Breeding Season - Chapter 23
Drdrdrdrdr.
It started from the soles of her feet.
Exactly to the part submerged in water, dark blue scales began to sprout.
The white flesh gradually disappeared, and in just a few seconds, the foot, transformed like a monster from a myth, was silently gazed at by Siren, who wore an expression neither of crying nor laughing.
How could she show this? Attending to someone?
There was no need to attend to anyone.
Because when she entered the water, she became like this.
Siren Wilkeron.
She had been this type of monster ever since she was in the amniotic fluid, and her mother had reportedly screamed as she threw her newly born daughter away.
“It’s the curse of the gods! It’s a curse!!!”
She should have died right then, but the only mercy was that she didn’t die immediately.
Her life was tenacious, and she was alive even as the amniotic fluid smeared on her scales was wiped away.
Sigh.
Soon, as she submerged herself up to her neck in the tub, the sound of cracking continued around her.
At the end of her breath, gills sprouted. The spaces between her fingers stuck together, and webbing was formed. The tips of her nails grew sharp and more pointed, and finally… a tail appeared.
Around her lower back and hips, like a crocodile or salamander.
Her pupils had even split vertically, and her appearance was no different from that of a gigantic reptile.
It wasn’t hard to understand how miserable her mother must have felt giving birth to such a child. Though it was bittersweet.
‘Thankfully, as I grew older, the symptoms have gotten better. Now, they only manifest when I enter the water.’
In other words, when she was younger, the symptoms could occur at any time.
The symptoms appeared in three situations.
First, when part of the body was submerged in water. Second, when water was suddenly splashed onto her. Third, when moisture remained on her scales.
Now, the third situation has been relieved. That was why she was able to wash in the spring on the way here. When she entered the spring, she would transform into this hideous form, but once she came out, she would return to normal.
‘I was worried he might look back…’
But somehow, she was certain Yasamin would never peek.
‘Well, even if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to recognize me.’
More than anything, when she took on this form, she could breathe underwater.
If she had been caught, she would have simply sunk to the bottom of the spring and remained still until everyone had left.
What would happen after that, she wasn’t sure…
‘At that time, I didn’t have the mental capacity to think about that.’
Every time she moved her body, the scales made a crackling sound, following the joints and muscles. If the scales had glimmered in the light, perhaps it would have looked more beautiful.
But this thick, stubborn shell was not even that.
The dark blue color had nothing to do with aesthetics. It absorbed all the light around it as if determined to swallow every bit of brightness in the world.
It was different from the color of the night sky, and it was different from the color of the river.
Her mother, as if it were obvious, called it the color of a curse, but Siren did not agree with that. How could a color exist in something formless?
‘If I see the sea with my own eyes, maybe I can find the answer. My mother always said that I was a sea monster that crawled out of the sea when I was drunk.’
That’s why her name was Siren. It meant sea monster.
In truth, the real reason her mother gave her that name was because the sea, to the Wilkeron people, was an unknown entity. What they didn’t understand was feared and considered strange.
Perhaps the sea was the most incomprehensible natural element to her mother, which is why she gave her the name of a sea monster.
‘It also means she hated me terribly.’
Her father had killed the midwife who had delivered her and all the maidservants present at that time.
Had he been able to, he likely would have wanted to kill her too, but he didn’t… It wasn’t because she was his daughter or for any sentimental reasons.
It was simply because the faith was that if you killed or assisted in the killing of a newborn, you would go to hell.
So, Siren, who had been abandoned while still alive until her scales dried completely, gradually returned to being a “human.”
The scales, having lost their moisture under the sun, retreated back into her body as if it had never happened. When her mother saw her, who no longer appeared different from any other baby, she eventually cried and gave her a name.
A name she would curse for her whole life.
‘Still, I’m happy when I’m in the water.’
If she submerged herself completely, remaining still, a lot of the noise would be blocked out.
The water, like the amniotic fluid that had surrounded her, was warm and not threatening.
No one touched her or grew angry with her in that space. Only the flow of water swirled.
In fact, Siren could open her eyes freely underwater.
She didn’t think anyone needed to know, nor did she plan to tell anyone.
