Part One

View Online

Taking on a New Life

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Knight sighed, looking at his computer screen and not really seeing it. “Busy work” was what they called it, data input and admin and stuff that was supposed to get him grounded in the company. It was a good job, albeit a desk job after his army contract had finished, dumping him off in the land of the in-between, not knowing what he could do next or even what he was supposed to do. Anything was a good thing when it came to starting off on the right foot and he leaned back, the wheeled desk chair squeaking under the frame of his body. He was lucky that they hadn’t made him change his hairstyle, his red and black locks tied back neatly and professionally so that it was pulled back from his face at least for the workplace.

It was not a bad day, not even to him who was still restless after being in motion for so long, having spent so very much time doing and moving, always moving. There had been little rest in the army and he hastened to do something more meaningful with his days, drumming his fingers on the desk. But the very reason that it was not a bad day to Knight was the big, fat bonus cheque that landed on his desk.

Others went out to celebrate but he was little more of a solitary soul after spending so much time around other people, leading him to instead head out on his own rather than to join others for drinks. In the end, his self-isolation would lead to him integrating better with them, strangely enough, when they’d know him with another face.

He had always been fascinated by antique shops and the cloying musk of it was familiar, tainted with a faint lick of incense. The shelves were tall and closed in around him but that was okay as Knight had never been one to worry too much about confined spaces, regardless of how his time in the army had gone. Vases were of little interest to him but statues reminded him of foreign cultures and he sought out what could have reminded him of his time aboard, his time in the services. A chessboard carved like tiny dragons almost had his fingers twitching for his wallet but there was so much more there too that he had to move on, eyes grazing the collection of fine gemstones, cut and polished and gleaming in a scarf that had been beaded with them. That could have been suited for a lady...but not for him. No, what caught his attention there, even as he lazily perused the shelves, was the impressive collection of vintage swords.

He almost drooled, letting the shop keeper display them for him, allowing him to hold them, to feel the weight of them. They wouldn’t be useful in battle but he’d had enough of that, at least for the time being, even though he wouldn’t have known just what to do with the particular katana that he ended up with. It was, of course, not a traditional weapon in the army when machinery was the order of the day there but that was what made it special to him, marked with images of sirens looping into one another, splashed through purple and green and blue. In the distance of the painted scene on his chosen katana resided the sunset over the water, a pang in his heart reminding him of better times.

Maybe that was why he bought it. Maybe he thought it meant something more. Maybe he just liked the pictures. Either way, it would only be to Knight’s detriment in the end as he slumbered peacefully, the katana already proudly displayed on the wall of his bedroom in pride of place.

It was not to stay there, however, not peacefully, as it glowed faintly, the human in the room entirely unaware of what was happening, the properties that the katana held. Awakening from her slumber, a magical mishap that she would rather not speak of, the siren with the fish-tail and the front half of a pony, shivered in the picture. No longer static, she bared her fangs and wisped her way out of the sword, flicking her tail, yellow-gold scales gleaming where they melded softly into the coat and hide of a horse. Her head was more reptilian in shape, however, a fan-like fin running down the back of her neck, although she used her ability there to swim through the air rather than through water.

Floating, she flicked her tail, slithering through the air to hover over Knight, his hair strewn out over the pillow, an arm flung back, woefully unsuspecting of how his life was about to change.

“Yes...” The spirit hissed, weaving back and forth lightly, her eyes intent. “You... You will be my vessel for this human world!”

It was the warmth that she sought, after all, the freedom of having a body again, slipping into him, her translucent spirit shivering as it moulded to the shape of a human. The warmth would feed her, give her energy, but only time would tell just how long it would take for her newest vessel to take shape in a world that she was only just beginning to understand.

Until then...she would lie in wait to see just how Knight changed.

On waking that morning, Knight would not have noticed anything different about himself, even though there was. He was a little shorter and his work trousers a little looser, though he put that down to his diet (which he didn’t stick to all the time) having a greater effect than before and strode out the door with a strut and a spring in his step. It was going to be a great day indeed if he was looking and feeling better! So great a day, in fact, that it even made him want to sing.

Knight shook his head, laughing at himself as the sun shone down, his walk to the office lighter than it had ever been. He wanted to sing – how weird was that? His feet were light, shoes a little too big, sliding about on his feet as he smiled at everyone, although there was a glint in his eye that he had never had before.

It happened slowly, his fingers not quite sitting right on the computer mouse anymore, his work slower and “clunkier”. He frowned, fiddling with it. Had it been swapped for another one accidentally? Had a co-worker played a prank on him? Whether in the office or the army, that most certainly was not unheard of.

Knight shook himself. No. He must have been imagining things, he was sure of it.

But he wasn’t. He most certainly, definitely, wasn’t.

His co-workers looked at him oddly, whispers following him behind his back, though he could not understand one bit why they seemed to think that he was wearing make-up. There was nothing wrong with his face and, frankly, it was so rude of them that it did not even bear addressing, though he fidgeted and tried to keep his fingers still while they eyed him up and down, eyes wandering even while they should have been fixed on his face, concentrating on what he was saying.

Coughing lightly into his fist, Knight tried to push past it.

“Did you do something different to your hair?”

The comment caught him off-guard and he reflexively ran his fingers through it.

“What do you mean? What’s different?”

His co-worker’s eyes slid away. She hadn’t meant to hurt him or embarrass him, no... No, not by any means. That wasn’t her aim and she was a nice enough lady but not one that Knight, clearly, was destined to know well.

They parted ways, both busy about their work, things to do, busy things, yes. There was always something to do in the office and, if there wasn’t, their managers would find something for them to do anyway. Knight paused in the bathroom, looking at how his shirt hung on him. He’d thought he’d lost weight but his chest seemed a little bigger, even then, which would have suggested that he’d gained weight instead. But then why was his waist narrower and smaller, his stomach pulled in as if he was actively trying to suck it in before the mirror before a hot date?

“Hmmm...”

It didn’t make any sense but Knight was too busy to focus on it too much, even as his army-born strength deserted him, making it difficult to even grip what he had done before. He’d kept up with his workouts in the gym since leaving, physical fitness drilled into him, but it had become more and more difficult to bench press, his upper body strength leaving him first. It was embarrassing and it was that more than anything else that made him call halt to his workouts, lost as to the meaning of what on earth it could be that was affecting him all of a sudden. Was he sick?

It was much worse than that, however, as his attitude shifted too, becoming a little snarkier and snappier, even when he was getting coffee in the morning.

“Could you hurry up?” He sniped, rocking back on his heels, a hand on his hips. “This is taking forever...”

Of course, that was not really Knight talking there but someone else, the someone else that was slowly taking over his mind, transforming him into a form and a body that would better suit her. The coffee vendor at his cart, however, did not know that and merely frowned at him, offering him his triple-pump caramel macchiato with a squirt of spray cream with nothing of a smile on his lips.

Things were different, very much so, and not even Knight could fail to notice that things, frankly, were happening when his hair started falling out, red and black wisps coming out in clumps. The stranger thing, however, was, as he stood before the mirror, running a brush through it, the black turning to orange, growing rapidly. He would not have said it was ginger, not even as he, trembling, took it delicately between the tips of his fingers, treating it with more care than he even would have his own hair. For that couldn’t be his hair, not truly, not when he had never, not even once, borne that shade for himself...

“I just need some time off...for health reasons.”

He was fortunate that his employer did not press the issue further in that case, but employment and health law did not require him to, as difficult as it could make things for them. He offered to be available for distance work from home during the “course of treatment”, for he surely was ill and that would come to light when he finally figured out what on earth was actually wrong with him.

The changes in Knight’s body were easier and easier to spot as he found himself taking on a different body shape, his waist tucking in over the coming weeks, becoming softer and more feminine even as his hips widened. He made a face as he bumped something off the coffee table at home in his apartment, not knowing how big his hips were as yet. The doctor hadn’t been able to help him with that at all, although they had done some blood tests, the results of which he was still waiting on to come back.

It was wrong, all wrong, and he tried to do a little exercise at home, ignoring how his chest wobbled, a strange swathe of flesh that didn’t seem right there, especially in comparison to the rest of his body. Where the rest of him was lighter and softer, his thighs stronger than before even with an added rise of comfortable flesh there, a little more padding that still looked good on him.

Knight didn’t want to admit how much he liked it but there was still a need and a want there to flaunt what he had, hips cockily jutting out even when he was strutting around his apartment. With the dispersal of his hair came the rush of orange, striking and glowing, even with a yellow streak cut through the centre. It was more obvious in another shade but his hair was much bushier and curlier too, boasting volume that he had never had before, even if the changing reflection with a lightly defined face with high cheekbones and a narrow chin no longer looked at him in the bathroom mirror.

But it was strange, very strange, and he sat on his bed with the katana held between two hands. Holding it there, he stared at it for a very long time – time was all he had while the medical investigations were underway – though it could not be denied that the one little image of the golden-yellow siren with a gleam in her eyes was gone. If he had not adored it so much on first purchasing it, he would have thought that he was losing his mind but he knew it had been there and the whispering hiss of something that could have been serpentine but was so much more teased up through him like the raising of a snake’s head.

She was not a snake though. No... Much worse than that.

“It’s you...isn’t it?”

His skin prickled as if he was being answered, even though his lips parted silently. It was not him but a her, something rising inside him, tightening and pulling around his heart as if the muscle surrounding it was actively contracting, reducing his ability to breathe. He didn’t have to know what was happening to know that it was happening, his body slowly but surely shifting, though it was, thankfully, not the body of the siren from the sword that had held so much interest for him before and, now, so much potential.

She was the one who had turned him into something else, was in the process of changing him to suit her needs. And as nervous as it made him, Knight was quite sure too that he would not be a man for much longer, not with the fresh understanding in his heart as to what his chest was becoming. Breasts, of course, could be present on males too, but they were not as large and as full as his were becoming, the mammary glands of a woman in her twenties. The nipples too grew more pronounced, although he did not dare do anything sexual with them, regardless of how sensitive they were, perking up, as he squirmed and wriggled in bed, working out a new comfortable position in which to sleep.

Knight’s eyes too, well... They were no longer softly shaded pools that could draw in an onlooker. At least, that was a joke a friend had made about him many years back and the thought had always made him smile at the worst of times, therefore it had stuck. No, they were lighter, a softer shade, but they slowly turned to a type of amber that changed shade depending on just how the light hit them. The golden-brown glowed when he was not expecting it and he even spent more time in front of the mirror than usual admiring them, for it was, in a way, the only way that he could gain the full extent of his transformation in one sweeping glance. The more intimate details of how his body changed, however, were better tamed with his fingers, feeling out new curves, even around his hips.

Knight chuckled to himself, lying back in his bed, oddly at peace with it all. It was not as if he was sick, after all, and that was more of a concern to him after coming back from war-torn countries, fighting for his country. If he was well and healthy, he would be fine, and he took a kind of morbid fascination in his widening hips, a line of bone showing through as the fat on his body too redistributed itself. It was strange to see his body halfway between male and, well, something else, the tucked in part of his waist forming him into something softer and gentler, though there was still deadliness to the siren inhabiting his body.

There were other parts of his body too that changed, his legs redistributing the muscle more readily and easily, perhaps more so once his understanding of it changed. He didn’t have bulging, masculine calves anymore (the desk job, admittedly, had taken those down just a little) but his thighs were thicker with a little more fat. He was surprised how they seemed stronger and even tested that at home with strange and difficult squat repetitions (ski squats, in particular, after single-leg squats were trying to the extreme) that he could not have done to that extent before. It was impressive and bolstered him on, even as other parts of his body, right at the top of his legs, forced him to pay attention.

He didn’t go to the doctors when that part of him started to change, although he did have further tests throughout those weeks. None of those doctors, thankfully, asked him to pull his pants down – why would they? His cheeks burned with the humiliation of it, the strangeness of it, and he couldn’t resist the urge to look from time to time, even if it was a change that deemed to make itself more obvious when he was going about his daily business. The act of urination, well... That most certainly became different and more difficult, no longer able to stand as that part of him disappeared entirely, melding back into his body as if it had never been. He couldn’t urinate in public toilets though, not even when he went to see the doctor, breath catching, cheeks flushing, not sure which bathroom he was supposed to use. He didn’t look either male or female as yet but he was soon to become she.

Knight’s genitalia were not to be the subject of inspection until later on, but at least his extended leave of absence from work was accepted. All the while, he became more used to walking as a woman, a female, standing tall and yet moving fluidly, as if every part of his body was light and soft. There was no heaviness to be had about his tread in his new body and he knew still that he could not stop it, the tint of his skin growing more golden, though he would not have considered it as yellow. It was a gentle glow and he smiled, running his fingers over it, feeling just how his skin was softer there as if he spent time conditioning and moisturising it, though he could not remember a time when he had ever taken part in such endeavours.

Maybe it would be nice... He sat there, gently brushing out his hair, long and curling, down to the middle of his back. It was lusciously thick and matched the rest of his body by that time, looking quite in place, swept back from his face, eyes thick with dark lashes that would have drawn the attention of anyone. But just whose attention was he trying to draw?

Ah, that was no matter... And it was a good thing that he’d been able to go along with things too, allowing the changes to happen without fighting. It was easier, more comfortable, and explaining things to his workplace in a way that he was familiar with, that they could understand, allowed him to continue on with his work when he was ready to return. They only wished that he had told them in advance but there was nothing that Knight could have done on that count and it was just something that they were going to have to live with.

He was lucky, yes... Lucky, even though he didn’t know what was happening, what was going to happen next. He tried on ladies shoes, dainty heels – well, they felt dainty in comparison to his usual trainers, casual shoes, and boots. Even his feet shrank, which was the most surprising thing of all for him, how little they could be, more in proportion to a body that was light enough to be discreet. It had been difficult to be discreet and subtle in any way as a man and he could honestly say that stealth had never been his strong point.

Moisturising his legs was a new experience, the coarser, darker hair that had been present there growing lighter over time. It was a subtle process and just when he thought that the transformation was complete, something else caught his attention, something that he had not noticed before. The dark bags under his eyes, from so many nights of failed sleep, tightened up lightly, giving him a fresher appearance than ever. His broken toe straightened out where it had healed crookedly. He gained an aptitude for swimming, although he went at off-peak times, finding the ladies swimming costumes shockingly revealing in comparison to the trunks that he would usually have worn. He could go into shops to find underwear and not have sales assistants look at him weird.

That was a new one for him. Underwear was, of course, a necessity and his chest required more support when he was out in public, even if he preferred slouchy tops for personal comfort when he was at home. It was good to relax but his chest needed support too when out and about, the added weight of it tiring on back muscles that had not yet learned to brace and support, not even that little bit. He refused to get fitted even though the attendants could not understand why, scurrying away between the racks as the many colours, shapes and styles overwhelmed him. Maybe a simple cut? Yes, that would have to do, at least to start with. Clothes shopping was ridiculously complicated as a female too, a woman, a lady. Which term suited him better? Maybe Knight would choose one in time.

Choosing what he needed for outerwear too was a process of trial and error though, blushing furiously as cocky as the swell of attitude was inside him, the siren trying to come out. It was the bold attitude of her that was the slowest to manifest for what he was yet to learn about transformation was that it was not simply physical but there was a mental and emotional side too that would take many, many months to manifest.

Wearing a bra, however, well... Well, he had to face the facts sooner or later, even as he showered, teaching himself to wash and blow-dry much longer hair than he was used to. Who knew that being female could be so much work? Even that needed extra lotions and potions just to keep it smooth and silky, for getting it all frizzed up on a massive bad hair day was just not for him. It was hard to ignore his changing body, alternating between fascination and worried, even though the concern never lasted for all that long. The siren made sure of that, smoothing out any rough edges, making it easier, simpler, just to go along with it. There was no worry, no stress... But he had some notions to face up to, bit by bit, day by day, especially as he readied himself to return to the workforce and earn his way.

Taking a deep breath, Knight paused before the front door. Neighbours thought he had a girlfriend. They didn’t know that the woman was him. But they wouldn’t, for the simple fact that he...was no longer a he. Perhaps Knight had never truly been a he and belonged to the being of a she but that thought in itself was too confusing even to her mind.

She shivered. It was one of the first times that she thought of herself as female and, well, the thought stuck. How about that?

Living as a female, however, as she could not be considered as male in any other sense of the term even in her own mind, was more difficult than she may have realised. She fidgeted in line at the bank, waiting to hand over the details, including the signed details from the doctor, thinking that everyone knew, that everyone was looking at her. She’d even donned a skirt, thinking that it would look a little more natural on her longer, shapelier legs, though she wanted to tug it down, to cover more of her legs than it should have done naturally.

This is silly...

But it wasn’t and she had to get used to it, wearing purple tights underneath that, at least, made her skin tone set off a little better. It seemed to work for her and she shrugged into the jacket, standing a little more like a woman even though she was not so sure she had left all the mannerisms of being male behind as yet. She shivered. Did she even want to?

It was a strange question to ask but simply having the siren change her felt quite as if she was finally settling into the skin and the body that she’d always been meant to have. It was comfortable and it was warm and it made her feel safe. The siren within her did not always make herself known but she had to trust that she knew best, leading her along the right path. At the very least, it was a more interesting path than the one that she had walked so far in life and she would soon be able to reintroduce herself to her colleagues as...well...

Who was she, exactly? “Knight” no longer seemed like the right name, not for her. She sorted her documents, notes of gender reassignment, her sex confirmed as female by those in a medical position. The process she went through was paved by those who wanted their sex to be changed, medically or simply as gender reassignment, though there were so many different ways to look at that that she didn’t want to dig into it too much personally for fear of being disrespectful. The fact of the matter was that she was female, however, and had to deal with that one way or another.

Going to the bathroom, well... That was an experience. As it had been during the process of her transformation, it had not quite been as she had expected, the weird process of sitting, trying to wriggle to get comfortable. It didn’t feel right but she’d have to get used to it somehow, her breasts getting in the way at other times as she reached for things, more apt to bump things off shelves in her apartment than she ever had been before, despite her clumsiness. Thankfully, they were not as large as those that some women boasted and, for that at least, she could be grateful.

Any easing of her condition, of course, was something to be grateful for.

