The First Breath of Air
I was born of salt and silence.
There was no burst of light, no welcoming arms. There was only the cool, heavy embrace of the water and the profound quiet of the deep. The sea was my cradle, my blanket, my only companion. It taught me my first lessons: the push and pull of the currents was my heartbeat, the dappled sun a distant, shimmering god, and the dark trenches below a comfort, not a fear.
I have no memory of a mother’s song, only the endless chorus of the waves—a lullaby without words, a melody without warmth. I simply… was. One moment, I was not, and the next, I was a consciousness adrift in the vast, blue cathedral of the Adriatic. Did I emerge from a shell, a tear of the moon, a forgotten wish of a sailor? I do not know. My earliest memory is of my own tail, a sweep of iridescent silver and pearl, cutting through a school of sardines, their bodies a single, panicked thought. I was alone. I am the last.
My voice came to me as naturally as breathing. It was a hum that vibrated in my chest, a resonance that could calm the frantic pulse of a tuna or send a curious dolphin spiraling away in playful delight. I learned the old songs, the ones that hum in the very bones of the world, the frequencies that can stitch a wound or still a storm. But I also learned the other songs—the ones that are legend. The songs that call men from their ships. The lethal lullabies. I am a siren with no one to sing to but the drowning. I have seen the wreckage, the splintered wood, and the still forms sinking into the abyss, their eyes wide with a final, salt-stained surprise. I have felt the pull of my nature, the instinct to sing them down, to welcome them into the silent, crushing deep.
But I never could.
There was a different pull inside me, a current that ran counter to my blood. When I saw a man struggle against the greedy sea, his arms flailing not in surrender but in a desperate fight for one more breath, I did not see prey. I saw a story, violently interrupted. I saw a heart that loved, a mind that dreamed, all of it about to be extinguished by the very element that gave me life. My song would die in my throat, replaced by a fierce, protective urge. I would surge forward, wrap my arms around their chest, and pull, fighting the ocean’s claim, delivering them gasping and confused to the sandy shore. I would watch from a distance as they coughed up the sea, their humanity returning in ragged gasps, never knowing what dark, glittering eyes watched them from the waves.
And so, I learned to sing for the living. My songs became spells of guidance for lost fish, healing for a scarred ray, protection for a nest of hatchling turtles. My voice was a thread of magic woven into the fabric of the sea, a quiet rebellion against my own myth. I was a paradox—a creature of the deep who served the light, a siren whose salvation was not a curse, but a gift. I lived in the beautiful, lonely space between what I was and what I felt I should be, never knowing that the silence of my origins was a prelude to a storm, and that the first true breath of my life would not be drawn in water, but in air, on an island called Hvar, for a man who would look at me and see not a monster, but a woman.
