lived at the bottom or hid in the waving underwater plants below. Overtop of the water arched an enormous bridge, comprised of bricks that stopped about ten feet up and gave way to huge, twisting tree branches, interwoven with one another in a way that Valeria was sure couldn’t be natural but couldn’t fathom being constructed by any person- or people. If anything, it seemed like something out of a fairytale, a structure crafted by magic alone.  

Something splashed in the water. The girl’s head swivelled over to look at the ripples in the water. That “something” had been big, and Valeria’s mind fruitlessly searched for any animal or fish that could’ve made that sound. Even the biggest fish in this lake weren’t that large- but she was getting distracted again. Honestly, now that Valeria thought about it, she was really leaning closer to writing about something like Scylla. Vaguely monstrous, but still ambiguous enough to not cause too much terror (at least, not to her), and still interesting enough-

Another splash. Closer to her now. Valeria suddenly felt her heart rate spike. That was… disturbing, but it couldn’t get to her from this distance. Right? She smiled shakily. Right, yeah, she had enough separation-

It lunged at her again. Valeria promptly spun on her heel and sprinted out of the clearing, all the way back home with her heart in her throat and adrenaline in her veins. It could’ve been nothing, it was probably nothing, but Valeria would very much have preferred to get very very far away from that nothing for the moment. As she went to bed that night, though, her mind was swirling with how stupid she had acted. It was a fish, she had been scared off by a fish. Internally, she groaned. And how old was she, again? So, she resolved to go back the next day, determined to get some work done and enjoy the warm weather while it lasted. 

As soon as she woke up the next morning, she had eaten a good breakfast and packed her bags, walking over to the glade as the sun sunk into her bones. She walked into the clearing fully expecting to have a calm, quiet afternoon. Valeria had walked into that clearing and felt her heart jump as she met eyes with… someone. It was a girl, she was fairly sure, a very tall girl with eyes that seemed to have no sclera- but Valeria figured that was probably because of how she was hidden by the trees. The girl looked generally odd, off-putting, and quite out-of-proportion, but Valeria was willing to look past all of that. Then, she started to speak.

“Leave,” she rasped out, and Valeria jumped. The hostility- “Leave. This is not your territory, you have no right to be here.”

“I- excuse me?” Valeria managed to force out. Her heart was pounding again and she could’ve sworn she heard something in the woods, but this girl was snarling at her in a way that wasn’t entirely human, and the flash of fur behind this stranger felt like the least of her problems-

But then it was. This mysterious stranger turned around and slapped the bear that had been prowling around behind her. Valeria choked in a breath as the creature reared back in indignation. The girl seemed to snarl at it, whirling around on her heel as if to fight the thing, and Valeria felt something within her jolt hard enough to send her rocketing towards the stranger, ripping her away to place herself in front of the bear- still angry and ready to attack. A hint of regret sparked within her yet she did her best to shove it down as she screamed at the stranger to run, uselessly putting her fists up as if to ward off the animal. Valeria fought the beast until a series of footsteps told her that the stranger had left, and she had almost allowed herself to relax when huge claws dug themselves into her chest and slashed. She screamed in pain, feeling her knees go weak and her body thrown like a ragdoll to the side, feet desperately searching for some form of purchase before her lower body gave out on her. She plummeted backwards into the freezing cold of the lake. The water enveloped her, no longer inviting and entrancing but a prison, suffocating her as she spasmed. Whether it was the water in her lungs or the pain in her chest, a black cloud was rapidly encroaching on the edges of her vision.

She could register a paw breaking through the water before it all went black.

She might’ve been dead.

Valeria couldn’t be certain, but as she felt herself floating aimlessly in some great void, she thought she might have been dead. After all, it wasn’t like she could see anything or hear anything too well.

But she could feel, just out of the corners of her senses, how her chest would move every so often with a shuddering hint of breath, so she decided that she couldn’t have been dead.

Valeria forced herself awake, pain shooting through her body with every tiny movement. She could move, though, which was amazing, and she could breathe, which was even better-

Her blood froze as the mental gears started turning. The girl was suddenly shooting herself forwards, out of the blackness, away and away, out and tripping on hands and knees, falling, out of the cave and across the grass until her hand hit the freezing cold of lake water. She stopped. Her reflection rippled beneath her, warping her expression of sheer shock into something almost unrecognizable. No, her face was there, and her chest wasn’t a gaping mass of blood and viscera. She pulled down the collar of her shirt slightly. Pink scars were plainly present, streaking down her collarbone and into her shirt. She felt numb as she let go of the fabric, gently lifting the bottom of her shirt this time to find the scars ending just above the waistband of her… undeniably damp jeans. In fact, now that she focused on it, her shirt wasn’t entirely dry either. She could feel her head spinning as she swayed slightly. What the hell-

Are you done yet.

A voice echoed in her head and Valeria jumped. She scrambled backwards as quickly as possible, staring in disbelief at the water. 

“What- what?”

Are you done yet?

The voice repeated, and Valeria was sure she was hallucinating.

ARE YOU LEAVING?

“Who are you,” she asked instead, sitting firmly in her spot. “Where are you?” There was a noise like some sort of inhuman growl before the water started rippling, and that same splashing sound that Valeria had heard a day or two earlier appeared again faintly. She watched, gaping, as the ripples got closer, larger, and closer, larger, until-

Something surfaced. Claws, teeth, dark hair and terrifying eyes that looked like voids in the dark. Valeria watched in horror as it pulled itself up to shore, then started dragging itself out of the water, a massive tail that had previously gone unseen trailing behind it. As the girl watched, the appendage began to warp, split, with scales and algae forming a web around the creature that constricted, and then the monster was standing up… up… up...

And it was the girl from yesterday, standing in front of her once again. Valeria felt all of the air leaving her lungs as she stared in terror at this- this-

“Monster,” She whispered. The girl- the thing- snarled.

Siren.

The voice responded.

Siren. Ungrateful brat-

Valeria’s head spun as she felt her feet leave the ground. Her limbs went weak and her vision blurred. It all went black again.

It was with a gasp that she woke up in the morning, head snapping around to see where she was. The trees looked the same as they did before, and the water was still. Instantly, her hands went to the hem of her shirt, pulling it up frantically and poking the chub of her stomach, careful around the tight pink scars that still were present and firmly planted on her torso. Something white swung in front of her field of vision. Valeria paused before- slowly- crawling over to the water, fear pounding in her veins as she looked once more at her reflection. A streak of white had planted itself in her hair, and she was about to wonder what sort of alcohol had made its way into her system last night, when- of course- she was interrupted.

Leave.

She blinked. That couldn’t have been- it wasn’t-

The water rippled below her face and her reflection was replaced by a snarling face full of fangs.

NOW.

Valeria left.

She went home and took a shower, marvelling even more at the sudden bleached streak in her hair and the scars that slid across her body, and then she sat down to type the beginnings of her analysis. It was then that the curiosity started brewing in her. It brewed, boiled and slowly developed until she was standing in front of her teacher’s desk the next week, handing in her paper and still wondering deep in her bones- was this just coincidence, or was it meant to be?

As school ended that day, she brushed her hair out of her face and started walking.

She decided to ask the siren to find out.