The water lapped at Alena and Jesenia's tails as they rested in the sand, hours having gone by since the two had saved the man from his boat.

"When you said we couldn't just leave him here, I didn't think that meant you were going to baby him until he revived himself," Alena muttered with a roll of her eyes.

Jesenia continued rubbing the man's head as the first rays of sunlight began to cast themselves across the horizon, catching the flecks of brown in the sleeping man's hair.

"He deserves to survive, Alena. Don't be so heartless."

"It's my duty to be."

"What was that?" Jesenia asked.

"Nothing," Alena quickly replied, tilting her head back into the sand as her body shivered in the midmorning air.

"Alena," Jesenia whispered after a few minutes, "do you think it's possible that we could die being out of the water this long?"

"I suppose we could." A smile smoothed over her lips. "I don't know quite how long it takes for our bodies, I've never been out of the water long enough to find out."

Jesenia's mouth fell open as she began to ask another question when a muffled groan reached both of their ears.

They sprang away from the rocks when the man sat up slowly and rubbed at his eyes, shaking his hair as sand fell from his curls.

"What happened?" He moaned, wincing at the glow from the morning sun as he struggled to stand to his feet.

Jesenia remained speechless, whereas Alena frowned and began to pull Jesenia back towards the water.

"What are you doing!" She shrieked, trying to pull her arm from Alena's grasp.

At the sound of her scream, the man turned towards the pair. His eyes bulged from his head at the sight of the two sirens, and as he started to shout himself, he promptly fell backwards into a slosh filled puddle.

Alena again grabbed Jesenia's arm as she sprang into the water, disappearing into the crashing and frothing waves before the human could confront them.

~*~*~*~

With water dripping in slews down his body, he wiped the liquid out of his eyes with fervor.

They had to have been apparitions, Damari thought, being out for so long is warping my mind... I must be having sea madness.

He stumbled to his feet and held onto the closest rock until he regained his balance.

Although maybe I simply drank too much last night before...before...

He blacked out.

He was boggled. He could come up with no plausible reason for the disappearance of his boat, the way he was rescued or why he needed rescuing in the first place.

All he could remember was being hit in the head with one of the leaden floats on his net and then darkness, the cool and empty darkness.

What confused him even more was that a basket woven of material he had never seen before in his life sat on the rocks near his body with fish overflowing from it.

There was no explanation at all for his frazzled mind except accepting the fact that his life had been spared by beautiful maidens of the sea.

He ran his palm over his face and heaved a deep sigh, keeping care to avoid the tender cut on his forehead, and making his way over to the basket to carry. Staring vaguely out into the waves that held more mysteries then answers.

He moved carefully through the rocks, and could see fishing boats sailing out of the docks to meet their quotas, while other ships made their way out to sea.

Some that will never find their way home.

The thought made Damari blink quickly, thinking back to the countless days when he was a boy and his mother tried to care for him and his sister while his father made a living out on the ocean.

The money was fair, but in the end it had been what dragged his father to his death when Damari was seventeen and his sister,Rayen, only fourteen.

His mother was crushed when the news finally reached them after months of waiting for his return.

She retreated into herself and refused to speak with anyone except her two children after the funeral, her agony only increasing when his father's body couldn't be recovered from the wreck near the islands of Sicily.

Her condition became so awful that Damari felt as though he had lost both of his parents at the same time.

He could no longer find the woman who would call him her "Little Apollo" or the one who had constantly cared for him when he was sick or afraid for his father at sea.

The song she used to sing to him as a child echoed in his ears while he walked along the shore towards the docks that led to his home, passing fishermen who had loads on their backs while he held a measly basket.

It was more than his family had seen in weeks however, and with him being the head of the house now, the duty of providing for them fell on his shoulders.

The weight was a heavy one to carry, but at the age of twenty three, Damari knew what was expected of him, and with his mother in the current state of disarray that she was, he was really the only one that felt sane nowadays

The smell of fish, bait and sweat hung in the musky air as Damari marched through the market place, men shouting the prices of fresh fish, clothes, fruits and jewelry of all kinds.

