Songbirds & Sirens

6

I jumped, ready to put the few self defense skills I knew to good use, when the figure stopped and his face came closer.

Someone, most likely Oren, sighed out into the cool cave-night air just as the hiss of something being struck against rock rang out.

A few more clips and sparks grew, and then there was a lantern brightening the dim cave, bringing two people into focus who had not been there before.

Beautiful, clear dark skin illuminated in the glowing rock walls, the man was only a few inches taller than me, and beside him stood a woman of the same coloring, both of them wearing matching expressions of indifference, though I could've sworn I spotted a flicker of amusement cross the man's face.

"What are the two of you doing here?"

I started at Inala's voice that appeared directly beside me, my body inching closer to the Siren as the two strangers inspected me with an almost alien look in their eyes.

The man spoke first.

"Inala. Good to see those sailors weren't successful in keeping you. How long have you been traveling with Lord Oren?"

I was still, silent and calculating.

I wasn't sure how it happened, but I was suddenly surrounded by people who knew Oren as 'Lord Oren'.

Something wasn't sitting right with me.

Why did everyone we 'suddenly' come across know him? Surely the world couldn't be that small.

Who was he, really?

"Only a few hours, actually."

Her cryptic answer did nothing to stop the questions floating in the two stranger's faces, and the man, Yuni, stared at me a bit with unnerving brown eyes assessing every single twitch of my jaw and breath that raised my chest.

"And who do we have here?"

The two people before me wore robes of gilded white and honey gold material that clung to their dark skin and draped to the floors.

The woman's eyes were milky white, like she was unseeing.

Glancing at her hand wrapped around the man's arm, her inability to look anyone in the eye I realized that she was most likely blind.

"This," Oren spoke up, coming to stand beside the woman, "Is Josephine Raphelia. Josephine, this is Yuni and Soraya. They are...acquaintances of mine."

My name sent shockwaves through the two standing before me, no matter how subtle they'd tried to make their reactions.

I was a topic of discussion between these people, and I desperately wished that I'd been a fly on the wall for every one of those conversations.

"Oh, so you know of me," I began, placing a hand on my hip as Inala took an almost imperceptible step in front of me, almost as if she were protecting me.

"We've heard of you. The Elder of the Siren community, Inala's community, actually, spoke of you constantly."

The woman Soraya spoke and I turned to her, though her face gave away almost as little as her counterpart beside her.

Her voice had been lilting and sweet and everything that I wished I could have been.

I was hard and sharp around the edges, voice a deep rasp that most men considered to be alluring but I only found it a negative attribute as it drew them to me when all my voice wanted to do was slaughter them where they stood.

Why would I want a voice that called men to me just so that I could kill them with it?

"I don't see how they would have heard of me considering I've been on the run most of my life."