Sitting like a woman too... She grimaced, trying to drink coffee in a cafe, shifting her weight constantly. How did that even work? No one there looked twice at her – she was just another woman to them, a lady in her twenties that wouldn’t warrant a second look unless they were admiring how pretty she was – and she fussed, crossing one leg over the other and back again. Nothing was comfortable but she couldn’t relax her legs out either as that, for sure, was not ladylike at all. And, besides, her skirt stopped her from doing that, even if she felt comfortable enough in the warmer weather to go bare-legged.

Leaving her legs bare-legged in itself was a revelation in comfort. Usually, she wouldn’t have been able to wear shorts to go to a cafe like that, at least not in the middle of the city, as it just wouldn’t have felt right to sit down in them. But a skirt, yes... She smiled to herself. That was a good thing, a good thing to be comfortable. Maybe it meant that she could even get used to the changes that the siren had forced upon her, at least in some sort of time. It was not all that bad if she could find some comfort even then.

“Excuse me, miss?”

The employee leaned forward over the counter, beckoning her up, one of the most important pieces of paperwork of her day waiting before her. The employee pushed up her glasses and frowned down at her, although she had too much confidence by then to worry about something like that, looking up at her with defiance in her eyes. She could think what she liked.

“And what name are we putting down to finalise this?” The employee asked, her name badge unreadable. “I need it confirmed verbally also.”

She blinked. She couldn’t even remember what she’d written. It was important though, important that she remember. Fumbling for words, she sought to buy herself time.

“My name?”

She paused, a little flustered, brushing her hair back behind her ears. It was cutely endearing and the assistant smiled without thinking, her stern demeanour softened by her charm.

“I... My name... My name... It’s...”

And then she knew it, holding her head high, fluttering her eyelashes, a hand on her hip. It popped out cockily and she knew that her clothing, however casual, accentuated her form perfectly and prettily, showing him how her charm could drew him in. Her eyes gleamed and his jaw dropped and she rocked back, only hiding her smirk so that it would not disrupt the effect of what she was going for too much.

“My name is Adagio.”

And, so, it was done.

Her life would never be the same again.

Part Two

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Two

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Adagio frowned into the mirror, although it felt far too cliché to pause there for too long. That was the sort of thing that took place in low-budget movies and ones that were mocked for taking advantage of the clichés, though perhaps was more prevalent in novels where the author didn’t have much to do or say other than to describe, literally, how the character looked at the beginning. She had maybe been a little more on the cliché side when she’d been a man but, well, that side of life may have left her with more questions than even the full-length mirror in her bedroom, newly purchased, could answer.

No. She pulled away, in purple pyjamas that, for some reason, she had felt as if she’d “had” to buy. They weren’t the sort of thing that Knight, the man that she had been, would have picked up, not even for a lady-friend, but they had seemed right in the shop and money had changed hands even before she’d realised quite what she was doing.

She tried not to look too closely at her body, preparing to return to work for the first time since her transformation. It was strange at the same time as being a relief, though her old semi-professional wardrobe was woefully lacking. Frowning at her wardrobe, she cocked a hip and pursed her lips, though there was make-up too that needed to be applied, something to make her look more feminine than before and a fair side less like Knight.

Would people there see her as Adagio, a new employee, or would she slip into Knight’s place, having people wonder just how many changes had taken place. She winced but the spirit of the siren inside her rose up with a flicker of a serpent-like tongue, brushing over its lips. The siren was half horse and half fish, a hippocampus of sorts but not even in his life as a man had Knight ever come to see something quite like her. Adagio did not “see” the siren that had taken over her soul and her body in a way that was both painless and seamless but her mind’s eye still encapsulated her essence, the orange and gold of the potent demoness flowing through her in a way that could not be denied or pushed aside.

She shook herself off, dressing in a violet skirt that was too short for the office but would have to do. Heels stood out against it in a smart black and a purple blouse gave her a different shade to play with, though she went without jewellery that day, despite the prompting of the siren inside her. There may not have been any words but there were feelings, prompts, a sense of being “pushed” inside her. It was not as easy as she may have liked to ignore it and Adagio felt it was easier, in a way, to forget that there had been anything other. If she didn’t think about it, maybe it meant that she was not being controlled, that her life was still every last bit as it was supposed to be.

Heading to work on the train was as alright as it was ever going to be and she smiled, tossing her orange, curly hair back, tamed a little by some feminine hair gel that she would never have used before. There were a few more looks than Adagio was used to at play there but she cocked her hip for them and popped her hand on it, letting them look, letting them adore her. It was her right, after all, to take every last drop and scrap of adoration that she could from those around her, waiting until it was time for their true adoration to bring her back to full power.

Adagio shuddered. That wasn’t one of her thoughts, not at all. But she didn’t want to think about that as she stepped into the elevator with another hair toss, a smirk lingering on her lips that didn’t seem to want to fade away at all. It was there to stay, or so it seemed, even as one of her old work colleagues, Rickie, raced for the elevator, her hair all a mess and tousled.

“Heyyy!” She cried out, barely able to force out the words, arms flying. “Hold the door! I’m late!”

But that was not something that Adagio did for anyone, stepping fully inside the elevator and hitting the button for her floor without a second glance or look back at an old colleague who had actually helped her out time after time before. Rickie’s face was flushed but there was no way that even that was going to draw on any note of sympathy in Adagio’s heart, throbbing and pounding, the distance closing between them all too swiftly.

Adagio’s eyes flashed.

“Sorry! Too slow!”

“Hey, what are you –”

But the door slid closed in her face and Adagio laughed out loud, preening and fluffing up her hair in the mirror.

“Such a shame...”

Things, however, were not destined to go any better for her or others in the office, as diplomatic as her manager had decided to be with her. He scratched the back of his neck, a little flummoxed by everything but treating her well all the same, though Adagio was not about to notice that as she chewed gum, popping it between her teeth as she looked on with distinct disinterest.

“Now, this’ll be your new desk,” he said quietly, Mr Henson acting discreetly for her benefit. “I hope it’ll be suitable. We should be able to integrate you back into your old work slowly and please let either me or HR know what we can do to help you in the meantime if you are sure that this is the way that you’d like to go.”

Something inside Adagio pulled.

“What, you don’t think I’m good enough for my old job anymore?”

Heads turned where Mr Henson had been terribly careful in trying to ensure that no one was put out or alerted to what was going on with Adagio, though all he could do was hold his hands up and back off, sweating profusely.

“No, no, no, of course not, that was never the case...”

Adagio was on a roll, however, as she threw her hands up, making a scene, her body acting out without the control or consent of her mind. In one half of her, she still felt Knight, the man she had been, and the other half was all Adagio, with one half becoming more and more dominant with each passing day – hour, even.

“Noooo, that’s not it, is it?” She rolled her eyes dramatically, one foot up on a chair – how had that gotten there? “You think that now that I’m a woman I can’t do the job I used to? You think a change like this makes me incapable? Well, have I got news for you, bud!”

In but a single leap she was up on one of the desks, letting out a cackle as she spun in a circle, eyes glowing with the faintest hint of red. Later, those working in the office early that morning that bore witness to her debacle of a display would put it down to the lighting not being particularly kind to her.

“I’m more capable than I was before! Have you controlled an entire school – of course not! That would be too much for a puny man like you! You don’t even have any magic!”

She should have been walked into HR and fired straight off the bat for that outburst but, somehow, they managed to give her another chance, although she did not last the day. Work seemed oh so very boring while she knew what she was capable of, sitting at her desk with an arm slung over the back of her chair, entirely disinterested in what she was supposed to do. Adagio rolled her eyes when she was asked to make a round of coffee, the truth spreading that she was Knight, though she didn’t care about that. A short word here and a harsh word when she was assigned work was more than enough to put her on the short-list to leave the office building in spectacular style.

Dumped outside with a meagre box of belongings, Adagio frowned.

“Idiots...”

The box of her stuff wasn’t any use to her and she left it there, stalking down the street with a toss of her hair as the day wore into the late afternoon. A different kind of life bustled through the city at that time, the office workers filtering out for a side of evening relaxation, shop workers finishing shifts and hustling to make sure that they had everything they needed, chore lists never-ending in personal lives. Adagio scoffed. That wasn’t what she cared about. Didn’t they have servants or whatever to do that kind of stuff for them?

Well, she had the documents to get a new job, even though she rolled her eyes at the notion of needing to earn money. Wasn’t she above that? A supermarket was hiring but her slamming of a hand down on the counter didn’t seem to impress them as much as she would have wanted it to, the cashier rolling her eyes and dropping the bodged application in the bin near enough as soon as Adagio had filled it out. She scoffed. How rude! Well, she didn’t need them anyway.

Stalking into an administration office for a construction company and batting her eyes at who she thought was the CEO (hey, he was some big-wig in a meeting – who was she to know?) before she was ushered out in a ruffle of clothing. Why didn’t they want her? She stumbled over herself, her inexperience from being in the armed forces before and, well, not knowing how to job hunt as a siren-woman-thing tripping her up, shops turning her down with her snide smile and roll of her eyes even before she’d opened her mouth.

“No, sorry!”

“Not today!”

Another door closed on her heels and Adagio snarled under her breath, a rippling, writhing growl that clawed at her lips.

“Is no one looking for real talent in this god damned city? You – you hiring?”

She jabbed a finger a stranger on the street, a woman who hurried on by without a second glance. Just another crazy person, no one that she had to worry about, but Adagio was on a mission as she hunted, her resume sloppily retrieved and amended in a new frame of mind from her work computer while they had been trying to less than gently extricate her from her desk. That had not been the most graceful exit for her...

In her foul mood, she didn’t step out of the way of a man who was bustling down the street in a straight line, acting as if he knew exactly where he was going even if that included going straight through her.

“Watch it!”

His snap riled her up, fire seething through her, though a snap of her fingers and a snide word was all that she had in turn for him. The part of Adagio that was still Knight wondered at how she thought that that was any kind of response, for the guy who had been so rude and dismissive was already long gone, leaving only bystanders to stare and wonder at just what had possessed her.

But pausing there, at least, gave her a lead in the right direction, the flashing neon sign of the bar catching her attention as it flickered and buzzed, in need of a little electrical TLC but still very much functional. The “now hiring” sign on the door may have been small but there was nothing like a call from destiny like that if Adagio had been looking for it. And the name of the place... Well, even that made her laugh out loud, though there was a lack of humour in her tone as she cocked an eyebrow.

“The Siren’s Call bar, huh?”

She grinned, lips quirking up to show a flash of white teeth.

“Maybe you’ll do just fine...”

Knight had not been a social sort but Adagio was as she learned, swiftly, to pour drinks, how to mix, how to shake everything in just the right, a smile on her hips and a wiggle in her hips. It suited her more, slipping into the flow of it, although the old part of her still wanted to hide in a corner as the night wore on. It was not like Knight but it was like Adagio and that was all that mattered for a time in which she had to make ends meet and work out just what her life in that world was meant to be.

“Hey, hot stuff, what can I get ya?”

She flirted with the best of them, though it was all with the nuance and intention that she was deserving of their attention, not that she was the one set to give it to them. Her patrons stuttered and blushed, wrapped around her little finger, though some would have been as blatant as to say that they were under her spell. A spell of a siren, however, was a potent force indeed, far more than the liquor that they poured down their throats. She even was allowed to try some herself, watched by the bar manager, though they didn’t seem to mind her “snarkiness” and snide comments one bit.

“Keep it to customer service levels and you’ll do fine. Don’t let anyone take advantage of you – this isn’t a place where we give away shit for free.”

Can do!

Somewhere that allowed her personality to show through a little more was just the ticket for her as she laughed and let the energy of the bar lift her, her heart pounding in time with the increasing, driving music. Of course, it was a Friday night (she’d only been supposed to get settled at her old job that day, before that had gone bust) and she learned on the fly, even tossing a bottle from one hand to the other and putting on a little bit of a show.

“What, guys, you thought I’d drop that? None of that here!”

Sliding a drink down the bar to the patron who had ordered it, she flashed him a brilliant grin.

“There’s more where that came from. If you’d like me to stick around, talk to my boss. And say only real nice things about me, alright?”

She winked as if they were conspirators in a plot, leaving the man stuttering, his drink untouched. It didn’t matter to her though as the band stepped up on stage, drawing her attention a little more, though it was at least fair to say that anything that lingered on the ears would draw the attention of even a covert siren like her.

“What’ve they got to offer then?”

Frowning, she ignored the patron waving money at her, trying to get her attention, though her ignorance was deliberate. Yeah, yeah: they could wait. They could all wait until she was good and ready to serve them. A flip of her hand waved him off to another bartender while the twanging tones of the band thrummed through the bar, a trio of guys with one woman on vocals, a typical arrangement.

They weren’t any good – at least, not to Adagio. Knight had never been much of a singer but that was different to a siren, the music flowing through her, her lips parting, wanting to join in. But she was something different to them, different to human beings, the sort of creature that could control them all and leave them wondering just what had happened. Adagio smiled and rocked back on her heels, a hand pressed to her throat as if she could feel her vocal cords trembling even then, wanting to spill forth her sound into the world once more.

Had she done that before? A memory flickered up of a stage, many colours shooting across the twilight sky. Was that her memory or was it something else, the shadow of a dream that she should not have swallowed up for herself? She brushed it aside. It wasn’t important. What was important was getting up on that stage all over again, spreading her influence far and wide, letting them all see and adore her.

Adagio grinned. She could make that happen. She could most definitely make that happen.

“Say, boss,” she said with a smile, laying a hand on his arm, her best wink teasing on her eyelashes. “Do you take on new acts to play and perform here too?”

Her boss frowned, a little more distracted than her hand on his arm than she may have liked but that wasn’t something she was concerned about. Twisting people to her will came more and more naturally to her as she leaned over the bar, appearing wide-eyed and eager while, all the time, she was simpering and convoluting, entirely aware of what she was doing and the effect she had on him.

“I think I’d be great at it,” she said warmly, brushing the back of his hand with her fingertips. “You’ll have to listen to me sing sometime, I’ll really draw in a crowd. You up for it?”

She phrased it as if she was offering him something that he could not refuse and, of course, the expected answer was given. Adagio wouldn’t have settled for anything else.

Working at the bar was a revelation as the days and the weeks passed, Adagio making sure that her pipes were working just right and everything that she could have wanted was in place. If there was a way to feed and draw in more and more power over the course of time the bar was perfect for that, the sort of place where there were an ever-changing clientele and fresh display of patrons for her to utilise. She could take charge of the other bartenders too, commanding them in a way that just wouldn’t have gone down well at all at her last job, knowing the ropes or, at the very least, pretending to.

“You! Make sure table nine has appetisers.”

With a snap of her fingers, she flounced up to the stage, the quiet night the perfect time to do a sound check. Of course, Adagio performed alone and the tips were sure to be well worth it, her pay cheque still perhaps a little on the smaller side than she would have liked it to be for herself. She was used to, in the life of a siren, having whatever she needed whenever she needed it, taking up and dropping anything that took her pleasure as and when. Yet money was a changeable thing in the human world and Adagio, formerly Knight, hardly even knew what was in wait for the times if she did not find something to line her pockets with.

Do it.

Knight quailed. Adagio was dominant, pushing him on, pushing her on. The line between the man and the siren was thinner and fainter than ever, swelling within her heart even as notes of cruelty came out to play too. The others bent to her whim whether they wanted to or not, lies and manipulation running amok. She had them under her control, stepping back and out of her way, though Adagio, truly, did very little work at all in the bar.

“Ah-ah-ahhh,” she sang lightly, testing the microphone, wondering just how it would translate her voice across the bar. “Testing, testing... One, two, three...”

The last three words were sung as she stood halfway to the side of the stage, not quite in the centre but that was just her old self holding back. The man didn’t want to be there even as she pressed her legs together, a small part of her trying to be insignificant even as her siren side dominated. Yet the line blurred and they pushed back and forth, Adagio arguing with herself in her head about what she did and did not need to do.

This isn’t you.

Yes, it is.

It never was you.

It can be now.

Why are you in my head?

...

No answer was required in the tone of a smirk, Adagio groaning and rubbing her temples.

“Hey, you gonna sing anything up there or what?”

The patron scowled, leaning back in his chair so that it rocked onto two legs, a rougher sort that really should not have been leering at her one bit. And, just like that, the siren pulled Adagio back to her snarky reality, a raised eyebrow and chilling look simmering down any manner of sulkiness and entitlement that one, lone man may have had in his head.

“If you pipe down,” she whispered, her tone silken like the thread of a spider’s web, dangerous and beautiful at the same time, “maybe you’ll hear something worth coming back for.”

Of course, she would always be worth coming back for as her smirk touched her eyes in a red glow, shoving down the part of her that just wanted to skulk away, to pretend that she didn’t exist, that she didn’t want to get up on stage. A snap of her fingers had another bartender of a lower rank rushing up with a fresh drink for her, something to cool the tiniest bunch of nerves in her heart, even if it would only be temporary. Temporary relief was all the siren needed to take a scootch more control.

Her voice rang through, the backing track rising, though it was not as good as she would have liked in terms of acoustics. Yet Adagio’s voice was still not as she could have expected; to say the least of it all, Knight had not been all that much of a singer, emptying karaoke bars across his adolescent years. She flinched, eyes half-closed, losing herself in her music, heart beating more and more quickly as if even her own body struggled to keep up with it.

Head after head turned to her and she could not help but drink down their attention greedily, wanting more. The siren curled up within her like a dog before the hearth, watching and waiting for the opportune moment to act, but she had little to do or say when she was not needed in action. Words flowed from her lips from an old song that was still very much a hit, a party pleaser that had the patrons tapping their toes and drumming fingers upon the table, knowing the words even though it had not been heard in years. Adagio was not even sure whether she knew the words but they kept coming and coming, even as more patrons had to double-check themselves, sure that her eyes were glowing.

The show ended with a round of applause, the bar moderately filled and even the bartenders and manager joining in. And just like that it was the start of something new for Adagio, her smile wide and a gleam in her eyes, aching to press her hand to her throat for power that something in her urged was there, if not quite yet.

Word got out that she was the best singer in town (well, in many blocks of the city) and the money poured in, affording her the opportunity to dare with shorter skirts and tighter tops, pulling her hair back so that her shoulders were on show for her performances. Her attire only served to help with her bartending gig too, alternating between quailing and showing off her body, shifting her weight from foot to foot as much as she gave a little shoulder wiggle that drew attention straight down to other assets too.

