The water had been still. It was the beating of a falling heart that disturbed the slumbering siren. Clara wiggled her body out of the sand she'd burrowed herself into and opened her eyes. She was at the bottom of Paradise Beach. Up above the moonlight shone through the water over a falling silhouette.

It was falling like a stone. Not swimming or struggling. The body was indistinguishable from a corpse were it not for the struggling heart. Curiosity got the better of Clara. She untied the rope around her ankle anchoring her to a slab of rock jutting out of the sand.

She forced her body up and swam to catch the body. Once her arms caught the form, she could see it was a woman a little smaller than the French ingenue. Clara pushed the lithe body up to the surface. The moment their faces poked out of the water she heard the girl inhale and cough and inhale. And then proceed to cough. A lot.

The girl looked straight at Clara with panicked and confused eyes. The Daeva flooded the girl's senses with the ghost of a sweet childhood memory scent. She was still bewildered but then a wave of water splashed against her face and the girl drew her weakened body closer to Clara as she swam to shore.

Now with air in her lungs and land under her body the stranger started weeping. She was a beautiful mess. Shaved head with an unobstructed beautiful face. A lithe body running with hundreds of whimsical tattoos. And her eyes. In the moonlight they were bright discs basking in gratitude, sorrow, and joy at being alive.

After a good long while the woman managed to stifle her crying and glance at Clara. "Th-thank you. Are you real?" A beat. "Are you my guardian angel?"

"Nah," Clara said as she straddled the woman and pressed her salt-covered body against the woman's. "I just hate it when beautiful things have sad endings."

Clara's lips descended on the unresistant woman and Kissed her. The rush was different than anything she had tasted before. The siren drank deep and tasted the woman's desire for life; unconsciously, the helpless woman wrapped her arms around Clara to press her closer.

An eternity later, Clara licked the punctures away and placed the woman close to a camp site with a fire blazing in earnest. The woman who had slumbered at the bottom of the lake was walking away as the tattooed beauty was discovered with a smile on her dreaming face.