None of it mattered to him, and when he had made it through the market and reached the top of the rugged mountain path that led to his home, he was struck with the memory of his father standing beside him when he had to leave for one of his voyages.

"Daddy," he had squeaked out pitifully in between salty tears, "how do I know that you'll be safe when you're so far away from Mommy, Rayen and I?"

His father's strong arms had wrapped around his waist as he hoisted him off the ground and set him on his shoulders.

"Because I promise to always come back to you my little sailor boy. Wherever life may take me I will always find my way back to your mother and you children, no matter what."

"But how can you promise that Daddy?" Damari had asked in confusion, his little nose scrunching up in thought.

Damari's father lifted his hand and patted it directly over his son's heart.

"Because as long as you have love in your heart, I will never leave you Damari. Whether my ship takes me as far away as the other end of the world or past the gates of Elysium."

He brought Damari to his eye level then into his arms for a farewell hug, the fresh ocean breeze rushing over his son with a calming welcome.

"I will never leave you."

The words resonated through Damari almost as if his father were still standing next to him, the years stripped away to reveal the same terrified young boy who wished for his father to return home.

But not every wish was meant to come true and that was on lesson that Damari had learned the hard way.

Seagulls called to each other in the air as he rushed up the final steps to the door he had opened ever since he was a toddler, his sandals clicking against the stone as he bounded into the doorway.

"Mother! Rayen! I'm home!"

A crash from the direction of the kitchen dragged Damari's attention to his twenty year old sister who sat on the mud floor with a pot on top of her head.

"Ray," Damari chuckled, bending down to the floor and tipping the pot up so he could see her face underneath, "what are you doing?"

"I was trying to get a pot ready for you if you brought home dinner." she said jokingly, starting to laugh at herself as she removed the cooking pot from her head. "I slipped as you can now see, all my fault really."

Damari gave a genuine smile to his sister and brought her in for a bear hug. "Well you should get that pot ready again if you think you can handle placing it on the hot plate, because I did bring home dinner."

Ray laughed exuberantly, brushing her fair blonde hair out of her face and hitting Damari with a cloth all at the same time before returning back to work.

"Mother has been muttering nonsense all day again." she uttered quietly, turning away from the pot to look out towards the courtyard that lay just outside the kitchen.

Damari followed the line of his sister's sight and saw his mother sitting against a crumbling stone wall that had been in their courtyard for years. They'd never had the money to fix it.

"I'll talk to her." he assured her.

Moving around Rayen, he walked under the overhang that had vegetation spilling forth, wild orchids and bougainvillea displaying their white, green and purple petals that flourished in the sunlight.

Damari and Rayen's mother wore a chiton around her body, one that had been given to her from her husband in the weeks prior to his death.

Underneath,she had a simple white gown, one that she wore constantly along with a black silk scarf over her head, given to her as a child from her mother.

She rarely went out in public anymore, confining herself to the courtyard where she claimed the gods spoke to her, telling her of things that were to soon pass.

Damari had always believed his mother to have been a brave and independent woman, but without his father, she had slipped into the greatest recesses of her mind.

Trying to be as quiet as possible, Damari approached his mother, the last time he had done so he had been scolded for interrupting a conversation with her and Hermes, so he stuck to asking instead of interrupting.

Her long brown hair hung down in waves just past her shoulders, tangling with her scarf as she situated herself against the wall, almost like she were in a restless sleep.

"Mother?" Damari asked lightly, "are you busy?"

Deep, caramel colored eyes opened lazily to look into his light blue ones, glazed over with a mixture of exhaustion and forgetfulness.

"Oh Damari, no I'm not busy, just sitting and remembering." Her laughter trilled through the air like soft, gentle music as her delicate shoulders shook with it.

"Remembering what, Mother?" he asked cautiously, about to rest a hand on her shoulder, but thinking it wise to wait instead.