Oh, there was sweetness in such manipulation that she could not help but lean into, hungry for the stage, hungry for the spotlight, feeling more and more fulfilled as her time went on. Sure, it was only a small gig but it would do her for a start until she could find herself on a big stage in the big world, spreading her voice to the masses and her control even further. Yet not even Adagio herself could have expected just how much she had changed, not only embodying the very essence of the siren’s spirit that possessed her but learning more, developing more.

She’d never known how to play cards but she learned then, flipping tricks and showing them sleights of hand unlike anything they had ever seen before. She wowed the patrons easily, a master of all trades and a jack of none, her smile flashing into a smirk at the drop of a hat. Adagio was more than she’d ever been and, more and more so, it was difficult to remember that she’d ever been anyone else, flourishing and thriving and singing her soul out as more and more returned, flocking to the bar to see and hear her perform first-hand.

“You’re doing great!” The bar owner said, though she didn’t bother to learn his name, as well as that may have been for her. “Do you want to do more shows, step up from your bartending gig? The tips will only get better.”

Smiling, she blushed, something softer in her reminding her of the way she was, the way she was without that voice inside her pushing her on, goading her to fresh spills of control.

“Oh, was I that good?”

Yet she could barely get the words out while appearing modestly abashed, something driving her to straighten her back and push her hair back behind her ears, boldly ensuring that her face was sharply on show at all times. Just what could Adagio possibly have to hide?

“I mean – of course, I was good! I was fantastic!”

Grinning widely, she dropped the owner a wink, even his smile faltering just a step. On the back foot, he couldn’t do anything but freeze as she leaned in, walking her fingers up his chest like a seductress, sending his heart aflutter even as she brushed the very tip of a single digit of his nose.

“And I’ll sing for you anytime,” she purred. “But we’re going to have to talk about my salary.”

“Er, yeah... Um, of course, of course, anything...”

She flounced to the bathroom as if she owned the place, expecting others to move out of the way for her. Cutting a path had never been easier as she got into the swing of her body, knowing just how to work her hips and jut her elbows, her gaze saying quite clearly that she expected people to move for her, to clear a path. They did so and a queue for the ladies bathroom was just not something that Adagio had to worry about, doing her business in more privacy than she had enjoyed as a man, which was, to say the least, a relief for her. She’d never quite liked the public aspect of male bathrooms, which were just strange. But maybe that was a part of the siren creeping in, a thought that she shrugged off as soon as it appeared as “not being all that important”.

There was, however, another bartender waiting to get in as she left, a friend of hers with dark skin and long, black hair that could not have been more different to Adagio’s wild curls, puffed up to add volume and height to her do.

“Sandra!” She said with a grin. “You getting some good tips in tonight?”

To her credit, Sandra laughed only faintly, shrugging as she tilted her hand back and forth, held horizontally.

“Not with you on stage, you know they’ve only got eyes on you,” she said, though her tone was light, not challenging in the slightest. “It’s the way it is but people know you’re here now, they know what they want to see.”

“Well, we’ll share the tip-pool, no sense in not sharing it, no?”

Smiling, Adagio patted her friend’s shoulder as she made her way back to the bar. She was genuine in her want to help out Sandra but there was a part of her that was more siren than human that would slip the biggest notes out of the tip jar before divvying it up between her and the rest of the bartenders, ensuring that, of course, she got the biggest cut as she believed was her due. It was hardly something that she would have done before, if she’d even been in the position where she’d have had tips to share, but taking control and taking her dues just acme more and more naturally to her.

The reviews came in and the owner was oh so very kind to her, so good to her, good enough to throw more shows her way, to put her on stage more and more. No more did she have the quiet nights to sing and dance, hypnotising the crowd, but times were changing as she stomped her foot and snapped her fingers, a bartender who looked up at her with eyes as wide as saucers handing her a drink without even Adagio having to say anything.

Looking down at her crowd, a red straw pushed between her lips, Adagio smiled, lightness flowing through her, lifting her, almost as if she had a pair of wings on her back to soar high above all else. It was where she belonged, of course, far above everyone else, looking down on them from her rightful place, everyone cursed, everyone under her control while they knew no different.

“Ahhh... You don’t get pipes like these without wetting them, my dears! That’s sooo much better! I know you’re here for a show, ladies and gentlemen, but have I got something in store for you!”

And it was right then and there that Adagio let go of everything that could have held her back, throwing her arms out wide as she sang and she sang. Even those that had been close to her stopped what they were doing, watching in awe, the siren-woman as light as air as her toes just barely touched the stage. The siren was right there with her, the two of them at least somewhat accepting her, her music holding them all spellbound, voice rising more powerfully than ever before.

They would never know who she really was, that she was bringing something new to her life and that of theirs, as much as the two of them would, in the end, have to find a way to work together, compromising between the soul of a human and the song of a siren. Even in her lyrics, Adagio beamed. The siren hissed, mentally turning her back on her human vessel. She could do it. The siren was not her ruler.

The future held so much in store for both of them!

Part Three

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Three

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Adagio frowned. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. As she dropped her bag by the front door of her apartment, it no longer surprised her to see the light blinking on the landline phone, which she’d kept after she’d returned from the services as a man, Knight, to draw her attention to the fact that there was a message there. There was at least a message there every day lately.

It was all the agencies hassling her, wanting her attention, wanting her to perform for them, like a cute little doll that could be paraded around on show at the drop of a hat. Look at her, look at her, they would all cry and proclaim. Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t her song just divine?

Of course, Adagio was no fool and knew that the stage that it would give her to increase her power – the notion of which the siren inside her had planted in her mind – even though it was not what she wanted. She didn’t want someone taking a chunk of her earnings, greedily hoarding them, coveting them. Everything that she earned was her own and if she was going to step onto a bigger stage she would do it all on her own!

However, that was more difficult a feat in itself for a woman who didn’t want to work with a big agency, one that had the time and the connections to force her into the spotlight, whether perhaps she wanted that or not. Adagio’s frown deepened, crossing her arms and staring at the phone as if it held information that could have changed her life. Sometimes, it did. What did she want?

Oh, if only she knew.

It’ll be fame, the siren whispered inside her mind, snaking and flowing. It’ll be glory. We’ll never want for anything everything again. All that I can feed on...forever!

Adagio huffed and rolled her eyes, though she didn’t dare look in the hallway mirror. Sometimes it did not reflect the truth in her eyes, the shade of something darker, something evil, lurking there.

Sure, and I’ll get a minimal cut of whatever they’re pimping me out for – and then what? What then? Tours and press meetings? Even in her head, she scoffed, hand on a cocked-out hip. Who wants that? I never wanted to be centre stage!

The sense of the siren darkened inside her, though Adagio held her ground. The siren had been more and more vocal and she had had to pull out every last trick in her admittedly short book to keep her at bay. There was an opposing force there that had managed to put words to the sense and thoughts that had flitted into her mind so far, though the separate entity making herself known sent chills too down Adagio’s spine.

There was, however, the chance to do a few gigs at the right price and those she took gladly, which was perhaps one thing that at least simmered down the siren inside her. She was always waiting though, urging Adagio on to cast her spell over people, the woman not wanting to be a puppet for agencies and corporations while she fought against simply becoming a puppet for the siren too.

She could not deny that it felt good to perform, chest lifting with breath, her heart rising, the tightness in her throat spreading out and out as she drew all that dared to bear witness to her into her hold. They couldn’t take their eyes off her, Adagio the Siren, which had seemed like the obvious choice of a name when she had needed something a little catchier for on stage. “Adagio” should have been enough but sirens, of course, had more to their history that made people love her and she smiled down at her adoring fans from the stage, letting them worship her, adore her, all in her rightful place above them.

The money was good too from doing the gigs, though she was in control of it and it was that control that Adagio was most keen to linger over, ensuring that nothing came to pass that she did not want. It was for her to take, not for them, and she performed with a smirk and a smile, one as interchangeable as the other as she manipulated all to her will. That did not mean that others did not benefit, undoubtedly, watching and bearing witness to the highlights of her singing time after time again, but it did mean that nothing was true and nothing was genuine with her anymore. It even led Adagio to question her own choices, though the siren pushed her away from that thought whenever she ventured too close to a terrifying truth.

They love you, they adore you, she hissed, lavishing praise on her vessel. Give them more, give them all they want to see.

And she could, if she had stepped forward a little more, just a little more. Her bar, however, was her second home, a domain that she well and truly ruled. After being promoted to bar manager, she had more power than she even felt she’d had in the forces, controlling who was hired and who was fired, shaping the place to her will. The tacky neon was pulled down and replaced with something a little smoother, a little classier – but not so classy, of course, that people who visited the bar would not drink heavily. If there was one thing that Adagio had learned there it was that drunken patrons tipped more heavily and that was something that she was more than keen to work to her advantage.

The patrons changed a little there but, mostly, they dressed up the required amount to be presentable enough for her slightly more up-class establishment, although it was still a bar at the end of the day. She just wanted their money to flow more freely and a smile at the right times with the air that things there were just “so much more expensive” than the other riff-raff of the city made their pockets a little easier to dip into. Even cleaning up the lingering, sticky residue from the bar top had helped, though Adagio had had one of the other bartenders take care of that job. It might have messed up her nails.

The siren too didn’t seem to mind the bar all that much, pointing out the patrons that might be more willing to part with their money as they entered, though she did not seem to see out of Adagio’s eyes. Rather, she more aptly sensed who was around, the forces and vulnerabilities of people, of souls that could be useful to her. She’d told Adagio how she’d taken over villages and towns with her sister sirens back in another world but Adagio had baulked the most at how she had boasted of how she’d taken over a school in their current world. Not to mention that the talk of “other worlds” existing was near enough more than she could handle – who would go after a school of all places? Thus, the siren’s brags had fallen on deaf ears, leaving her no better off with bragging her abilities than she had been when she’d begun.

Do you know him?

Adagio paused, fingers twitching even up on stage as she did her best to wave the siren out of her memories. The siren guided her eyes to where they needed to be, although the young man sitting at a table with a couple of people that she presumed were his friends was especially nondescript, nothing special about him at all. Brown hair hanging down around his ears and the back of his neck (probably due a cut), brown eyes that were a little bit hazel, a little richer than normal. Adagio frowned. What was so abnormal about that? His face was heart-shaped, however, with a narrower, more noticeable chin, a lightness in his laugh that, in some way, sounded familiar.

With the microphone in her hand, she gasped faintly.

“Donnie?”

The name was whispered but someone heard it, the waitress fiddling with the sound equipment at the side (she’d probably unplugged something to clean again and was hoping against hope that Adagio wouldn’t notice).

“What was that?” She called up. “Everything okay?”

Adagio rounded on her, hair flying, lips contorting into a sneer. Even the siren reeled, taken aback.

“What’s it to you?” She snapped. “Get back to table service! And the speakers better not be full of static from you moving things about – you always change the settings, Isabelle!”

Isabelle didn’t know what else to do but to scurry from there with due haste, from the bar manager and singer that everyone had learned to fear, even if some would have said too that they were friends with Adagio. The patrons grew restless, however, and Adagio could rest assured that Donnie, if it was him from back in the days before she had left for her military calling, would not recognise. The only problem was, with her heart beating more quickly than it should have, she didn’t know whether she wanted him to recognise her or not.

Things like that hadn’t made sense for a while.

She still had a show to put on though and gave it her all, the spotlight on her, a hand flung high as if she was calling down another kind of spirit to aid her. Yet her eyes were only on one patron in the bar, curiosity brimming over. Who was he with? Why was he there? Had he gotten better looking? The last thought was a strange one but she couldn’t deny that he’d changed, the Donnie that she remembered being a bit of a dreamer who never quite seemed to know what was going on around him.

Adagio smiled as she finished her set.

“Goodnight, folks! That’s all from me on stage tonight but I’ll be back at nine sharp, Saturday!”

They cheered for her but she had work to do as a bar manager, even though she could have easily have passed it off to someone else there, being that they hardly ever had any complaints for her to deal with. One of her younger waitresses, one who was barely old enough to serve alcohol, squeaked and smiled, a jittery, anxious sort, but Adagio did not pause as she brushed past her, snatching the tray from her hands.

“This for the guys at the table of three?”

Of course, they were, and she left a flummoxed staff member behind, something a little more than her usual customer service smile painted on. She plopped the drinks down with a grin, heart pounding. Even the siren coiled and twisted, waiting simply to see what she was going to do.

“Hey, fancy seeing you out here!”

She smiled, though, of course, Donnie only blinked.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

Oh, shoot... Of course, he didn’t recognise her! He didn’t know how she looked as a woman – that was a whole lot different to being Knight. Inside her, the siren smirked and chuckled, watching all with great interest.

Nice going. Maybe you can twist his mind a little more still if you can keep this up...

But Adagio was well-practised at pushing the siren inside.

“Oh, thought I recognised your handsome face from someone who was here last week,” she covered up smoothly, a little flustered as heat leapt to her cheeks. “Perhaps I was mistaken... But it’s a pleasure to see you here now!”

Donnie smiled and she offered her hand to him, ignoring the others at the table. In the moment, they were of no matter to her. But why was her palm sweaty?

“Donnie.”

“Adagio.”

Only then did his smile match her own, the bustle of the bar continuing around them.

“That’s a great name!”

His enthusiasm was catching but, alas, Adagio was well-aware that she still had more work to do, a couple of hours left still until the night was all wrapped up. With her best flirty wink, she popped the tray on her hip and fluttered her eyelashes in just the way that got her patrons stuttering and fumbling with her words. After all, she was just trying to get some more money out of them, better tips for herself and the place. Even Donnie was dressed nicely enough to be alright there, she was sure, even if she would have made an excuse either way.

“Sure is – now, if I can get you anything else, you guys just let me know, hm? We’ll take real good care of you here, only the best.”

The others laughed and blushed and jabbed each other in the ribs, her good-natured flirting ticking all the usual boxes. The show was something that Adagio seemed more than capable of performing with her eyes closed, easier still than even being up on stage, though Donnie’s eyes never left hers, the softness faded while they drew on deeper intent.

She shivered. Yet the moment passed almost as soon as it made itself known. She turned back to the bar at a brisk clip, fussing with the classes.

“Sarah! Take these glasses back! And we need another cask brought up – can you handle that?”

It was genuinely asked but all well with her staff, everything running like a well-oiled machine with her commanding hand at the wheel. Crossing her arms, she pursed her lips and surveyed her strange, little domain, though a tap on her shoulder drew her attention rather sharply and rudely away.

“Yes? What...”

But she trailed off, finding Donnie there, a smile on his face.

“Do you want to do a duet?”

If the question took her aback, her answer did even more, the words leaping to her lips before she had a chance to say or do anything different.

“Of course!”

It was a chance, just one chance, and she found herself up on stage with him more nervous than she had been at performing in months. She shifted her weight and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the siren within her laughing and cavorting all the while with malicious glee.

Oh, please... A weak human like that?

But Adagio had to ignore her, ignore her as she had been doing for so very long already. It was her life to lead as she pleased, not the siren’s, and she had to push past all of that to find out...what, exactly? It was not too bad, not really, although she fussed with the tracks, trying to find something suitable, even though she’d never really worried about what she sang at all. With her voice, it was all phenomenal.

“This one?”

His grin brightened her night.

“Sure!”

He was so cheerful, so lively, the draw of him crackling in the tension between them, though it was a good kind of tension, something that made Adagio want to step closer to him, to feel the warmth of his skin against hers. He would not be as good as her, she was sure of that, but it was just a kindness to play up to what the bar patrons wanted too from time to time, something that she could use to bring them back time after time again.

They did not announce themselves, simply going for it, Adagio throwing herself into the song with her whole heart and soul. Who she was trying to impress was beyond her but she didn’t ever step up on stage without the intention to put on the very best show possible in hand, a smirk on her lips as she swayed to the beat of the music.

To her surprise, Donnie kept up with her admirably, his voice a little shaky at first and then growing stronger and stronger with every verse. His eyes caught hers and she flashed him a grin, leaning into her enjoyment of it, how singing simply cut everything else in her life off as if it no longer mattered. But it was the first time, as Adagio, that she’d sung on stage with someone else that made her heart pound like that, not just a patron who thought they were going to have a “a go” at karaoke or something like that, someone who could match up to her skill and talent even if after a rough start.

And then she was blinking in the spotlight, Donnie standing so close that his shoulder brushed hers, breathing a little more heavily than she was proud to admit. Why that was so she could not tell but there was no needed answer to take the praise and adoration of her loving audience. She took a bow and gestured for Donnie to do the same and, of course, like everyone else who came under her influence, he did so instantly, the low, sweeping motion outdoing even her. But Adagio was not to be outdone as she pulled him back upright with a giggle and dropped a kiss on his cheek. It was no more than she would have done for anyone else but it, somehow, meant something different with him.

Keep it together, girl...

“Hey, that was fun!” She smiled, wondering if he saw something of Knight still in her or if she was that different. “We should do that again sometime. Do you want to come back Saturday night and join me for the show?”

Adagio didn’t pay too much attention to the shocked look of her staff members, their surprise meaning nothing to her. She was a law unto herself and could do as she pleased, performing with who she pleased, and she told herself right there and then that she had found another way to bring money into her bar, even if she did not, technically as yet, own it. That was in the works, however...

She should have known better. Even the siren whispered to her that she should know better as she sashayed up to guests with a flirty wink and a wiggle of her hips. She didn’t tolerate idiocy and perhaps should have seen a tickle of that in herself too, snapping at her staff even while she sat down and confided in a friend over coffee.

“Sooo,” Tracie said with a wink, black hair falling forward as she leaned onto her elbow, chain coffee cup in hand. “This guy... This guy you’re performing with...”

Before, such a suggestive inquisition may have turned his stomach to a sickening twist of nerves but Adagio rolled her eyes, even though a blush prickled to life across her cheeks and neck.

“Oh, I knew him a long while back,” she said evasively, almost bumping a passing, wobbling toddler with her foot as she jiggled it out beyond her table where people were moving back and forth. “He’s a nice sort, but a good voice on him. I should have thought of doing a duet a long time ago!”

Tracie pressed her lips together, eyebrows lifted.

“Hon, do you think you’re fooling anyone there?”

Adagio blinked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re clearly smitten. You’ve got it written all over you! Totally, freaking, utterly smitten!”

