Alisa - Day 141 (I'M BACK! ...With news)

Well. Hello there.

It's certainly been a while since I posted... sorry! I got caught up in school and just life. Also, it's November! I don't know if any of you have ever heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but it's basically a time for writers to unite, buckle down, and just write. So yeah, you guessed it, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. It's only my second year, and I kind of suck at it - but, I mean, hey. It's an excuse to be on my laptop all month, reading and posting and writing.

I've also been really busy with school - I have so much homework! And volleyball season literally just ended this past weekend, so now that's a lot of time that I can finally get back to myself. Don't get me wrong, I love volleyball, but it's nice to have me time. Or, I guess, what's turning out to be let-me-catch-up-on-blogging-before-Noelle-kills-me time. Also, it's this close to my birthday! It's pretty hard to juggle all these things in my life - God, youth group, school, family, friends, blogging, and now this whole writing gig - so I was thinking about stopping NaNoWriMo and just trying to live life.

But I mean, hey: why live life if you can't make it a little crazy for yourself? So I just lowered my word count goal, and kept plowing through.



One more thing: YESTERDAY WAS MY DADDY'S BIRTHDAY!!! Happy 54th birthday to him! Also, today is my uncle's birthday, so happy birthday to him! In my house we have like zero birthday wrapping paper, so I have to come up with like super creative ideas for how to wrap presents. Tape and cloth? I did that for my brother. Drawing patterns on the white side of wrapping paper? I did that for my niece, and my friend. But this, this leafiness for my father - this is something new!

So basically, all I did was tape and glue (the glue didn't work very well) leaves that I'd pressed in a dictionary to a box. There's a whole webpage I found on preserving leaves. Check it out here. But yeah, I wrapped the box in leaves (it was a little box) and then put some ribbon around the side. I'd show you a picture, but the pictures are on my mom's phone and she's not here, and she doesn't even know I took them. :P But trust me, it was cool.

So yeah, I have a whole book of excuses (haha, bad pun...). Here's a little bit of my NaNoWriMo book, Sirens.

CHAPTER ONE: My Translator Is A Seven Year Old

I don’t remember much.

I remember everything from my childhood and adolescence with a sharp clarity, but that is only to be expected. What irks me is that I can only remember flashes - small glimpses, really - of the first year of my captivity.

Before that… I remember being young, hardly able to swish my tail, as a young merman. I remember everyone thinking I was a girl. I remember everyone finally realizing I was a boy…. I remember them freaking out, yelling and spitting at me…

I remember my years of loneliness, my vocal failure as a siren. My voice - no. That memory is too painful to bear. I pushed it to the back of my mind, resolving to ignore it.

But at least I remembered it.

I let out a small growl. The most important time of my life, and I can’t remember.

I remember Nicella teasing me - she was, by far, the nicest, she never yelled - and I remember arguing with Mella… but that usually happened. I remember being scared after they caught me, scared for myself and for the other sirens. I remember small details - a little face pressed against the glass, being strapped down and out of the water again - but I can’t remember anything big, anything important… I sighed in frustration, wiping a hand across my face and laying down on my back. I used to hate other sirens, I thought, but now I’d give anything to be with them again.

My captivity has given me way too much time to think.

And yet, even with all this thinking, I still can’t find a way to get out of this forsaken building. A growl made its way up my throat and I sat up, burying my face in my hands and wishing I could sleep. Whoever left the lab last forgot to turn the lights low. Ugh. If I could have one wish, it’d be for the lights to get turned off.

Actually, I take that back. I wish for better food. They feed me disgusting food… a bunch of plants that they just sort of dump into the water above me, like I was a pet fish or something (There’s a goldfish in a bowl… somewhere around here. Someone brought it up to my tank and I spat at them). What they obviously don’t know is that I’m not a mermaid, I’m a siren, and that means I’m an omnivore. I eat other fish too, thank you very much. They also don’t know that my favorite foods are shrimp and bass, and that plants make me gassy.

I sat in my watery house, absently playing with the artificial sand in the bottom. I had long ago pushed it all to one side, so that I could see the black bottom. It reminded me of my cave back at home. Well, sort of.

I suppose I should explain my predicament.

