Daesung sat on the lower edge of a large outcropping of rocks near the shoreline. It was the best vantage point to soak in the sun’s rays and look out to see whom he might lure into the sea with his beautiful voice. Dipping the end of his tail into the water below, he raised his head a bit as he started to sing. He made a glorious sight to see, the sun glistening on the water droplets upon his upper body, while making the scales of his lower body reflect brightly. His hair hung in braids and twisted down his back, entwined with bits of shell and random sparkly things he would find on the ocean floor. As his voice floated across the water, Daesung saw someone making their way along the beach. As the merman watched the other walk he realized that it was him, the one he has never been able to persuade to come to him, the only one he has never been able to coax into the sea. Irked, Dae flicked his tail making the water splash as he strengthed the power flowing into his siren’s call, trying his hardest to coax the other to come to him. The lilting melody made its way across the waves to seemingly fall on deaf ears.

If Daesung was more aware of the passage of time, more aware of just how many times he had seen the other one over the years, he would have realized sooner that something was off. He might have noticed that the man never changed, never aged, and also that he had seen him for longer than the normal lifespan of any human being. Time did not pass quite the same though when you have lived for millennia. Humans were not something he overly concerned himself about, except for the desire to call them to him, to the sea, to their deaths. That was all humans were to him, a toy really and nothing more. If the passage of time was something to which Dae paid more attention, he might have noticed that he had been trying to call this one man to him for over three hundred years.

Youngbae grinned to himself as he heard the siren’s call across the sea. He could always hear him, no matter how far away he was. He listened for when this particular creature surfaced and began his haunting melody. He teleported onto the shoreline of the cove where Daesung sat, proud and beautiful, on the rocks a few hundred yards off to the west. He couldn’t help but admire the way the morning sun made the merman’s skin seem to glow. Youngbae longed to touch it, to feel and see for himself if it was as warm to the touch as it appeared.

He understood the lure of the siren’s call, could feel the pull of the hauntingly beautiful notes. He understood how humans could fall under its spell and want to follow the notes back the creature from which they came. The song d