“Oh, come ooon!”

Adagio flung up her hands but, well, she should have known that she wasn’t fooling anyone, regardless of how much she protested. Tracie laughed and teased her lightly, though even she knew that she couldn’t push things too far, not with Adagio, a volatile powder-keg who would go off the rails if she thought that she was about to not get her way. No, no, no, she said, he was just in the show to make her money, though even suggesting that he would be a good draw at her outside gigs got her yet another raised eyebrow. What the hell was up with not being believed like that?

Either way, the shows continued and she performed with Donnie, choosing songs together that were best suited to a duet where they could play off one another. There was a bit of dancing too, real dancing, not just her hypnotic sway and wiggle that melted the hearts (and the siren would have said the minds too) of everyone who watched her. Grabbing her hand, Donnie grinned and spun her around, catching her in one arm, though with her head bouncing off the inside of her skull she could only be glad in the moment that he was not so adventurous as to dip her too.

It was strange to look up at him like that, feeling like they had already exchanged so many words and, at the same time, no words at all. Songs were not words, they were feelings, her head spinning as he drew her back to her feet.

“Oh...”

That was not the last of it though as he sat down with her after work, the late hour not seeming to bother night-owl Donnie at all.

“So, you’ve handed out flyers but have you thought about doing a deal with local hotels?” He asked, his advertising know-how surprising her more than anyone else. “They could suggest you to people who are travelling or here on business, a local place that everyone goes to, something to get a feel of the city...”

His ideas spilt out one after the other and she propped her chin on her hand, eyes almost half-lidded as she peered up at him through her eyelashes. He had some good ideas, even if he did let them run and run in a stream of consciousness, remembering them later even if he couldn’t remember which one, if any, had garnered the best reaction from Adagio. Donnie made it easy to listen to him, day in and day out, and her liking for his company grew and grew. She couldn’t have put her finger on what exactly about him that she liked but he had most certainly changed from the time when she’d last known him, more driven and more motivated again, although he was not the most ambitious person in the world by any means. Truth be told, an ambitious soul probably wouldn’t have matched up all that well with her.

Don’t let this one go.

In the dark of the night, Adagio stirred, the siren’s voice in her head waking her from what had been a rather pleasant dream, even if she would never have admitted to the content of it. That, in fact, would have been a shade too far even for her...

“What are you on about?”

She spoke out loud, grumbling, pressing the pillow over her head. She could have stayed in her mind, of course, and only thought what she wanted to say, even though that in itself was something that she forgot from time to time. Who talked in their head, after all?

This man... He is a kind soul.

“And since when did you give a flying toss about who is kind or not?”

I don’t.

“You do.”

Only then was the siren silent, leaving Adagio to grumble and pummel her pillow, trying to find her way back asleep in the dark of the night, city noises rumbling around her.

But it was Donnie that she saw in her dreams – nothing untoward or bad, of course, but they did leave her waking in a sweat, panting lightly, chasing after a future that she did not even know whether or not was hers to take for her own. She was a man but not a man, seeing the world more and more differently as Adagio, and she didn’t even know what to think about relationships, having hardly ever been in them. Life before just hadn’t left any time for that and she could not have said that she’d had very much interest in dating anyway, despite notable instances in her life.

Where did that leave her though when it came to Donnie? Adagio tossed and turned, trying to find peace that would not come, not quite then. She could do something to change things but, well...she wanted to hang out with him. To say the least of it, he was a nice guy. And sometimes all someone had to be was nice without reason for her to feel a little more kindly to them. It wasn’t even that she was coarse and harsh with other people but more that she had a leg up on everyone else, standing tall above them, knowing her place in the world. Maybe it was that self-assurance that had led her to invite Donnie out with her to the gigs and such, knowing that he would not upstage her as much as he made her heart beat flutter and flutter.

The siren pushed her on.

He likes you, genuinely.

Adagio rolled her eyes, earning herself a glance from Donnie across the dining room table, laid out a little more fancily than she would have done so if she was having friends round for dinner and drinks. The half-empty glasses of beer on the table were more their style than wine or anything too fancy and they laughed easily even as a rosy tint gleamed in their cheeks.

“Is something wrong?” Donnie asked, her silence after whatever he’d asked her stretching out a little too long to be ignored. “You seem...different tonight.”

See? He cares. Who else can you say that about?

“No... No, everything’s fine. Better than fine.”

Did she like Donnie? Oh, the siren had an answer for that, saying that she was being possessive over him, though she couldn’t blame her: after all, he was one of few that liked being around her and didn’t back off because she had an attitude or what-not. For it was not exactly that Adagio went around being mean to everyone by any means. No, a short temper was one thing and her brisk, snapped orders in the bar something else entirely, something that she felt had simply become a part of her. It was not how she’d been before but a better way, like slipping into just the right outfit that made her want to stand up tall and proud, to show off all that she had to offer. Of course, it was a given that she was a catch and there was no lust in his eyes...but something more.

Or was that just her being hopeful?

She didn’t want him to leave that night, having dinner there together under the pretence of prepping some material for a show, but he did anyway, everything normal, so very normal. Adagio made up an excuse to see him the next day, though that was a ruse and something that she regretted as soon as she saw him out on the street...with her.

No, not Adagio: a young woman with blue eyes and a sparkling smile, a fall of perfectly straight, blonde hair that was the exact opposite of hers. With a tucked-in waist and a chest that drew the eye more than Adagio’s attire – when she was just out on the street, at least, and not on stage performing. It was her voice that was her main draw and not even her body would have turned the hearts of men to that extent, both men and women alike lusting for her.

Do it.

The siren goaded her on as the other woman leaned into Donnie and laughed, too loudly, her hair flying, surely wafting perfume into his face. What the siren wanted her to do was to use her voice, to let go of her humanity, to push on into a new way of being, though there was something still holding her back, the new Adagio standing tall and proud even as she smiled and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. She strode into the midst of their group as if it was nothing at all, taking centre stage and commanding Donnie’s attention.

That was right.

“Excuuuuse me!”

“Hey, Adagio!” He grinned, his gaze locking onto her as if there was no one else in the street at that very moment, all of his attention on her and her alone. “You ready to go?”

Even the siren grinned.

Nicely done.

Adagio didn’t need to thank her. It had been all of her own doing and there was nothing that anyone could do to step into her place, the other woman shoved aside quite neatly all the while being perfectly normal, yet her assertive self in a way that no one could frown on. Everything was just as she wanted it to be as she stepped away, arm in arm with Donnie, though a little smirk of triumph on her lips was not completely untoward.

And, before her very eyes, everything seemed a little bit lighter and brighter, easier to manage. Things had changed so very much with the siren’s presence in her life and there was little else she could do but try to manage things as they were, stepping forward, one foot after the other. Though things just seemed easier with Donnie there, happier and softer, the urge to sing both fading and rising at the same time. Maybe the siren didn’t have to control her. Maybe she was, after all, in control of herself.

It was worth a thought, but did she really have to come to terms with the fact that she was falling...for Donnie? And, if she was, was that even such a bad thing?

“Here you go!”

A little girl offered her a tiny flag, something to celebrate an event in their town, and Adagio could not help but smile, Donnie murmuring a soft sound of appreciation too.

Maybe things were due to come right, after all...and she didn’t have to understand everything she felt either.

Either way, things were okay. With the flag held between two fingers, she smiled, looking down, tucking a strand behind her ear. All the girly things that she’d never thought that she’d have any reason to do, much less for a man.

She’d have to see about keeping Donnie around for a little while longer too...

Part Four

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Four

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Not so long after Adagio had brushed off Donnie’s admirers while she was set on acquiring his attention completely, things were going so very well that she almost had to pinch herself to realise that two whole weeks had passed. Coming him from a night off and a night out on the town with the girlfriends she’d collected living as Adagio rather than night, she huffed and sighed as she dumped her bag on the narrow table by the door of her apartment. It was small and it was a little stuffy with all the new possessions that she’d collected and crammed into it as the tips kept right on rolling in but it was hers and that was all she cared about.

The siren inside her shivered, swimming back and forth as if Adagio’s innards had been turned into a fishbowl of sorts. She could feel the siren, the siren Adagio, moving, shifting, yet it was not something that the siren had moved forward with though, perhaps not even knowing what she could do still as her powers were yet to grow in that world. It disconcerted her slightly even as she sent a silent warning to the hippocampus-type creature that had turned her life upside-down to behave.

Snorting bubbles, the siren turned away. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get any conversation out of her at such a late hour.

Her phone lit up with a message as she tugged it from her handbag and she flipped it open with delicate fingers to read that the owner of the bar, where she worked, was in the hospital. Well, that was a bit concerning. Was the place still going to be open? Of course, it was, considering that she was the manager there, the owner in all but name, though she read on to make a sympathetic noise in the dim light of her entrance hall. A roofing accident? Who would be doing something like that in the city? She’d forgotten where he lived out in the suburbs but that wasn’t something that she had to worry too much about, sending a quick reply that was just about toeing the line of polite. Adagio was just lucky that she’d managed to get something in there about him getting better soon at the very least.

“Huh? He wants to talk to us?”

Shrugging it off, she yawned and made her way to bed, not giving it much more thought than that, though she was not so sure at all how he was going to meet with them if he was stuck in the hospital. Maybe she’d have to read the message again in the morning, she could have missed something.

Yet the siren was wakeful.

You can have the bar.

Adagio frowned. Sometimes, the siren was insistent.

“Oh, yes? And how is that?”

Take it for your own. He’s ill. He won’t need it.

She rolled her eyes.

“Yes, but he will when he’s out of the hospital, he’s earned it. You know, like I work at the bar to earn money? He’s earned enough to buy or rent the bar, I don’t know what he does – so it’s his. Does that make sense to you?”

She was duly shorter and snappier than usual after such a long night, even though it had hardly been a bad one at all, and the siren retreating with a grumble that would linger with Adagio. That grumble stayed with her as she tossed and turned in the arms of a less than sweet sleep, wondering just what was to come of the bar and her position in it, whether the hands of change were turning, even then, tossing her from the life that she’d come to love after her transformation with the siren’s call, were at play. There was no way for her to know and no way for her to make things right, yet the sweetness of unconsciousness in sleep would not come either, a traitor to her kind.

The night would prove to be longer than any she’d had before.

Adagio was not looking her best when she turned up at the city hospital with the address scrawled on a scrap of paper in messy handwriting that was not because she had bad handwriting but because she had not cared enough to make it neat and pretty. Stalking by an old woman with a walking stick, she almost forced the other lady off the sidewalk onto the road, although she was merely single-minded in her focus to get in and get out, not thinking of anything else, a little more of the siren’s influence and spirit seeping into her every day. The siren liked that and twisted within her, wanting her to go back to see if the older woman had anything to give her, but that was not something that Adagio could understand as yet, how sirens fed off chaos and distrust, with her life, strangely, becoming more settled than ever after becoming a woman.

Yet what she uncovered in the hospital, feeling oddly uncomfortable as if she was back in her army days as a man, was a man rather energetic in a hospital bed while doctors and disapproving nurses tried to usher his staff from his room. Of course, the owner was not to be dissuaded, speaking through his moustache, eyes animated and even flinging his arms around, though the pain that he was in with the cast on his leg, pending operations for more, was evident in the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

He told them many things but the crux of it, what she thought was important, was that he wanted to hold a competition (very unorthodox) to see who could run the bar “the best”. Sure that was an arbitrary thing, considering that takings differed on different nights of the week, although the lure of a competition did have her attention, as much as the siren sulked within her. Whatever her problem was, however, was none of Adagio’s concern as she only had to consider what was right and needed for her, her position in the world, when the siren, truly, did not have a say in it. She just lived in Adagio’s head and, at the end of the day, she would have to keep her mouth quiet on more than a few things that did not affect her!

Ah, but the lure of running the whole show at the bar, not just being a manager, was too much for her to pass up, although the details would be hashed out in a message later that day when the owner was dosed up more adequately on pain medication. He wanted to stay in good standing with the clientele, of course, and the actual manager was too busy to take over ownership duties in addition to his own, which was why it had been deferred over to the rest of the staff, those hungry souls waiting and wanting to step up and see what could be in store for them. She was barely out on the sidewalk again, ignoring the ambulance screaming past to the emergency entrance, wrapped up in her own little world that not even the siren could get into, when she had her phone in her hand, dialling the one number that she could always call.

And that was her dialling, not the siren, the twist and turn of intertwined souls more and more confusing by the day as she didn’t know what was her, Knight-Adagio, and what was the siren, the influence of such sinuous and insidious, creeping more and more into her heart day by day. Of course, Donnie was more than happy to help, ideas spilling from his lips as if he may have been considering the day that they could run their very own bar for themselves, judging by just how many thoughts he had. The gist was it that they would swap who entertained and who managed, for Adagio surely could not do both, the siren simmering down inside her, seething and hissing, though she did not have Adagio’s attention at that time.

Smirking, she looked up at the sky, the fluffy, white clouds scudding away to reveal the afternoon sunshine. She didn’t notice people around her but, truly, it was not as if they mattered to her, the siren having more influence over her and her personality than she knew and understood at that point.

“Maybe things are looking even better...”

The siren, however, did not think so, snarling and snapping and trying to throw Adagio off her game at any time. Never before had Adagio been so clumsy that she’d spilt drinks but she’d managed to, somehow, jostle the vessel of her body enough that she’d sent two full trays pouring over patrons who, of course, were just the kind of people to throw their hands in the air and proclaim that they were “never coming back”. Oh, they’d be back when they needed their next fix of alcohol on a night out, for there was no bar like Adagio’s in the city and she knew that too, so could not be too worried. But the other wait staff whispered, her competition, everyone more conniving and catty than she had ever given them credit for. If she wasn’t trying to make things the best they could be on the nights she was running the show completely, she would have been just a little impressed.

However, the siren did not make it easy for her, shouting in her head, making her fumble her words while she was on stage to the point that even a kind, older regular asked if she was feeling okay. It was humiliating, however, and it was even worse when eyes followed her when someone else was “in charge” for the purposes of the competition, days going by while she was both in the spotlight and out of it with Donnie doing his best to help her out even though it seemed that there was not so much that he would at all be able to do to help her out there.

It was the siren, all the siren, the “man” Knight growling and stomping a petulant foot that would not have flown in his former life. Were they a man or a woman? Oh, Adagio didn’t know anymore, every last one of the lines that she’d never thought would be crossed blurred and fuzzed-up around the edges, things coming to light that were perplexing to need to address. Who was she and what did the siren actually want with her? She’d been so wrapped up in trying to live her life after the big upheaval that she had not paused to consider the why of it and, well...all that entailed.

She had to talk to the siren.

Making sure that Donnie wasn’t around to wonder at just why she was talking to herself (technically, she was), she sat down on her sofa, cross-legged, the old fabric sinking lightly under her.

“So...” She said, starting with difficulty. “What gives here? I mean, come on!”

It was short and it was snappy and it was not her, Adagio exhaling hard, puffing out her cheeks, trying to come back to herself. Adagio and Knight, Adagio and Knight. The new version of her was as much “her” as Knight was and she had to remember that – regardless of how the siren tried to split her up in the aspect and more.

Yes?

The siren rose slowly as if she didn’t want to have the conversation that, really, had to be done. Even she knew it as she clenched her jaw, something tightening in Adagio’s gut at the same time. Even though she did not want to acknowledge that there was something else, someone else, living inside her, changing her, the facts of the matter were impossible to deny when she locked in and looked at it with a more observant eye.

Adagio shook her head slowly.

“Why are you here?”

The siren considered the question, seeming ethereal and ghost-like as if she had no substance at all. Yet Adagio could feel her there as if the shape of her was inside the cavity of her chest, her ribs splayed and laid bare to expose her beating heart and the siren who would always be there until the end of her days.

I did not choose to be here.

“That’s not answering the question.”

Knight had been clear-cut and direct in his army days: there was no room for confusion there. Yet that was not something that the siren was used to, a master of chaos and twisting truths to suit her own sordid means, flitting back and forth, her rippling shape sending erratic currents and bubbles through Adagio. Adagio grimaced, pressing her hand to her stomach, but waited it out. It was all she could do.

“Well?”

I drain people, feeding on chaos, their energy, turning love to hate. You already know this, so why are you asking me again?

“Surely there has to be more reason to it than that? Are you feeding off the chaos you’re causing at the bar?”

The siren shook her head at that but did not elaborate, the twist and knot of frustration in Adagio’s chest growing, throbbing tightly with each beat of her heart.

“That’s not helpful. So, I’ll take it that you cannot feed off me. I’ll forget that then, because there are more important things at stake here.”

Important things? She sensed the siren licking her lips as if hunkering down for a beast, fangs sharp and bared.

Yes?

“I need to run that bar. It’ll set me up wherever in the city I want to go and it works for me, works for us. This is something that we must continue doing or else you won’t even have a body or a mind to live in. What happens to you if I’m sick or even if I die? Have you thought about that?”

It was something that the Knight part of her had had to, unfortunately, think about years back on entering the forces, going out into some of the most dangerous parts of the world for the good of his country. It had not been something for him to progress up the ranks in, however, his demeanour not completely suited to the line of work, though she, as Adagio, could not have said that office work had been any better in the long run. The siren knew that too, catching and picking up on her thoughts even as they flitted through her head so swiftly that Adagio herself was almost unable to keep up with herself. But she had to, had to keep going, had to get to the bottom of the changes that had come over her life, his life – whatever life it was – once and for all.

The siren was quiet and still, floating, drifting, her eyes half-closed. For a moment, Adagio wondered if she had gone to sleep.

You were always meant to change.

Adagio’s eyebrows shot up.

“Excuse me? I’ll have you know that I never wanted this! How could you even suggest that?”

I’m not suggesting it but I feel you. In Equestria, where I come from, there are forces at work beyond you and me, things that we cannot control. Sometimes you have to let those things that you can’t control happen as they will, even when they seem to be working against you.

Adagio shook her head.

“And don’t you think that those forces were working against you in locking you up in a sword? They probably had good reason to, considering the chaos and unrest you cause.”

For a moment, sadness tickled at the back of Adagio’s mind – but it was gone before she could even pay it the attention that she wanted to.

Yes, I cause trouble, to put it mildly. Yet things will happen to me too if I do not feed, even though I cannot feed on you. It enhances my power, yes, but it’s something too that keeps me alive...putting it simply.