A contented sigh left her. "Oh the old days with your father, the tales he used to tell, singing me such beautiful songs..."

Her sentence trailed off and Damari had to prod her gently to regain her attention.

"What songs?"

A childlike smile came over her face as she spoke. "Simple songs really, he was always intrigued by the mysteries that hid themselves far below the sea."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean like sharks, whales, dolphins, mermen, sirens, that sort of thing. Your father had a fascination with sharks at one time if you'd-."

"Wait, wait Mother," Damari raised his hand and held hers as if it were made of the most fragile of glasses, "sirens?"

"Yes dear, haven't you heard of them before?" She asked jokingly, staring at him with a bit of concern in her eyes.

"Well no, I can't say that I really have, but Mother, Ray said you were muttering to yourself again."

His mother laughed once more. "She thinks she hears me muttering all the time and the way you two worry over me just because the gods choose to speak through me isn't my fault either."

"Mother, the gods haven't spoken through anyone but the Oracle of Delphi and its been centuries since anyone heard anything of prophecies such as hers."

"The gods chose to speak through me Damari, and you can choose to listen to me or not, but I know what I hear." His mother stated firmly, crossing her arms with the strength and determination of a vexed Minotaur.

Damari wiped a drop of sweat from his brow and studied his mother, about to ask her another question when a shudder ran through her.

It wasn't an incredibly visible one, but he could tell something had happened as soon as her eyes flashed, a silver glow reflecting through her eyes until her entire body hummed with power.

"Mother.." Damari whispered, reaching a hand out to nudge her again.

But as soon as his finger came into contact with her body, he was shot backwards into the wall, a deafening boom sounding through the courtyard.

Plumes of smoke surrounded him and he groaned, coughing in pain as he attempted to pull himself back to his feet; the area in which his mother sat now swamped in dust.

"Mother!" he shouted, racing through the haze until he found her figure sitting alone in the chaos that had occurred.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. "Mother, I've been trying to tell you..."

Damari was incapable of speaking as he took in the sight of his mother, her eyes held life again, her hair was healthier, even her skin was more flushed that usual.

She looked as young as she had when she had married their father at the age of twenty five.

Her breath came in raspy inhales, like she was breathing past clouds of dust, the way in which she held herself unlike any Damari had seen before from her, her spine straightened and her grin nearly maniacal.

"Damari Callos."

His mother's voice called to him, yet he knew it wasn't hers, the foreign way in which she stared into his eyes told him something was off.

"Yes?"

"I have a message."

"Mother, please stop acting like this, your charades scare Rayen, there is only so much more she and I can take." he choked out, hoping that it was only his mother's antics again.

"I have no time for your nonsense, boy. There is a prophecy meant for you and you only Damari Callos." The voice growled menacingly.

His hypothesis of his mom jesting quickly flew out the window. "What exactly is this prophecy?"

The smoke swirled around the pair and he could barely hear his mother until she grabbed a hold of his arm and yanked him forward.

"Centuries have passed since the kidnapping of the Goddess of Spring.

Eons gone by, yet the darkness of the underworld cannot be spited.

The time is coming, the time of the gods is returning yet again.

The Lost Siren's call holds the key to all, though doom is soon set in her palm.

Through the light at first dawn, till the solstice at midnight.

The Goddess calls out for her heart."

Darkness swelled and Damari wasn't able to see his hand waving in front of his face, or his mother that had sat before him seconds ago.

"Mother!" he shouted, stepping into the dark and trying to find his way to the doorway that led back into his house.

But he couldn't find the door, all he could hear was the words of the prophecy echoing in his ears.

"Remember who you are Damari Callos, remember your father, remember your mother. Their pasts are your key." The voice whispered from the dark.

He found his mother sitting against the edge of the rocks on the mountain path, the smoke clearing away and the last words he heard before she passed out into his arms stayed in his mind long through the night and into the morn.

"Down by the sea, where the sun doesn't shine, there you will find your answers and the key you must define."

~*~*~*~