Drawn to the Sea

Chapter 10: History

Nathaniel

I waited for Douglass to speak first, knowing whatever he was going to say would be hard for him. I could tell from the way he reacted, and everything he said about learning his lesson, that he had a bad experience, or experiences, with relationships.

When he finally did speak, his voice was trembling slightly. "I was born human."

"What does that have to do with what just happened?"

"Just..." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Just listen. I promise it will make sense when I'm done."

"Okay."

"I was born human, on an island that has since been eroded away. My parents put me in an orphanage and sailed away, and I was adopted by a witch. I grew up as her apprentice, and I lived with her until I was around twenty, when she kicked me out."

"Why did she do that?"

"I... I got caught up with the wrong crowd. I didn't know it at the time, but a few of them were supernatural creatures. The signs that they were bad news had been so clear, but I was so desperate to fit in that I ignored them. That came back to bite me in the ass sooner than I would've liked." He paused, swallowing. "They roped me into covering up the murder of a witch in my coven. A very gruesome one."

I cringed. "Merda santa, Douglass."

"I know. I didn't even realize that was what I was doing until it was too late to get out of it. When my adoptive mom found out, she was furious. She'd told me to be careful around them, but I was careless anyway. She was a water witch, and I could tell how mad she was because the storms on and around the island that night sank two ships." He leaned his head back, taking a breath. "She threw me out, giving me a branding on my throat as a reminder of what I'd done. I still have the mark from where she hit me."

"She shouldn't have done that to you. You didn't know."

"Regardless of what I did and didn't know or do, I had nowhere to go. No one on the island would offer me a home, since I reportedly lived and grew up with the coven. An enemy of the coven was someone you didn't get on with, no matter what they did. So, I fled to the forest.

TW: Implication of suicide

"I ran into the beach accidentally. I... I planned to do something unspeakable that night."

I felt a jab of pain in my chest. I was only a few years older than the age he was when this happened to him, and I couldn't imagine going through it. It must've been horrible.

"Before I could do it, a siren pulled me back up. She brought me to the shore and offered me something I could never take back. She said I'd be loved and cared for in the sea, and I believed her."

TW end

"That's when you became a siren."

He nodded. "I thought it was the only way I would outrun the mistake I'd made. What I didn't know was that accepting the offer would be the start of a string of bad luck and tragedy in my life."

He swallowed again, and I put my hand on his leg. "You don't have to tell me anymore. I know it's probably hard to talk about."

"No, I need to. I've never really spoken about it, and I think that's what's screwing me up." He ran a hand through his curls, then kept going, "Things were fine for the first few months. I'd completed my transition, and I was even beginning to explore more magic than what I learned in the coven. The pod of sirens I was accepted into had some elemental sea witches, and they taught me much of what I know. Soon enough, I discovered I was a volcanic witch, and my siren body started to reflect it.