Adagio pressed her lips together. She hadn’t realised too that it was that dire. Yet the siren had found enough to feed on during the course of Adagio’s daily life to sustain herself and grow more powerful, so it wasn’t something that she was going to spend too much time worrying about.

Only a little. She didn’t want to be the cause of pain, regardless of how much discourse there was in the very nature of their relationship.

Tell me this. Do you truly not enjoy having power over people? The siren asked, quietly waiting on an answer, which was unusual enough in itself for her. Do you not enjoy seeing them run to do your bidding, hustling and tripping over themselves just to please you?

Adagio shook her head, but did not reply, even if the siren already knew the answer. The siren already knew that Adagio felt as if everything was right with the world when she was the one in charge, snapping her fingers and hustling those around her with her lips, words spilling forth with the sharpest of directions. She flushed with settling heat inside when she was short-tempered, a sense of being simply as she was flowing through her, and even strutting down the street with heads turning her way was empowering, though not in the usual way that it could have been for a woman so inclined to draw such attention deliberately.

“Yes...”

It came with a rush of reluctant breath and Adagio sank back on the sofa, rocking her pelvis back. The siren nodded but did not need to press for information that she already knew.

“I’m not Knight anymore, am I?” She said as more of a statement than an actual question. “I’m someone else... Adagio... Yes. I remember bits of how I used to be but it feels like watching an old life playing out on a screen, as if I was never really part of it. But that’s part of the change, everything that’s happened. It feels more natural to be Adagio than it ever was to be Knight and I never could get anyone to do what I wanted before.”

Intoxicating, isn’t it?

Adagio gulped. She didn’t need to answer that one.

“Your life and my life were not compatible... And yet here we are. I like the business of all this but I had more than enough of that before too, that’s why I had a quieter job, a slower life. I’m not used to all of this and you can’t say that it’s not you that pushed me into it like some sort of pawn, forcing me to find a way to keep you alive, to sustain you. Was it all because you could feed off people in the bar?”

The siren nodded, though there was no shame in her agreement.

There must be change and unrest for chaos to occur, though we are not strictly restricted on what we can feed on. That’s why I can survive here.

She made no mention of others surviving but Adagio noted the “we” there, filing away the thought for later perusal.

“But you know that I don’t want this. If you can survive and feed with me working at the bar – why are you hindering me so? Why are you forcing me to fail?”

I am not in control.

Adagio blinked.

“Excuse me.”

You can move your body, speak, communicate, do. I cannot. Except through you and, even then, only to some extent. You do not know how fortunate you are.

“Well, forgive me for being so blunt about it, but you are kind of evil, you know,” Adagio said with a roll of her eyes, only resisting a toss of her hair, that felt both unnatural and natural at the same time, at the last moment. “This isn’t where you’re meant to live, if what you’ve told me is true and there’s not much I can do about you being inside me like this. Heck – you chose it!”

Adagio shook her head, slowing her breath, taking slower, deeper breaths to calm the pounding of her heart. The siren made it too easy to get worked up but she supposed that that was one of the things that she was best at.

“Look... We need to agree on some ground rules, find some middle ground. We need to make this work, otherwise, neither of us is going to have a good time and I’ll be damned if I know where either of us will end up.”

That sounded more like her, the old Knight, and she pushed on, buoyed up by her words.

“I am Adagio but I’m Knight too. I never wanted too much responsibility but half of me wants that now – like running the bar. It keeps me going, gives me something to focus on.”

Gives you people to control.

Adagio did not deny it. What was the point?

“But I can’t let go of the past either, who I was and what that was all about. I am me and you are part of me now too... I guess we’re both, like, a part of each other.”

Ah, there was Adagio’s voice again but her and Knight were interchangeable voices and personalities, blending together softly and smoothly into one being as time went by. She could not do anything about that and, at the bare minimum, Adagio could not say that she wanted to find a way to separate back out all the parts of her that had, somehow, become smooshed and crushed together into one hodgepodge of a person. It was as it was, in that regard, and being as she was naturally, right then, was just something that she took for granted, because it did not seem possible to change back to a man and she didn’t even think it was something that she wanted.

Maybe she should have. Maybe that was the right way to go about things. But she just didn’t think about it in that way and that was okay too. Very okay, in fact.

Let’s move on.

Of course, not a single thought was her own anymore with the siren living inside her, constantly in her head, inspecting and looking over every last aspect of her being. She needed more though, which was why they were talking.

“You take over sometimes though,” she said, acknowledging something that, perhaps, they would have done well to look at earlier. “You’re rude and short with people, speaking from my lips. You want to get everywhere in a hurry and you get frustrated when things don’t go your way, even when that’s me. But you’ve backed off in some cases too, haven’t you?”

If anything could have drawn the siren up short, that was it, hissing and shaking her head.

Certainly not! You would be a fool to think such!

Yet Adagio knew that that was different for she knew more about the siren too than she had ever known about another person in her life. There was so much to learn and know there, memories that did not belong to her, and an image of Donnie floated before her face, the siren hesitating then, something pulling inside.

“You may not care for him like I do, like I do now, but you’ve changed too, perhaps even more than me. A spirit like you could have surely just taken me over completely and controlled my body right from the get-go...and yet you didn’t.”

She let that hang there, lingering in the space between them that wasn’t even any space at all. The torrent of thoughts and confusing emotion, whipping and whirling, had to be addressed sometime but not everything could possibly be laid bare in a single night, not allowing them to come to terms with everything at once. That was okay too but there was still more that they would have to discuss as Adagio took a breath, pulling out one last arrow from her quiver. Yet her quiver, unlike the siren’s, was not one from which she would ever harm another being from.

“Is it so bad to feel for others, to empathise with them?” She said more gently, knowing that that was something that she would have to leave out there for the siren to mull over, to consider over a longer period of time. “Isn’t it...nicer to be adored for who you are? People can look at you, look at us, like they love us too, not just with anger and worry and fear. There is more to emotion than what you have fed on and maybe you could even take something more positive to sustain yourself, if you tried.”

The siren shuddered within her but had no answer to that, yet it was not something that Adagio was going to be able to work through in one sitting with her. The fact that she was not snarling and snapping and hurling her words back at Adagio was, at least, something that could have been considered a positive. Sometimes that was all she could hope for in the tiniest of wins.

“Look, this is probably as difficult for you as it is for me. But if we’re going to live together, like this, we need to live together too. This isn’t easy. It isn’t simple.”

It was never meant to be.

“Exactly. At least we can agree on that, right?”

Adagio gave a thin, watery smile and hoped the siren would reply in kind, though was afraid to look too deeply into that. Exhaustion clawed at her, dragging her down, the quiet of her apartment seeping through the cracks in her defences. Knight may have been strong in some regards but she was softer in his current life, the hard edges leaving gaps in her defences into which people like Donnie had wormed deep. There was more to uncover and yet standing on the very edge of that precipice was something that she needed to come to in her own time, fear twisting through her of what more lay in wait that she did not even know existed.

But Donnie would be waiting for her the next day, even though she had not been all that keen on a day off work when there was still so much left to do there. The bar was busy and her life was busier, but the Knight in her knew that she had to take some time, however little it was, to relax and recharge, though she wished that the day out with Donnie would be a little less about discussing strategies after the disastrous days that had preceded it and a little more about...well...

She swallowed hard, shoving the thought away, and the siren snickered.

I could show you how to win him over, to twist him around your finger... But you won’t, will you?

Adagio nodded and the siren sighed.

So, I see. But that is your way of doing things and not mine. Maybe you can learn a little more from me than you think.

“And you can learn from me too.”

Adagio left that as a sense of finality ringing in the air between them, though there was loudness in the siren’s silence, leaving them much to consider. Yet quiet time begged her attention, the cookbook that she’d brought home from work (something old that a co-worker had said they didn’t need any more) and a recipe that, one day, she thought she might just be able to share with Donnie, to see if it was something that he could like.

She didn’t even know if he liked cakes. She’d have to suggest picking something sweet up from a bakery when they were “hanging out”, be a little on the sly side and take him there, just to see what he went for. Was he a savoury or a sweet kind of guy? It may have been easier to be direct, her natural inclination, but, oh...she couldn’t do that!

That’s more like it.

Adagio smiled. Was that the kind of manipulation that the siren meant? Finding out what someone liked so that she could surprise them with it later?

“Not so bad.”

Not so bad at all...

She was hardly sure that she could get on board with what the siren was offering but she took a deep breath, all the same, setting up the cookbook and flipping the old, worn pages to a simple sponge cake. It was the best thing to start with and the quiet and the peace that she sought could be found in the mixing of batter even at such an hour, the siren lifting her head curiously as if she had never made a cake too and wanted to see just how it was done.

I haven’t.

“I figured.”

Yet that was still something that they could learn together, the siren murmuring suggestions even though some of the ingredients that she had in mind for a “better” cake were simply not things that Adagio could find in their world. Still, it was a manner of lighter conversation after a long day of work (day shift: ugh) that was much needed, feeling quite as if there was a friend inside her at long last rather than an enemy. Maybe that was one way that they could be, even if it would turn out that that manner of the relationship too would have to be fostered and cared for, just like any other relationship. But maybe the rest of her life would be better for taking that on, if only she could find a way to make things work.

“So, I will allow you to fully control...the body,” Adagio said slowly, thickly, forcing the words out even though she knew they were the right ones to say, the cake shimmering before her as strained moisture pricked at her eyes. “Sometimes. You can take over, as long as you don’t do anything untoward. And I promise I shall not do anything untoward in turn to you.”

She felt the siren’s eyes glittering within her, snaking back and forth with a softer sort of hum, lulled to softness deep down inside.

Agreed.

Maybe it would work or maybe it wouldn’t but she had to try, had to work with the cards that had been dealt to her. Yet it wasn’t all down to her, Adagio thought as her hand tightened on the wooden mixing spoon, trembling as much as she tried to steady it.

They’d both have to find a way to make things work. It wasn’t all down to her.

But, right then and there, all they had to do was to bake a cake, the swirl of the spoon hypnotic as she mixed in flour, beat in eggs. Even the siren was quiet.

Sometimes that was all things had to be.

Part Five

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Taking on a New Life
Part Five

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Adagio had her work cut out from her – both the part of her that was the warped version of Knight, the man she’d been, and the siren inside. The competition at the bar, which was, to be fair, rather toxic in how it had been presented and played out to the staff there, was not the sanest of things and hardly something that anyone wanted to delve into, regardless of the rewards. There was a pressure and a strain to having the competitive aspect of it loom over them, hanging over their heads, pushing and bearing down constantly, perhaps something that the owner had not considered to begin with.

Maybe he had. Adagio was not about to talk him out of it when she was neck and neck with Kayleigh, a seasoned bartender who had been there and done that, seen it all, for the winning spot. She had Donnie, of course, to work with and support her, though it was the siren, surprisingly, that stepped up to the plate, using her skills in a way that shocked both of them. Of course, the siren would never have admitted that, however.

Adagio took a back seat to the siren some nights, fascinated by her way of going. When she wasn’t trying to trip Adagio up and make her fail she was a formidable creature to behold. Giving up command of her body was strange at first, watching things happen as the siren took control, pouring drinks and singing her heart out, but it gave her a break from controlling two beings rather than just the one that she was truly used to. She saw through her own eyes without feeling as if she had to lift a finger, much less an arm, though her body still gained the aches and pains of being on her feet for so many hours.

One of the bartenders who was new and absolutely no competition or threat to Adagio at all, Olive, was turning into a pretty good student under her teaching, though Adagio could not take credit for the smirk on her face as she slung her arm around the timid woman’s shoulders.

“I’ll teach you everything you need to know,” she proclaimed and bragged (quite a feat to do both at the same time) as the siren, letting her speak through her lips. “You’ll do well here but listen to me, alright, because I’m the one running this place!”

She blew hot and cold and the others working there, whether they were washing glasses, serving snacks or mixing drinks, didn’t know what to make of her, but the siren told Adagio that that was a good thing. It was good to keep people guessing, never entirely sure of where they stood. If she was erratic, jumping all over the place even with swapping back and forth from the siren to the human Adagio and back again, they wouldn’t know what to think. That made them weak and vulnerable while she was left in prime position to swoop in and nail what she wanted: the top spot of the bar.

You’ll learn…

For once, Adagio hungered for it in a strange way. She didn’t understand, not yet, but she would, one day.

It was strange, very strange, but she could see more when she didn’t have to think about doing all of the time, opening up new routes and avenues to make money, more money than anyone else at the bar. There were little slacking notes, inefficiencies, and Adagio stomped them out with ruthless precision, chiming in with the siren when required, though the siren’s hands, when they were leading the way, were more dextrous and swift than Adagio could have ever hoped to be. It was her that learned to mix more cocktails than anyone else, quicker than anyone else, pushing things harder and faster, sweat beading on her forehead.

Adagio could not say just why the siren was trying to be better than anyone else, for she made no secret of the fact that she thought that everything that was being done then was pointless, at least to her. The siren did not benefit one bit from Adagio running the bar, except with, well, her life continuing as Adagio was able to continue sustaining them both, yet she pushed on, aching and yearning for it, for something that she kept hidden from Adagio even as they fell more and more in-step with one another’s thoughts.

“Adagio, you’re on form tonight!”

Donnie laughed, his cheeks rosy with the heat of the night, though the summer did creep into the cloying darkness of the bar from time to time. The air conditioning was not the best in there, to say the least, though it did conk out from time to time too. That made the drinks flow more freely but it did also make clientele leave more quickly, a tentative balance that the two of them were still working on fine-tuning.

“Yeah!” She could not help but grin back, his uplifting mood intoxicating. “We’re killing it! There’s no way we can lose now.”

There was only so much that could be done in a single night, however, the night eventually coming to an end as the lights dimmed, the customers left into the sweltering heat of the night. It clung to the lines of city streets as if it was striving to smoke them out, snarling and hissing a draconic head down and through the tarmac, steaming from below to dry them up until they were nothing more than bones.

Hey, Adagio thought, shaking off the rather macabre image. Cut it out.

That had been the siren taking over her thoughts a little too much, as descriptive as things could be, Adagio taking back control to lock up for the night, the staff collecting their tips.

“You’re taking in too much.”

That was Kayleigh. Of course, it was Kayleigh. Adagio raised an eyebrow and shook her head, rocking back on her heels. The siren itched to take charge.

Let me do it. I’ll put her in her place.

Not now.

The siren grumbled but simmered down obligingly, knowing that it may have put them in a bad spot. And the things that they did could put them in a bad spot if the siren was allowed to push on, needing to be drawn back and nudged into line too from time to time.

“What was that?”

Adagio, however, was not that much better as her hip cocked out, scoffing lightly.

“You do know that this is a competition, right?”

She spoke slowly as if Kayleigh had not realised that, was so stupid that she could not have gotten that far in her mind, and the woman she addressed sucked in a short, sharp breath.

“You... What...”

“What, cat got your tongue, dearie?” A younger Adagio may have stuck out her tongue, childish glee pushing forward to the forefront of her mind. “You know what this is all about and to say that I’m taking in too much, well... You sound jealous. Are you jealous?”

It was, perhaps, only the smile on her face the whole time that softened her words, Kayleigh backing down, although there was a frown on her face.

“You’ve changed, Adagio,” she muttered, though she didn’t even know what she was saying. “You’ve changed... Good luck here. I don’t need this. You know I can get work anywhere I want in this city, don’t you? This whole competition thing… It’s madness. So, good luck to you and let us leave it at that. This is crazy. You’re going to need it.”

But Adagio didn’t think that she needed luck, even though the siren asked her internally whether she was glad to make one of her staff members quit, taking a cruel joy in watching Kayleigh stalk out the door with her nose in the air.

Does she really think she’ll get work elsewhere? The siren tossed her head scornfully. No… No, I know ones like that. But to make her quit, why… That’s something indeed from you.

What? No! Adagio shook her head, Donnie shooting her a questioning glance. No, I didn’t make her quit, she took her tips, she looked at the schedule. I didn’t make her do anything. I can’t make anyone do anything.

The siren rolled her eyes.

Keep telling yourself that.

Yet Adagio could not admit just how far the competition had pushed her, the end in sight as she leaned hungrily into it, a racehorse chomping at the bit for the final stretch of the race, that last furlong. It had to come even though she was shorter and sharper, less forgiving of mistakes, yet she knew as she lay in bed that night with thoughts of Donnie in mind, how his fingers had brushed hers earlier that evening, that there were other things that warmed and softened her in equal measures.

He’s a good sort.

Adagio frowned, though her lips twitched as if she didn’t know whether to smirk or not, amusement bubbling through.

Really? She said to the siren. It’s strange to hear you say that, considering that you didn’t even like him at first. What’s changed there?

The siren did not want to tell her, which was not surprising in the least, grumbling and practically squirming, the flick of her tail something that even Adagio could feel. The hippocampus-type siren floated in the space that she occupied, a strange sort of tank-like sensation residing within Adagio. When the siren crossed the bounds of that, she would be the one in control, but on either side of the tank they could interact with neither of them truly taking over control of Adagio’s body at that time.

He’s interesting, the siren said at last, tossing her head with a lofty flick. Don’t you think that interesting things are so much more...interesting?

Adagio suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Sometimes she really did talk gibberish but they didn’t have to think in the same ways, not always.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

You know I don’t sleep.

Yet such conversation was not needed as Adagio drifted off, the siren resting in her own way also, though the bar gig would continue night after night, even pushing the bounds on her scheduled days off. It was harder to push away the siren’s natural attitude when she was always there, pushing at the back of her mind, egging her on to be snappier, shorter, bossier, to get her way.

She was coarse, just like the way that she had been when she had just become Adagio, her personality shifting without her consent. Those had been more difficult times and, indeed, she had lost her job before she’d gotten a handle on it, thought letting the siren in to pilot things had problems there too. Things there...well...they weren’t all entirely left under Adagio’s control.

Adagio, however, had to push back against it, her lips fixed into a hard line that was not conducive to being a good waitress or bartender or even running the bar, though there was a little leeway when it came to nights where she was not running it. But those were harder still to bear as she snapped and hip-checked another bartender out of the way, a scowl twisting her lips.

“Move! Honestly! How slow can you be?”

