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He didn't know how or why, but on that rainy day he could feel his sister's power.
With a feeling of hope, he realized that she was close by. After he quickly closed down his shop for the day, he raced down to the beach and began calling out her name loudly in desperation through the pouring rain. The power he felt guided him like a compass towards where it was coming from.
At first, he didn't bother trying to figure out the emotions the power was emitting at first, as he was excited that he could finally meet his sister again. But now, he noticed that the source of this power was in agonizing pain.
Worried that she was hurt, he began to walk quickly over the shoreline, not caring that pebbles wedged in between his sandals or sand stuck to his toes. He tried not to think of what kind of injuries she may have sustained, but the gruesome images couldn't stop filtering into his head as he walked closer and closer towards the source.
When he got to the source of the power, he saw that it was not his sister whom he had felt, much to his disappointment. Rather, a woman was emitting that power.
The woman had long brown matted hair tied in a low ponytail that was almost undone. Her brown bangs almost completely covered her gold eyes which shut tightly in pain. She was wearing a faded, white no sleeve shirt that had obviously seen better days.
Two things immediately caught his attention. One of them was that instead of having human legs, she had a long, shiny pink siren tail. Another was her swollen stomach which her shirt barely covered.
From what he could gather, sirens could only turn into a human if they turned another human into a siren. A life for a life, so it seemed. He had met a few desperate sirens when he was in the ocean or on the beach before, and he knew that it was all his sister's doing. This all started because she blamed him for a tragic experience that happened many years ago.
What he remembered from researching on sirens and seeing a few from a safe distance, was that sirens were limited to not doing a lot of things, and one of them was that they couldn’t give birth.
The power grew stronger when the woman whimpered in pain, tail and body trembling as she wrapped her arm around her stomach tighter. "Help me...please help me." She pleaded with him, tears sliding down her cheeks. "It hurts...so bad..."
'Either she was heavily pregnant before turning into a siren, or didn't know she was pregnant until after she turned into a siren and had begun to show signs of it,' He thought to himself. 'The latter is more optional, as there is no way a siren would have turned into one of them if she showed signs of carrying a child.'
He couldn't do anything to help this woman, as his power couldn't turn her back into a human since his sister loved making tricky spells that couldn't be undone easily. He didn't have the necessary tools to do a C section, and was in no way skilled enough to do so. 'How cruel of you to create such a wicked curse. You don’t even care about the consequences they receive after accepting your curse.'
So instead, he walked over to her slowly, and knelt down in front of her. He grabbed her hand, and started to use some of his power to alleviate the pain she was experiencing right now from the contractions. If he couldn't help her, then the best he could was make sure her passing was as painless as possible.
The woman's whimper quieted, and her fingers wrapped around his hands. "Thank you..." She managed to say, a shaky smile spreading across her face which made him feel sad for her.
"Jahad, it's Jahad ma'am." He said to her when he realized she didn't know his name. The woman smiled back at him, before wincing in pain again from another contraction that he helped dullen for her.
After five minutes passed by, which felt like hours to him as he watched her suffer even though he was using his magic on her; when her body started to turn into foam.
"Thank you...Jahad..." Were her final words before she turned into foam. Jahad thought that was the end of it, and got up to leave. However, a sound stopped him and he looked down to see that the sound came from the foam, and was surprised at what he saw.
It was a baby boy with brown hair, crying and kicking his arms and legs around in the air. The rain pelted against the baby as the waves washed away the excess foam surrounding him.
‘So the children don’t turn into foam along with the mother?’ Jahad thought, shocked at the revelation as he stared at the crying child. He snapped out of it when the baby’s crying grew louder. Worried that the baby would get a cold, he took off his jacket and proceeded to place the child in his jacket like a makeshift blanket.
The baby quieted down, his cries turning into soft coos as he nuzzled into the fabric. The baby’s eyes which were the same color as his mother’s, slowly shut as he fell asleep.
'I don't want him to go through the same thing like his mother did and share her fate.' With that thought, Jahad decided to cast a spell on the child that would nullify any siren’s attempts to turn him into one. He also decided that he was going to take the child in, and thus, needed to decide a name for the baby.
"What name would suit you best," He muttered as he looked at the sleeping baby. Looking up, he saw that the rain had stopped and that the clouds were moving to show off the starry night sky. 'Starry night...' He thought, and then it clicked.
"Baam. I'll call you Baam, little one." Jahad told the child, who cooed again in his sleep. A smile came to his face at the adorable baby’s nature.
He then noticed that his necklace that he kept in his jacket was wrapped around the baby's hand. Gently, he took it out of the baby's grasp and looked at it. Thinking of Baam's poor mother and the desperate sirens he had met before, resentment for the curse and his sister filled him. If she hadn’t cast the curse, Baam would have most likely grown up with his mother, and all the other sirens wouldn’t have suffered such a cruel fate.
Without a second thought, he dropped the necklace into the rocks and watched it get taken away by the tide.
"Goodbye...Rachel." He said the last part angrily, turned on his heels, and walked back towards his shop.
Jahad was starting anew, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Only this time, the ashes were seafoam, and the phoenix was a little baby boy.