Well…

There is a little island, somewhere in the Atlantic ocean, called Del Marito - translated from the language of sirens into English, that’s “Island of Rocks”. As you can probably tell, that’s where the sirens live, more or less. You see, sirens - fat and skinny, pretty and ugly - all of them fight tooth and claw at sundown for the rock they wish to claim. Every night, they sit on the rocks and sing with their beautiful eeriness a thousand songs, and - every night - men jump into the ocean, swimming toward the sirens who have stolen their  hearts away. The men turn into sirens, and the sirens turn into human women, whose firstborn are always sons. The cycle is as old as time, and it has never been broken.

Except now.

I'm different. I can't sing. I can't claim a rock from the girls. I don't know what happened to the person I used to be before I became a siren, but they must have been different. Because I, Orion, am a male. Not only a male, but I was a child at first. I grew up. I was a fish-tailed man among the sirens… until I was captured, and became a fish-tailed man among humans. I’ve been stuck with them for at least two years. Nothing has ever gone my way, ever.

And then the lights went out.

I sat up, crossed my arms, and raised an eyebrow, completely unimpressed. “Oh, so now you turn off the lights,” I snorted quietly.

I heard two sets of footsteps approaching quietly, and saw a flashlight beam flicker across the room. A little boy’s voice rang out, but he spoke in the human language. I had no idea what he said.

I strained my eyes, but didn’t see anything until he was two feet away from the water tank. He looked to be about six or seven years old, with wide blue eyes and a shock of messy red hair. He said something, looking at me with awe, then began to run around the room, his flashlight dancing across the walls, jumping up and down in what was apparently a celebratory dance.

A young woman, dressed in casual human clothes, came through the door. She snapped something at the little boy, who immediately subsided and climbed off the worktable. He had his fingers pressed to his lips, trying and failing to make a shushing noise.

He tiptoed over to me. The girl walked over to me curiously and I frowned, memories of the sirens playing in my head. A girl was the last thing I wanted to see right now. She had frizzy straw-blond hair and brown eyes, which seemed typical of the other humans I’d been around. But the boy’s red hair… I’d only seen one other human with red hair and blue eyes. And that had been a woman, someone from the edge of my memories.

They said something, but I simply cocked an eyebrow and tossed some sand at their faces, causing them to recoil. “Leave,” I spat, knowing that they wouldn’t understand me, but that my message would get across.

“No!” A whiny, six year old voice spat back at me.

I flinched. Only in my dreams had I heard others speak in my language. I took a closer look at the boy. Was it possible…? The girl started as well. She asked the boy something, but he glared at her and then turned his stony gaze on me. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that it disconcerted me.

“We’re not leaving,” he said. “We snuck in here to see you and Marilyn promised she would play cards and Mommy’s shopping and Daddy left again!”

“Hey, hey, little guy,” I said, completely taken aback. How could we understand each other? He was definitely human. Humans can’t speak our language. The girl obviously had no idea what we were saying, but I ignored her for now. I was used to ignoring people.

Mind racing, I quickly said, “Can you tell me what your name is?”

“Well, I’m Teddy,” he announced proudly, puffing his little chest out. “My real name is Theodore, but I don’t like that. What’s your name?”

I gave a small smile. “My name is Orion,” I said.

“That’s a cool name,” he said. His face lit up. “Like the stars in the sky!” I assumed he was talking about the constellation, the hunter named Orion.

“Just like the stars,” I said, “only maybe a little bit different.”

Then he moved the conversation in a whole new direction, pointing to my tail and asking, “Why are you hiding your legs in a fish?”

I felt heat spreading across my face. “Um, I don’t have legs. I-”

Before I could finish, he jumped up and down three times, causing his flashlight to shine all around the room. “You really are a mermaid!” he cried. “Just like in the movie!”

I raised an eyebrow, completely clueless, and said, “Sure thing, bud. Can you do me a favor?”

He nodded, still grinning.

“Can you tell me who that is?” I pointed to the girl, and Teddy looked at her. She said something, and he frowned, then he looked back at me and spoke slowly.

“That’s Marilyn, my big sister” he said. “She promised to play Go Fish-” his voice sunk into a whisper that I could barely make out “-but she’s not very good at keeping promises.”

“Hey, Teddy,” I said slowly, as an idea dawning in my head, “do you think you could just - I don’t know - press a couple buttons on the computer over there?”

The little boy started to say something, but Marilyn cut him off, and this time they started arguing. Then she took him by the hand and half-dragged half-carried him out. She snapped something to him, and he stopped yelling and struggling. I swam to the other side of my tank, trying to keep pace with them. Then, before the door slammed shut, Teddy called out to me, “Bye, Orion! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

The door closed, the lights were off, and I was left alone - again.