The other woman, another new lady, Louise, who had started not all that long ago, stuttered and dashed for the back room, tears on her cheeks, and, too late, Adagio realised that she had let the siren’s influence push through one again. She didn’t have the grit of Olive or even Kayleigh, even bearing in mind that her biggest competition had thrown the towel in, quite literally. Damn it. She’d have to fix that later for the sake of building the relationships she needed to make the place a success, to get her name where it needed to be, but she hardly remembered how she was supposed to behave or how she wanted to behave when there were so many other things swirling around her head, each one clamouring for dominance.

Still, it could be tempered into strong confidence, the sort of woman who got things done, even if she was not always liked for it. She knew how to act to get people to like her and she laid that on thick, tips slipped into her work apron even though they were meant to go into the communal post. Of course, Adagio accepted them, happy to take everything that she was given, stocking it up to spend on herself and, well, maybe a little on Donnie too. The siren wondered what the point of the money was but she just couldn’t get her head around the importance of it.

Does it give you power?

Adagio mused over that, tilting her head from one side to the other. How did one explain something like that to a siren?

Sometimes.

The siren licked her lips, eyes gleaming, the rush of the bar pounding around.

I like power.

Adagio wasn’t sure what power the siren wanted but maybe it was something that she could come to in time. The siren was, after all, more amenable to things when Donnie was around and he did like to come to the bar too even on days when he was not actively helping her out there. He wrote and invited her on stage to perform too, though that was something that the other bartenders didn’t like, the others that were vying for a management position above supervisor. To run and own the bar, at least for a while, well... It would be a massive boost in the industry, even though they could not hope to stay at the bar forever when the owner would eventually return, setting them up for anything that they wanted to go on to do.

It would set Adagio up nicely, however she wished. And it was that which she wanted above all else, knowing that there was a way to keep things going in life, her new life. There were so many things behind her that, truly, she had had no choice but to leave behind, the job and the social circle that simply would not have been able to understand her as Adagio instead of Knight. Even Donnie did not realise that she was Knight, the man that he’d known so long back, though she wasn’t even sure whether that was something that needed to come to light at any point. Maybe she could keep it a secret forever. Maybe she wouldn’t be around Donnie forever.

However, the siren didn’t want to see Donnie slip from her life so easily, nudging her in the back of her mind even while she was in the bar.

You should ask him out again. Go for coffee. That’s that thing that you like to drink here, right?

Adagio raised her eyebrow, a glass in each hand. It was hard to keep up a conversation in the bar, let alone a second one in her head with the siren.

You being nice? Why would you suggest that?

Maybe just be quiet and go for coffee with him.

But Adagio pressed the issue.

Why? What are you trying to get out of it?

For once, however, the Adagio didn’t have an answer for her, nodding as someone else asked her a question and hustling on.

“There you go, lads, drink ‘em up!”

She snapped her fingers and flashed the patrons a smile and they were putty in her hands, though there was still the issue of the crying bartender to deal with. She had to fix that, pushing for her grumbling interior, the side of her that said that she was not doing anything at all that was wrong, that it was everyone else’s problem and not hers. The parts of the siren’s personality that she had sought to overcome leered ominously, dragging their way to the surface even as she wrestled with them, trying to work out the person that she wanted to be through it all.

Another day, a call came through that was turning out to be so very common.

“Yes, this is Adagio.”

She smiled, enjoying the attention even though it was yet another option that she would have to turn down. They all wanted her, so much attention and sustenance coming her way, wanting her to sing for them. Maybe singing alone would be a more interesting gig but it was a flightier one, one that was changeable, and, frankly, that was not something that either Adagio or the siren wanted at that moment in time.

“No, no, I’m afraid I can’t at this time.”

She still smiled though because she liked the thought that everyone who was anyone wanted her, craved her, wanted to see her up on stage to the exclusion of everyone else in the world. It could get too much, however, and her lips turned down as the person on the other end of the line pushed the issue, the siren snarling and snapping, showing her fangs.

“No, I said I wouldn’t do it! And for that rate, really – what do you take me for?”

Adagio slammed the phone down with a growl, crossing her arms, the siren swirling and circling inside her.

They all want to use you, she hissed. Don’t let them. Filthy humans.

Don’t forget that I’m one of them too, Adagio shot back. I have to fit in here, you’re just a passenger coming along with me.

Of course, she didn’t really mean that, not after they had come to an accord, but the shift in their relationship had brought fresh difficulties along with it, twisting and turning within her like a coiling serpent readying itself to strike. A siren was far more potent, however, than a serpent and she hunkered down, hissing and writhing.

You may be one of them but we are one and the same here. You will never be fully and only a human ever again.

Things settled, if only a little, when the owner returned to oversee what he could, though his injuries were still apparent and Adagio was less than quietly hopeful (with Donnie, of course) that he would want to take a step back even after he was better, fully. That was not something that she could rely on, however, wanting to see how things panned out and still wanting to ensure that she had everything set up as she liked it.

But you can have the whole bar too...

Oh, but the siren did so tempt her, luring her into a false sense of comfort, whispering to her all that could be hers if she only managed to rise to the top. The competition came to an end, which was both a trial and a burden, considering all the stress that it had put her under, even if it had gotten them to work together a little better. There were still things to be worked out, both of them testing the boundaries and the limits of one another, though the more they did the better an agreement they came to, seeing just where they stood.

They needed to push back to learn where the lines were, her new personality forming more and more, though it still was not very much at all a stable entity. The normality of routine and getting days off again once management resumed, though lightly as they were all well-versed in what needed to be done in which place at the bar by then, helped a little. The siren settled, taking over more frequently while Adagio could trust her to hold back the bossiness to just a level where she would not get fired. She’d even made up with the bartender that she had made cry a while back, though that relationship was, understandably, tentative at best. She couldn’t blame her for that but she would be her best self in that regard either way.

“Do you want to come out to the dojo with me this evening?”

Adagio blinked, taking the phone away from her face, looking at it, and then putting it back to her ear.

“What do you mean?”

Vaguely, she was aware of what a dojo was and something stirred in her, fuelled on by the siren.

Yes, yes, go with him!

You’re obsessed.

Look who’s talking.

Yet their banter was more light-hearted still than it had been before, a smirk on one’s lips shared with the other. They knew it was a joke, they knew they both liked Donnie. The real question there was whether or not Donnie knew that they liked Donnie, though that was not something that had come up as yet. It was not something that Adagio was even all that sure that she wanted to come up, shaking her head even as Donnie rocked back on his heels.

“Oh... You don’t want to come?”

“No! I mean yes! Yes, I want to come!”

She fumbled with her words, too flustered to get everything out in the right order, a grin that she was glad he could not see stretching from ear to ear.

You like him.

Adagio leaned against the wall, phone cradled to her ear, making the arrangements. Her hips even swung back and forth gently. One would have said that she was completely and utterly infatuated.

You do too.

And, so, the deal was set and she had a very interesting outfit to put together for a meet-up that was not a date but kind of a date, things taking a very interesting turn.

Wait, what is a dojo?

It was the siren’s confusion that came through, her emotions mixed and turning upside-down, inside-out, swirling back and forth. She’d wanted to spend time with Donnie but to go to a dojo, something where there would be fighting? Why would she ever need to know anything at all about that?

It’ll be fun and you get to spend time with Donnie too. I’ll even let you take control for a bit, if you want to have a go.

The siren snorted.

You should have gone out for dinner or a movie or something, those things you do. I don’t understand them but what I do understand is that we won’t have him all to ourselves up there.

She frowned and shook her head, though lying out outfit after outfit on her bed didn’t let her see what she needed to wear to such a thing. Was there something appropriate for a dojo even in her closet? Should she go shopping?

It’ll be fine.

Oh, even I know you don’t say that except when it’s not fine.

But that was where the siren was wrong and still had so very much to learn about humanity and how people were, even though she had already gotten more than her fair share of a crash course from Adagio or Knight, depending on how one wanted to look at the person inside the body. Adagio sighed. Sometimes it felt quite as if there were too many minds and personalities within her single mind, though none of that made sense.

The siren remained sceptical as they sat on the edge of a chair at the edge of the dojo floor. Donnie introduced them to a few people, the names slipping by her notice, and asked too if they wanted to join in, to learn a bit, but even he did not realise that he was speaking with one. Adagio and the siren swapped control, Adagio trying to make up for, in effect, forcing the siren to come to the dojo when it was clearly not something that she was interested in at all.

Just watching?

Just watching, Adagio confirmed, softening her tone. This can be useful. I... I used to be good at a type of fighting, I guess you could say. But I don’t know anything about this. I may need to learn something like this, if not this.

The siren was worried, twisting back and forth as Donnie sparred, Adagio’s eyes following the lines of his body, how he moved, with the mindset of someone wondering how it all blended together. It was hard to see as he could have been said to be more comfortable with technology and, to a small degree, weaponry, though that was part of a past life and, frankly, not one that she wanted to at all return to. She wasn’t even sure if she would have the muscle memory left for it.

We have our voice, why would we need to do this?

Adagio suppressed the urge to roll her eyes but the siren felt it all the same. She just had to be a little more patient with her.

Having some self-defence is good for people like us, people like me. It makes it more difficult for people to take advantage of us. For some women, it can make us more formidable even by knowing only a little.

The siren was not convinced, though there was still some part of her that enjoyed watching Donnie, the two of them figuratively sitting side by side as they relaxed into it. It was soothing to not be rushing around off their feet and Adagio murmured to the siren, pointing out a few moves that she knew and looking up some others on her phone for the siren, explaining what she could. Of course, what she knew was limited but there were at least a few things that she could pass on, though none of it perked the interest of the siren.

Donnie smiled and asked her about the dojo afterwards, though she said something about it being late and needing to get home, as much as the siren wanted to stay. She just wanted to look, to admire, to see what there was to see in one who had helped her grow her power.

That power was what worried Adagio, however, as she walked home that night, head down against a light mist of rain, although the coolness of it was something to be appreciated after such a heady heat. It was something that crept into every nook and cranny of a place and didn’t allow one to cool off at all, though the siren, thankfully, did not feel temperature like the body of Adagio did. Whenever she was at all uncomfortable physically she was quick to retreat, relinquishing control of the body to Adagio even when she was in the middle of a step. It was a weird game too that they could play, tossing control back and forth and laughing, dancing from paving slab to slab where the sidewalk had not been laid over with tarmac.

The rain splashed, puddles glittering with the street lights, the lightness of walking alone so late at night clinging to her soul. It was what she needed, letting everything sink in after the dojo, the slick moves of Donnie and all that even the more advanced fighters too lingering in her mind.

Could I do that? She wondered, the siren listening in as she always was.

It makes sense, in a way, to do it. I don’t think it’s something that I would have ever done or considered where I am from. But I’m never going back there, am I?

It was strange to hear that coming from the siren, though she was making an effort, which Adagio did too appreciate.

It’s only a suggestion, Adagio said back, knowing that the siren had seen her thoughts anyway, how she had wondered whether she could wear the crisp, clean uniform herself and take the place of some of the fighters. If anything happens to our voice, my voice, I’ll need something to fall back on. And just think about how demanding all these other people are being, trying to drag us away from our bar.

The siren smirked inwardly, a tease tickling at the back of Adagio’s mind.

Oh, so you want the bar now? And I thought you’d given up on that.

Of course, she hadn’t. But that was by the by as Adagio gently turned her mind and that of the siren’s back to things that could or could not come to be. She had spent so long at the bar, working and working, she needed to do some things too. That, at least, the siren agreed with whole-heartedly, needing more to entertain her than the same old grind day in and day out. Maybe that was why she’d been imprisoned in the sword from the beginning, though not even the siren remembered what had happened back there.

Maybe the knowledge of that would come in time, but she did not know, could not know. There was still more to be uncovered and they would have to see.

How determined do you think those other bars and events are going to be about getting you to sing for them? I hope you’re not going to do it.

Adagio hesitated, a pool of street lighting falling over her.

It may be more money but I don’t want to be pulled every which way either. I want to focus on this and...well...Donnie too. Other things. Things that don’t have me aching every night. I know you feel it too and we can’t keep that up forever.

For the first time, a rise of sympathy tingled forth from the siren’s mind. She knew, oh, she did, though she did not remember why she understood that. The knowledge of what burnout was came from another life or another time, though the word and the sensation of it was all that came to the surface.

People can be aggressive here, Adagio thought with a sigh. It pays to be careful and I don’t want to be caught off-guard, to be honest. It doesn’t make sense for anyone to come after me but do you ever feel...

...Uneasy?

The siren finished her sentence for her. It was odd, leaving a twisting, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, though it was not something that she could honestly put her finger on. It was gone as soon as she paid attention to it, slithering out of reach, leaving a feeling of warmth and companionship, knowing even then that she was not alone, not with the siren in her mind at all times.

They could play things back and forth, enjoying the company and knowing that they would always find a way through. There was singing but there was something more still to the power of her voice that Adagio was yet to uncover, the siren holding that secret close, one of the thoughts that she had not yet allowed into the grace of her host’s mind. Yet she was not a host, the two of them living inside one body and one head, sharing a form and still needing to learn how to live together.

You know... I’m kind of glad you’re here.

The siren started, drawn up short.

What do you mean?

You set me straight and have made me do things that, otherwise, I would never have done or tried for myself. You’re like an odd friend inside my head, although one that I can never get away from.

She made sure to say that teasingly just so the siren did not take it seriously – did they even have that kind of humour where she came from? It didn’t make sense but, of course, not everything had to make sense, not when the siren’s chuckle reached her mind, wrapping around her mind and curling in deep.

The same... If one succeeded, they both succeeded. And that was all that they needed with the lure of a new hobby ahead of them.

Put it this way, Adagio said, a little of the siren’s wickedness leaking in. If we try this, it’ll give us more...hm... More to make others bend to our will, to do what we want. I know you like that and, really, there are times when there is no harm there.

The siren smiled back, fluttering and flickering back and forth in her mind.

Agreed... But maybe a little more than necessary too?

In the dead of the night, nearly home, Adagio grinned.

Maybe.

On that count, they would have to see.

Part Six

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Six

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Adagio sighed, leaning over the bar as she cleaned the safe spot for what had to have been the umpteenth time. It needed to be cleaned, that much was fair, but the problem was that nothing that they used on that part of the bar seemed to lift the innate stickiness from the wood. Sometimes they gave up and placed mats and promotional paperwork over it, flyers to advertise what was happening in the bar the next weekend and the like, but it always came back to someone stubborn in the end.

The siren scoffed, flitting back and forth inside her. She even gave the impression, to the outer Adagio, that she’d turned a somersault in there, in the sanctity of her mind. Though it didn’t feel like much privacy to Adagio anymore when she was sharing both her mind and her body with someone who thought that they deserved the rights to the whole thing. Still, they had come to an agreement in the end, however tentative it was. A relationship, after all, could be built on and that was all the two of them could hope for going forward.

“I’m waiting.”

She spoke out loud, though quietly, addressing the siren, even as she scoffed again with a flip of her fins.

If you wait any longer, you shall turn to stone.

Yet the time for waiting was done as Mick, the manager that she had sought to replace, called everyone up to the stage, the entire staff available at midday on a Monday: completely unheard of. But they were there for a special reason and Adagio smirked, tossing her hair back over her shoulder in a blossom of ginger-orange curls.

“And I thought you were going to announce everything earlier, Mick!”

She charmed him, laying her hand on his arm, the siren taking control for a moment to exert a little more influence over the manager who faltered before them.

“I...uh, yes, Adagio, but there were last-minute details to finalise.”

To their joint surprise, he shook her off, Adagio left floundering a little in his wake, turning one way and then the other and trying to appear as if she was adjusting her clothes, fluffing up her hair.

What’s his problem?

Adagio frowned.

I don’t know. I thought that would work.

It should have worked.

Yet not all mortals were easily swayed by the wiles of a siren as he tapped the microphone and cleared his throat, the squeal of the microphone turning on with him speaking a little too close echoing through the bar.

“Right... That’s that then. Thank you all for your participation but it’s now time to announce who will step up to replace me, after I finish out the month. You will have a share in the bar, of course, and full running rights while our head, the owner, remains overseeing the greater operations. But as a partner in the bar, you have earned your place here. And I’m very pleased to announce that that person is...”

He paused, dragging out the suspense as the crowd of waiters and waitresses, the bartenders too, groaned.

“...Sandra! It’s a pleasure to have you here and even more so to have you on board! Come on up here!”

Adagio blinked. That wasn’t her name. Without thinking, her hands balled up into fists, tipping forward, a hiss ripping from her lips, though the polite clapping and diplomatic cheers of the rest, thankfully, drowned it out. Even the siren rose within her, striving to hold her back when she was at risk of blowing their cover, the nice little nook of a bar that they had carved out for themselves.

Stop it! It’s not worth it!

I thought you wanted me to kick up a fuss! That’s my job!

Not this time it’s not.

That much was true as the others filtered out, Adagio trailing after them, adrift and uncertain, no longer certain where she was. She should have flounced out ahead of them all, leading the way, though the anger inside her was not only her own but one born of jealousy, twisting and seething like a sea serpent or maybe even the hippocampus form of the siren herself within her gut. It was a darker, more insidious kind of anger and the words that played out over and over again before her eyes flirted like the hand of a lover with only promises to break.

Revenge. Yes, there was a sick, curling part of her that wanted revenge, though that had to be more a part of the siren than her, Adagio leaning into it. But what did it matter where the feeling had come from, in the end, only that she took it for what it was? She had been wronged and it was time to –”

“Adagio, do you have a minute?”

She followed Mick into the back room, the office, as if she had any choice in the matter, though her feelings were plastered all over her face for all to see.

“What the hell is all this about?” She hissed, slamming her fist into the palm of her opposite hand. “I made the most money! Everyone loves me! This is absolute insanity to hire her over me – to take her on as a partner, not me!”

Mick held up his hands, though he was seasoned and her anger was nothing new to him.

“Adagio, let me explain.”

“Oh, please do. I love hearing how little my work is appreciated here!”

Even the siren flinched.

Ouch.

Shut up.

“You lost because of your additional help, Adagio. That was never part of the deal.”

She stiffened, shoulder blades pushing back.

“What? Donnie? He’s been here for weeks! Just why didn’t you tell me that to begin with? And he’s been a great draw too to see what the customers here like! They come to listen to him and be entertained by him almost as much as me! Do you think he’s going to keep coming here if I’m not here.”

