She knew that the crashing she was hearing was really in her own soul. She wasn’t yet close enough to the beach to sink her toes in the wet sand after a pillage, but every inch – every minute – increased the sound.
The waves were waiting for her. They were her allies, no, more than that, her sisters. But she couldn’t return to them after such an absence without songs to sing. They depended on her. They were sworn to destruction on the shore, but she had legs to carry her to men no siren had touched before.
Too much time away from the sea made her danger weaken. Miles of never-ending land so flat she knew the Earth had to be round or else she could look over her shoulder and see herself looking back at her.
She was still wearing that timid frock as she meandered among the people, being seen but not noticed, brushing off the reckless laughter only high tiders dared.
That could only last so long, while the salt in the air cloaked her face and the unwashed sand cracked under her soles. With every murky breath she was being filled with the boldness of a deity.
There was always one who wanted to leave a party he wasn’t really enjoying. The one who didn’t laugh as loud at the others’ inside jokes, who slowed down to the back when the sidewalk narrowed, who was always searching for something better because there had to be something better than the boat he was currently rowing. That was the one she needed to find.
Something better was a dark beach, where they could only see the white caps of her kindred, but she could feel them and knew he could, too, if he would touch her. With only the light made from the moon reflecting brightly on the ocean, sitting gradually inclined so that the sand was in her loose hair and his eyes, once wrinkled from laughter, were now wide open and calculating.
But she was the calculating one. She needed songs to sing the waves and from the expanse of his chest, the callouses on his fingers, and the way he leaned his arm on the sand like he had been a mariner in a former life, she knew he would give her plenty of songs.
Hearing the waves crash onto the coast in rhythm with them made her wonder if they, too, were lovers. But she knew love couldn’t describe her sisters. They were destruction, and she had allied herself with them.
When she began to feel his shudder inside, she sacrificed him to the sea with a song and was welcomed back to the crest.