Mick raised an eyebrow.

“If you’d like to keep working here, you’re welcome, but do not throw threats around, Adagio. I am still your employer.”

The siren hissed.

I can take him. He shouldn’t speak to us that way. Crude, old man...

Adagio smiled. It was good to have someone on her side: she needed that. But she had to be present in the moment even as Mick droned on and on, talking about how it was about managing rather than doing anything. She barely even noted his commandment of her, though the siren latched onto that.

See, it’s not that important. You will come through this.

Even the siren was more encouraging than her and Adagio sighed, running her fingers back through her hair. It needed washing. It seemed more important than anything else that was going on.

“You wouldn’t like being in the office most of the time anyway, Adagio,” he said to her, drawing her back to reality and not in her mind with the siren. “You wouldn’t like being stuck back here, managing and doing the background work, while the others are out on the floor?”

She sighed. It was true. But it still dashed the step-up for her that she wanted. The siren did not seem to understand the gravity of it, why her anger rose so quickly, though it was not as if she was not keen to feed it, to let it simmer and grow.

“Whatever, Mick. I’ll get over it, you’re right, I’m sure.”

For what she knew was that the place, truly, was hers even if she did not have the keys in her hand. The siren flitted back and forth as she left, trying to talk to her, but Adagio was in too much of a foul mood to let her in, blocking the door and shutting her out so that there was no conversation or life to be had there. The two of them may have co-existed but it was fragile even from the human side of the equation. Adagio still could not let go, quite rightly, that she had been a man before the siren had changed her.

She calmed a little at home, dressing in loose, comfortable clothes, adjusting her balance and stance, practising her skills. Well, what skills she had gained already to join Donnie’s dojo, a mix of martial arts that was versatile when it came to self-defence but disciplined in a way that she could not quite explain why it appealed to her.

It has a pattern.

Adagio frowned, stumbling out of a kick.

What are you on about?

The siren readied herself, giving Adagio the impression that she was taking a big breath, gearing up for more.

The patterns in the fighting. When you’re training, going through drills. It’s like the patterns of the water, the flow coming together in current after current.

Adagio rubbed her chin, sitting down to stretch out. That was enough of the hard work for the night: flexibility had to be taken into account too.

I see what you mean there... It is kind of soothing.

It’s nice that it reminds me of the water too. I fought, in times gone by, but we sirens looked to attack with our voices and our influences more than our teeth and fins. It was crude and uncouth to battle like that when we could be far more subtle in waging war, driving chaos. It was all we fed on.

Adagio smiled.

That sounds like a lot of hard work though.

The siren nodded, turning in a circle, the tail of her hippocampus form seeming to chase her through a substance that was neither water nor air where she held herself within Adagio’s mind.

Indeed... But you have an exam to train for.

Why are you trying to get me to practise for it? It’s not like you to be so...so... Adagio floundered, searching for the right word. Supportive? Are you actually getting to like me after all this time?

Of course, the siren snorted and scoffed at that, turning her tail on the human who she shared a body and a life with.

Maybe only a little. And you toss and turn all night when you’re stressed. That’s uncomfortable for me, so I’d much rather you slept like a log than grumbled about things you can’t control all night.

Adagio smiled.

Sure thing.

They rested but Adagio slept a little more soundly that night, knowing that someone was rooting for her. Maybe it was not so bad, after all, that the siren had come into her life.

The next day loomed bright with the entrance exam and a day off work to take care of it. It was not much of an exam, really, but more of an assessment of the skills of new trainees so that they could be sent to the correct classes and given the appropriate belt, so she didn’t really have anything to stress about there. It was not something that was any kind of matter of life or death but something that she had to go through before an audience of friends, family and those who simply wanted to watch what was going on for the fun of it. The dojo was always open to spectators, holding an open door policy that she had taken advantage of, of course, when coming with Donnie before.

It had both good and bad sides.

Dressed in her dojo kit, the white “robes” that came in leggings and a loose top, tied with a like-coloured belt for practice, she paused before the mirror only long enough to ensure she was appropriately dressed.

You don’t have to look pretty for this one.

Adagio dawdled, toying with a stray orange curl.

I know... But why go out plain when I could make a statement?

The curl of hair was played across her forehead as she took a moment, applying very light, very natural make-up – just enough to bring out her eyes. It would stand up to sweat but, frankly, she didn’t expect to he exerting herself there.

Donnie met her at the dojo, a smile on his gentle lips as always. Her heart turned over.

At least he’s something nice to look at.

How can you say that when Donnie’s not even of your own kind?

The siren only smirked and waved a fin at her, though their relationship was lighter than usual. The dojo was a break and a distraction from the bar, though the siren did not understand why she did not exert her influence more freely to simply control them. There could be chaos, nightmares, eve the destruction of professional and personal relationships, if she chose – and the siren could feed on it all, drinking it all down until she was plump and full.

With Adagio, however, she had had to learn to settle with the hunger, lingering in the background of her mind as she watched, a voyeur to the life happening before her. She could help but things with Adagio were but a passing interest to the life she had led before she had become trapped, something that she still had to come to grips with in some way. The kicks and punches were all well and good, but where were the spins, the lure of vocalisation, the singing that could draw all into her clutches?

The siren shook herself off. Adagio wasn’t like that. But that did not mean that they could not work together. At least things kept her interested.

Being that she had been there for some time before the opening entrance exams, Adagio was treated to a session with the dojo master beforehand, his eyes dark and kind, though the wisdom of his years was shown in the lines of his face.

“Change your stance, take more weight onto your right leg...and lean into it, right there.”

Adagio frowned, her forehead tightening even if it did not draw into lines. It was hard and she did feel a light rise of sweat growing: damn it. She could only hope that no one would notice it on her.

Why does it matter? The siren interjected. I thought this was about defence, physical activity. Though it should really be about attacking...

Adagio shook her head.

We don’t do that here. Our world is not like that...though we have armies, the military. Adagio swallowed hard. That was where she had been, once. Once. It seemed a long time ago. Not everyone agrees with it but the idea behind it is that everything is self-defence, not going off out to attack anyone. Practising like this is merely practise, even in competitions.

She felt the siren’s interest perked a little more.

More competitions... You humans are strange, strange creatures.

But anything more that was entertaining would always be a benefit to the siren.

The master ran her through sets of exercises to allow her a little more stretch and flexibility in her muscles: tiny things that would give her an edge in the exam. The stands, set against one wall of the practice area, were half-full, though there were some old faces in there that she recognised, as if from a life that, in itself, had been lived in a dream. Adagio grunted, the master connecting with her, her side throbbing.

“Adagio! Focus!”

He was right, of course. There were more important things at play other than her past, yet no one else but her could ever understand just how it was to have another person inside her, a voice inside her head that was not her and would never go away.

I can be quieter.

Adagio rolled her eyes.

As if that would last for long. Anyway, I’d miss you too much.

That was almost a kindness between the two of them but the siren’s influence seeped into her, softly and slowly. If Adagio had not already known just how it felt, she would not have understood what was happening, why she felt stronger as she faced off against first the master and then another student, so that he could observe from a little bit more of a distance. There were things that one could see from stepping back that one could not see up close, but her blows raining down on him were infused with the muscle memory she had learned along with the swiftness of the siren.

Her military background helped her too with her reactions, locking into the moment as if she was in the thick of battle even though, to be fair, she had never been in anything too intense during her time of service. It had been something that she’d had to go through, however, and even with her new, female body, she did not forget her training, everything locked in as she folded away from a kick of the master’s like a reed bending in the wind.

Yes!

Even the siren was cheering for her: perhaps the most surprising thing of all. Donnie was there, clapping politely along, though she liked to think that he was encouraging her so much because he wanted her to be there, because he wanted to spend more time for her. She would have taken any excuse, right then and there, to spend time with him and she wanted the same from him, tuning out the siren but taking all the help she had to offer. All the siren gave her came from curiosity and interest but she liked to think that she was on her side too.

Maybe she needed that. Maybe Adagio needed that more than she had ever needed it ever before.

The master finished sparring with her and it was quite telling even as she backed away, not believing that it was over. How long at it been? Her muscles felt warm and ready, though not sore as she expected them to. She’d barely even touched the master: she probably could not expect to at a time when he was angling away from her, slipping from her strikes like water between rocks in the riverbed.

The final test against a student followed straightaway afterwards and she jolted upright to see that she was not up against another fresh-faced applicant but the man that she had been spending oh so very much time with lately already.

“Hello, Adagio,” he said with a grin, bowing as if he had never met her before. “Give me your best shot!”

It was all in good fun, of course, and yet she could not help but lean into it a little harder, all for those little touches and brushes of contact with Donnie. It was a distraction and some kind of motivation both at the same time. She wanted to get in closer but that rendered her vulnerable to his strikes – and, oh, he was quick. Quick enough to get by her military training, the siren hissing rising to the challenge.

Left!

Adagio’s muscles jerked, taking her that way even without the active consent of her mind. The siren was in control and she knew what to do, dodging, even managing to throw in a flip that seemed to come from a hippocampus’ tail rather than her legs. Everything that the siren had came in a raw, unrefined fashion but she had to push on, swinging, chopping, bringing her leg down in a move that no one had ever shown her but just felt natural.

Donnie frowned and her heart surged. She was a challenge for him! That was good, that was very good... That was everything that she needed it to be and more, everything that she wanted to push into to see herself through. Her muscles thrummed and throbbed with a strength and energy that she had never felt before. It was fresh and it was new and it invigorated her through and through, everything that she needed and more as a growl that she had never made previously ripped itself from her throat.

For the bar. For everything that she had lost. For everything that had changed in her life. Every moment boiled down to that single exam in the dojo, everything that she had thrown out there as Donnie met her, blocked her, taking a few blows of his own all the while. He had to strike back, connecting with her, eyes wide at her fury but he matched her with his own fervour and ferocity, though his was tamed and disciplined, coming from the heart of the dojo itself and all the training that he had done there.

Some things, after all, took time. Adagio panted, her lips dry, but she didn’t have a moment in which to sweep her tongue over them for a touch of moisture. No, she had to keep going, no matter how her muscles began to ache, a strange sort of pain as blood roared between her ears. The siren was in control as she took a back seat, the flat of her hand whipping out towards Donnie, his expression stark as he knew that he could not block her in time.

“Enough!”

Panting and heaving for breath, she’d pushed herself to her limit as she stood before the master, bowing respectfully. It was just as well that she’d been pulled back before things could escalate, though it would all have been within the rules of the dojo, despite neither Adagio nor the siren understanding, in full, the entirety of the strikes and blocks that they were performing.

Flowing from one to the other was exhausting, however, her shoulders rounding, stomach turning over. Maybe she should have eaten something more substantial before the exam but she had not been sure that she would keep food down.

“Master.”

He stood tall, arms folded over his chest.

“Excellent! You are good, almost a natural, though your movements... They are still stiff and unrefined. We can work on that.”

Adagio rolled her eyes mentally at the siren.

I knew that you should have let me take the lead.

I helped you get this far.

We’re not going to get into the school at this rate!

We? Since when were we in the school together?

“This belt is for you.”

She blinked at it, laid across her open palms before her eyes.

“That’s it? I’m in?”

Donnie clapped her on the shoulder hard enough to rock her sideways. She still was not as strong as him.

“Congratulations!”

“The counters were strong and you fight well, but you are at a place where you can train hard, looking for the fluidity of motion. Do you understand?”

Of course, she agreed with the dojo master, but it was hard to feel negatively about anything when she was so pleased to simply be in the position that she was. She was in and it gave her something new, a different direction in which to focus: something that would have been sorely needed for any human but even more so for a siren who tired swiftly of the same old thing, day in and day out. When she could not cause the unrest and chaos that she wanted, there had to be other things to occupy her. Still, she grew restless. Maybe the fighting, even if it was just practise, would help her in some way? Only time would tell.

The rest of the session was a blur and Adagio laughed as Donnie walked her home, stepping between white pools of street light, water glistening on the sidewalk. Cars sped by but they were none of their concern as Donnie and Adagio retreated to her home, the apartment that had already been her safe place for so many years. Something was different, that time, on inviting him in, though she liked having him in her space, welcoming him close even though she tended to keep more of a personal bubble elsewhere.

Dinner. She told herself, showering off hastily, though dubious about washing her hair at the same time, it would just take so long. It was just dinner. Between friends.

He’s interesting. You should do whatever it is that humans do when they don’t want to merely be friends.

Adagio winced.

Do sirens do that too?

Do what?

Get...together with someone else?

Yes, though we’re hardly as picky about it as you are. Maybe we have a smaller pool to draw from. There are not as many sirens in my world as there are humans in yours. I am unsure as to which is better, as yet.

That was a question that would have to be answered at another time, if it even needed to be answered at all, as she found a compromise between looking good and being casual: slim-fit jeans and a loose, flowing shirt. It was comfortable after working out and she certainly felt sore as she dragged herself back to the kitchen where Donnie was working away at enchiladas for the two of them.

“You look nice,” he said with a chuckle. “You make me feel underdressed here!”

It was all fine and good, however, as the siren retreated, allowing Adagio some semblance of privacy with Donnie. She would know all that had happened between them, of course, but it was moments like that that showed their respect for one another, though Adagio would surely owe the siren more control over the coming days and weeks to make up for everything at the bar and, of course, the dojo.

They talked and talked, though time passed swiftly, without them even noticing it. It was almost a non-event for Adagio to have him there on a social endeavour, for there was no more work to be done for the bar to push out the boat, to push on and on, trying to win. It was over. Donnie knew but, diplomatically, he had not mentioned it to her, for which she was grateful. It was like he knew her better than she knew herself, which would make sense, considering that she was still very much working out who she was as a woman, as Adagio.

“See you tomorrow, right?”

She said goodbye to him on the step at the front of the apartment complex, opening out onto the relatively busy street outside. Something hung between them in the damp air, laden with the promise of more rain, though it was not something that they could breathe life into as yet. Maybe it would never come to anything. But it was nice just as it was, exactly as it was. It didn’t need to be anything more than that as she smiled and waved him off, something tightening in her chest that she would, later, have to address.

It’s normal.

That was the siren, but, for once, she didn’t have an answer for her. That was okay too. Not all words had to be spoken out loud in an error of communication.

Left with her thoughts and the siren, Adagio sighed, glancing at the pile of dishes in the sink. Oh, those could wait until the morning as she opened the window for a breath of fresh air. The siren stirred, flitting up, pushing in, taking control while Adagio was too tired to honestly pilot her own body. At times like that, all she could say was that she was thankful to have the siren there.

What do you think about the dojo then? Adagio asked her, sleepily watching things grow tidy around her, under her own hands, though it was not through her own doing. You came in strongly... I didn’t expect that.

Oh! It is interesting, so very much so.

The relish and pride in the siren’s voice could not possibly be mistaken for anything else, which surprised Adagio, even though she was too tired to express it.

There’s a power and a precision to it, calming, soothing, even though everything’s happening so quickly. It takes you into a new way of feeling out this body. Everything is different to how it was before for me but it still reminds me of a good time, a better time.

The siren paused but whatever it was that she was thinking was tucked away where not even Adagio could pick it out of her own mind.

Anyway... Yes, yes, I shall continue assisting with this. I’ll take some sessions, maybe this “refinement” will not be so difficult for me to practise, once I understand the concept.

Adagio giggled.

So formal... You’ve got to loosen up at some point. So, we’re continuing with the dojo? Training? Practising?

The siren’s eyes glittered, though it was a feeling that Adagio got rather than something that she saw with her own eyes.

I think you’ve already made your mind up on whether you are going to continue with it or not, considering Donnie...

The siren let that hang in the air and Adagio raised an eyebrow. Was she teasing her? That was strange...very new. Adagio wasn’t sure whether she liked that or not.

But everything would be fine, luring on into the eve of the night, talking about the control and power, the force of the fight. There was a lot still to come and they both leaned eagerly into it, hoping to attain things that had never before crossed Adagio’s mind.

Being with the siren, even if it was unconventional, opened up so very many doors to the two of them that it occult have been a blessing even if it felt like a curse. Neither of them knew, though they were more than keen, in their own, separate ways, to find out.

There was a lot of work to be done but rest was to be had too as they collapsed into bed, imagining all that would come to pass, designed by their own hands. They could have been two separate beings again, though there was only so much that they could do, so much that they could take on, all at once.

Step by step, breath by breath. Taking on a new life was not easy. But it had to be done.

The siren and Adagio would work out their differences together.

Part Seven

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Seven

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

He is not so bad.

Adagio raised an eyebrow, the siren within her shifting back and forth in her hippocampus forth. Sometimes, when she spoke with the spirit that had infused her body and mind, it felt like going to a room inside her where the two of them could meet and talk. It was disconcerting, even to Adagio who considered herself to be the least disconcerted of all, though she didn’t dwell on it too much. If she did, she worried discreetly that she would lose herself in spirals of her own life changes. She doubted very much that others would have considered them all that great, even if that was something, very much, that she was not offering up for debate.

Lounging on her sofa, she kicked her legs up over the arm, a magazine that she would never have read before in her hands. The siren peered at it with a strange sort of interest but pop things and culture were not nuances that Adagio would usually have focused on. Considering where she worked, however, and the songs she sang – maybe she would even take on more singing gigs to get a hit of the high and the money that she merely wanted rather than needed – it was good to keep her hand in on things like that.

“I don’t know why or how anyone could read this stuff every day,” she muttered out loud, the siren listening in. “Do you have this kind of thing where you came from?”

No. Did you not hear what I said?

Adagio grimaced.

“Yes, I did, but you’ve been saying that about Donnie pretty much for the last two weeks. At some point, you just sound like a broken record. Half the time I’m tuning you out anyway.”

The siren reeled, her indignance palpable.

How dare you! If I’ve said it so many times, then the onus is on a foal like you for not listening!

Adagio sighed and closed the magazine. Unlike with a book, the rustling pages did not make the satisfying snap that some part of her had been hoping for.

“Then what is it that you want to say? I’m all ears.”

Only then did the siren dither, giving her the sensation that she was swimming back and forth, floating, pacing in a strange sort of way. That had Adagio’s attention, closing her eyes to block out the view of her living area, giving the siren her complete attention.

I enjoy his company also, the siren said at last. It’s…good to feel full from the emotion he shares with us. He is quite clearly affectionate towards us. It is only natural to desire to spend time around someone who behaves like that and want to spend more time with them.

Adagio shot upright, her back ramrod straight.

“Are you actually trying to tell me that you’re falling for Donnie too?”

Maybe she should have been a little more sensitive about it but the grin plastered across her face, a stray orange curl falling down her forehead, told a different tale. As the siren grumbled and half-backtracked, she laughed out loud and fell back on the sofa, mischievous glee coursing through, her heart beating as hard as it did when Donnie looked at her in that special way.

“I can’t believe that! After all your hesitation, holding back, trying to get me to see sense and all that…you’re the one who’s fallen for him too!”

I don’t see any falling in it, Adagio, but I don’t see why you’re so surprised – you’re the one that liked him first.

“And you didn’t see the point in it either, did you, oh great siren!”

She felt rather than saw the siren roll her eyes.

Name-calling? A silly human girl is reducing herself to that?

“I’m you so I wouldn’t go on about calling me silly and the like, thank you very much. But to see you mooning and lovestruck is something, siren, that I’d dearly like to see. Is your “song” going to change into a “love song” now? Maybe your special song will make everyone else fall in love with you instead!”

She may have ribbed the siren good-naturedly, but such was the nature of their relationship and how things had developed between them. It was not serious if they called each other names, though they were weakly put at best, each of them knowing just how sharp the tongue of a viper could be when put to good use. And if there was one thing that Adagio and the siren were finally in agreement on, it was when and how to turn their wrath on others.

“If that’s all settled then and you’re not going to whine about me going out with him,” Adagio said, raising her phone, “I’ll see if he’s free to…uh…yeah, shop for supplies for the next show we’re putting on together. That’s a fair excuse, nothing odd in that.”

The siren chuckled and shook her head.

Sure…if it wasn’t three weeks away yet.

“Are you complaining?”

Not in the slightest.

It was good, so good, to not feel like she had to hide or push down how she felt about Donnie, her heart skipping a beat the very moment she saw him at the entrance to the mall. Her clothes were put together so that she was dressed to impress, showing off her collarbones and drawing his eye down to the neat tuck of her waist, though her legs were left covered in a pair of form-fitting jeans. She still leaned towards purples and even deeper shades of blue too, though her wardrobe had expanded more and more as she learned to dress as a woman. Thankfully, being out of the office environment that she would otherwise have been stuck in if she’d stayed at the job she’d had when her change had begun, allowed her to experiment more. Office wear, however it played out, would have been seriously underrated for her.

His face lit up when he saw her but, unlike her, he masked it lightly, sliding his gaze away and back to hers. Stray strands of hair fell over his eyes, a looser, longer, more casual hairstyle than he had had before, and she smiled more widely, even wearing a little make-up that Adagio did not truly need. Make-up too was something that the siren did not understand, not being present where she lived in another world – or had lived, to be more accurate about that.

“Hey!”

He couldn’t stop his smile either, or maybe that was what Adagio would have liked to think.

“Hey… Hey, I’m glad you could make it,” she said, fumbling for words. “I know it’s short notice but the next couple of weeks are going to be sooo busy that I need to get ahead on this!”

He nodded.

“Sure, what are we getting? There are displays or something to go up? What’s the event?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Something about a prelude to Valentine’s Day that the bar is running. Of course, that wasn’t my idea but I’m not in charge of what the new manager gets to do and say. Maybe that’s for the best.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to always be caught up in that sort of stuff. Besides, it would mean that you couldn’t plan for yourself, running and doing it for someone else all the time still, even if it looked like you were technically in charge. It wouldn’t have been you that reaped the spoils of that.”

She pursed her lips, tapping the tip of her thumb very lightly to her forehead as she thought.

“I supposed you’re right…”

Donnie grinned, bumping her shoulder with his. Her heart fluttered and, deep inside, the siren pushed for control, her eagerness pulsing through with a strange sort of need.

“And you can’t run your own place if you’re doing that! Get some money and do your own thing. You’re more than capable, Adagio, I know you can do anything you set your mind to.”

She swallowed and scuffed her toe across the ground but there were not words due to come with the heat of a rising flush across her cheeks and down her neck, feeling as if the warmth itself was tightening and closing in around her throat.

Is this how it really feels?

She couldn’t answer the siren out loud, not with where they were, but a tiny nod from Adagio answered the question without delving into her mind. She had a conversation on the outside, after all, to focus on, the presence of how close Donnie was to her impossible in any way to ignore.

Adagio didn’t know how she managed at all to focus on the shopping that she needed to do, everything a blur but for the sharpness in her life that was Donnie. Where everything else faded out, he was stark and bright, leaving the rest of the world in the dark as she moved towards her light.

His fingers brushed hers as he passed her a sign and she leaned into it a tiny bit, not knowing if he noticed. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

He’d be a fool not to fall for us, the siren said, her tail flicking back and forth with a little bit of a smirk. He is ours. No one else can have him.

Adagio sighed.

That’s not entirely how it works here…but I can’t say I disagree either.

Donnie did not at all appear as if he didn’t want their, or her, company, however, staying close as they moved through the mall, working through her list, which, at the very least, was well-organised. Soon enough, they had time to rest their aching feet, Adagio regretting wearing even low heels as her soles throbbed from the unnatural position that her feet were forced into.

Getting something to eat was the next step, the two of them moving and working together so well that they were halfway there before they realised just how in sync they were. Adagio sat back, allowing the siren to pilot her body for the time being, never quite getting used to how it felt to have two minds inside her, both equally in control of all that she could do as a person, as Adagio. But it was good to sink away too where she did not have to think too much about how much her feet ached and throbbed, even as the siren struggled to walk evenly, still not having quite as much control over legs when new surfaces and different levels were introduced. The small heel to the shoe probably didn’t help either.

“I’m getting a burger, do you know what you want?”

An Asian-fusion stand caught her attention, the siren’s curiosity perked.

“I don’t think I’ve tried that before… I’ll get that. Meet you back here?”

He nodded, though Adagio, inwardly, groaned.

You don’t even know if you’ll like it, she said, mentally, to the siren. Get a burger. We could have stayed with him longer!

Oh, I didn’t think of that. Things are different here…

But Donnie had already disappeared into the crowd and the siren, truly, was interested in some way in experiencing new flavours and foods whenever possible. Some sort of noodle dish, chosen randomly, was placed at the end of the counter for her, thankfully in a taller container with chopsticks stuck to the side. It would be something that they could eat standing if needed, for the line seemed to be moving so very slowly as the siren, too eagerly, tried to get back to Donnie.

Grimacing inwardly, Adagio stopped her before leaving.

Take the fork and spoon, trust me. I’ll help you work with chopsticks another time.

Adagio’s face frowned, the siren still in control, but she obligingly took her advice. Sometimes Adagio wondered at the fact that they had even managed to come to some sort of agreement and even to a point where the siren listened to her on minute things like that. Though it was not as if she wanted hot ramen splashed down the front of her new top…

The siren froze, stopping Adagio’s body in the process.

What’s going on there?

Her breath caught, tight in her chest, panting shortly and sharply, heat flushing through. But it was not the good kind of heat that made her feel as if good things were happening, no – it was a different, sickening, curdling kind of heat like milk gone bad. The siren hissed, Adagio’s lips pressing together, the woman taking back control, though she was not so sure she would be any better at controlling herself than the siren was.

For Donnie was surrounded by a cluster of women, five in total, one leaning on his arm, tipping forward towards him as if she knew him too personally!

“Hey, you’re cute,” she giggled, the shrillness of her voice cutting through the cloud, Adagio’s hearing sharpened, though she could not have said quite why that was so, even with the siren’s somewhat heightened senses at play. “Why don’t you come hang with us? You can’t want to be here all on your own.”

Donnie eyed her, though it was hard for him to say anything back considering that his mouth was full of a bite of burger that he had not been able to wait to start eating. Swallowing hard, he tried to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth but the girl hung onto him too hard, holding him to her.

“Uh, ‘scuse me…”

“Aw, come on…”

They giggled as if they had nothing better to say, Adagio frozen in place. The crowd streamed around her as if she were a rock in the middle of a stream, the world not stopping for the searing-hot anger coursing through her with each and every beat of her heart. Blood roared dully between her ears as she clenched a fist, forgetting her ramen, setting it aside on a random table with calculating precision.

The siren hissed, head rearing back like a snake poised to strike.

Ours.

Mine.

OURS.

Thus, he was, the two of them in agreement even as the girls tittered and hung all over Donnie as if he was a piece of meat, a trophy to be claimed. Of course, the siren may have thought the same, but he was her trophy, her prize, the one that she wanted to be with her.

“Where are you going? Maybe we can come with you?”

Adagio could not see any of them as women with how they behaved, girls chasing after a man who was so far out of their league it wasn’t even funny, not to her. Donnie caught her gaze over their heads and shrugged helplessly but another was pressing a piece of paper into his hand, boldly dragging his gaze back to hers as she folded his fingers over it.

“Here… Take my number. It’ll smell like me too,” she giggled, batting her eyelashes at him, wearing too much mascara. “I spray my perfume on all of my notepaper…”

“Um… I’m really not interested…thank you… You should take it back…”

But the girl shook her head, already stepping back so that he could not even give the number back to her.

“No, no, no – keep it! You never know when you might like a little reminder of me.”

She blew him a cheeky kiss, the gaggle of them clustering again, moving on, though there were many glances back over their shoulders, looking at the man that, surely, one of them would be able to snare. No one would ever be sure of their true intentions on that day as Adagio, hands shaking lightly, joined Donnie, biting back anger that threatened to lash out from her throat, a serpent poised and ready to take back what was hers.

“Sorry, did they bother you?”

She couldn’t help how clipped her tone was. Donnie shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, head tipped to the side as he pushed a shoulder up.

“Uhhh… Yeah.” He turned, dropping the crumpled-up scrap of paper in a bin. “Didn’t you get food?”

She started.

“Oh… Yeah, I forgot. I thought you might need some help.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll eat my burger and you should go get something.” His smile dazzled her. “Make sure you eat! I don’t want you going hungry.”

He’s so caring.

But Adagio had no intention of going back to collect her ramen or even getting something new to eat, her sights fixed on the girls disappearing around the corner, Donnie getting out his phone with the hand that was not holding his burger. That would keep him busy for a while.

Adagio was in motion before she even realised what she was doing, what she was going to do, pursuing the girls with single-minded intent. Donnie hadn’t been interested and the siren snarled inside, egging her on.

Show them how wrong they are! They’ll never come after what’s ours ever again!

It was not like Adagio, not like how she had been before she’d been fused with the spirit, but there was little, seemingly, that she could do about that. The ringleader, the one who had been hanging off Donnie, laughed and tossed her hair, the black fall of sheer, straight hair glistening in the light.

“Hey, you!”

Adagio pointed, not needing to pursue further as they turned to face her. Five against one (they didn’t have to know it was two) was hardly fair odds to play up against but Adagio was far, far from worried about that.

Scoffing, a brunette with bangs crossed her arms, hip cocked out.

“Uh… Yeah, what do you want?”

Fools.

Adagio glowered.

“Stay the hell away from my man. Who the hell do you think you are coming all up in here after my guy? He’s not for you!”

Adagio took a breath, the siren rushing forward to take the lead, back at the forefront of her mind.

“He didn’t want your attention! Couldn’t you see that? Or are you blinded by all that gunk on your face?”

The siren even hissed, rocking back on Adagio’s heels as she smirked and studied her nails. Adagio was surprised she had even been able to come up with such a quip but, in hindsight, she must have thought that everything on a woman’s face was “gunk”. She’d be enlightened to the difference in that later.

“You didn’t need to hassle him like that! Just what made you think that he would ever give the likes of you the time of day anyway?”

Adagio swapped in, the two of the tag-teaming the gaggle of girls who, frankly, were not even able to get a word in edgeways. They stuttered and mumbled but it was not as if such earlier bravado, while flirting with a guy rather than the infuriated girlfriend, was going to play out well with Adagio.

Scoffing, she flipped her hair, scorning even their attempts to seem more in control of the situation than they were.

“Um, ah, well, I didn’t,” she repeated after them, mocking their very attempts. “Do you usually get guys talking like that? Get it into your thick skulls – he’s not interested in you!”

Yes! Only ours!

The siren snarled and it was difficult to tell as they swapped positions so frequently just who was in control at any given time, the two of them working together perfectly in defence of their man, the one that they wanted.

“We didn’t mean to do anything!”

Oh, they fell so easily, the weaklings they were, weak-spirited and weak-minded. Adagio didn’t know who thought that but she agreed with it, agreed with herself and the siren.

She advanced, a single step sending the girls scuttling back like crabs, not willing to turn their backs on her. Her eyes blazed and she lashed out, her viper-like tongue doing a better job of cutting them all down to size without even leaning on her dojo training. If she’d been more in control of herself at that moment, however, she would have realised that her legs had sunk ever so slightly into a fighting stance.

Some things were not so easy to let go.

They tried to get away but she pursued their stumbling steps with her own confident ones.

“You’d never get a guy like him, useless bimbos,” she taunted, stripping away their self-confidence even more. “There’s nothing that you could give him that I haven’t already, that I will. You think you’re all that because you have skimpy clothes and like showing off in your little hordes but you’re not even brave enough to approach a man on your own!”

Small, useless, weak, insignificant, pathetic. The girls, to her, were all of those things, others at the mall taking notice, though Adagio still could not find it in herself to care. What did it matter if they thought she was going too far, finally letting out that darker side of her? It didn’t matter, not at all, sinking her claws into them and ripping them to shreds, her and the siren one and the same in a moment like that when they were well and truly on the same side.

“It’s your fault that I’ve had to do this to you,” she laughed, mockingly sliding her gaze away as if to check her nails, as cool as a cucumber as she poised herself before them. “Really, I’m doing you bitches a favour. Stay away from my man and, lord – have some goddamn respect!”

Maybe they would or maybe they wouldn’t but Adagio had no intent at all of ever seeing them again, whirling about on her heel, her point made. In that moment, both her and the siren were in control, moving in perfect fluidity, neither one needing to specifically take the lead. A smile was on her face, even though the anger had only simmered down to a bubbling curdle in the pit of her stomach, heat leaving her face as she tried, just a little to cool down, slipping out of her jacket.

But Donnie was there waiting for her and she’d already forgotten the faces of those that had sought to move in on her man, the guy that she could not help but want to be near. Though she had not thought that the siren had meant that she was that into Donnie to tag-team the girls with her, darkly dominating and blistering through their ranks with a fire unlike anything she could ever have thought existed inside.

“Come on, Donnie,” she said, linking her arm through his in a bold move that may not have come if not for what had happened just before. “Let’s go.”

Oblivious as to what had happened, he smiled.

“Sure thing!”

A quiet walk home was just what she needed to de-stress, taking a moment with the light patter of rain around to add a rhythm to the backdrop of the day. His hand may not have been in hers but Adagio was sure that he walked a little closer to her, the warmth of him something that she could not so simply ignore.

They talked but neither Adagio nor the siren could say what had been talked about when he dropped her off at the doorstep to her apartment building, leaning in. Over too quickly for her to react, he kissed her cheek, a soft gasp escaping her lips, but was gone as soon as he had delivered it.

Lifting his hand in a shy wave, Donnie all but fled from the scene of the crime, leaving Adagio standing there in the enlivening rain, her fingers touching her cheek lightly in memory of that kiss. The sensation of his lips there remained after she closed the door behind her, the siren fidgeting and twisting back and forth, trying to come to grips with it, what it meant, how it felt.

It’s new, it’s different.

“Relax,” she said, speaking out loud to address the siren. “It’s okay, it’s…normal. I think.”

After all, she had not had all that much romantic involvement, only a little, as Knight, which was tricky enough for her to navigate. The siren knew that, of course, but between the two of them it was still Adagio who knew the grand sum more, which was not very much at all.

Her skin tingled. She smiled.

“So, you can’t deny now that you really like him.”

She had to fix some real food for herself, stomach grumbling, distracting her from the matter at hand. The siren was quiet for a moment but, after such a display in the mall, it was not as if it could be denied.

Yes. I do not know “why” I want him, but this goes beyond what I said before about liking him. That’s correct, isn’t it?

Adagio smiled.

“Yes, that’s “correct”. There’s no need to be so formal about it though.”

The differences in their language choices sometimes came out more starkly and strongly than others but they still made themselves understood, particularly with the nuances and touches between them that were mental, working away unconsciously.

With such a thing out in the open, there was little more to say, not even then, calming and resting in quiet companionship for the remainder of the late afternoon and evening. But what they did know was that they were on the same side, in agreement over the fact that Donnie was theirs and theirs alone, even if they would have to make that more openly known sooner or later.

Does he feel the same way?

Neither had an answer to that question but it was something too that would be seen and revealed all in good time.

“Heyyyooo!”

A glass shattered and Adagio winced. What was wrong with them? Why was it so hard for new patrons to come into the bar and have a nice time? She was about to go up on stage to do her set at the bar!

“Curses…”

She tried not to swear, not when there were other staff members near to hear her, dusting off the apron she’d had tied around her waist to clean glasses. It was a busy night and everything seemed to be in high demand there as she hustled and bustled, feet aching from running around the bar all night. With live music playing, she could barely hear herself think, let alone hear patrons order, though it was still what she lived for, something in the chaos making her feel more alive than she had ever before thought possible.

“Hey, girlie – get us another!”

At least, that was what she thought he said, slurring and leaning over her bar, waving a glass at her. She scowled.

“I think you’ve had enough, don’t you, lightweight?”

Maybe not something that she should have said but it got her point over well enough, even if the guy, who she’d never seen before, frowned, brow furrowing.

“Just who do you think you are?”

Funny, she’d said that to others only a short while ago. Only the day before had she had to scare off those girls from hassling Donnie. Seemed that nasty men were just the same with women or, if she wanted to be even more biting, nasty little boys.

Send them packing.

The siren barely lifted her head as she checked in, knowing already that Adagio was in control. It was not a situation that she could not handle as the rowdy new patrons shoved her regulars about, not letting them get up to the bar. Of course, the new manager was not doing anything at all about it, with all her position and her power, Adagio screwing up a drying rag in her hand, tighter and tighter.

Now!

“Get the hell out of my bar!”

Her voice bellowed forth like a siren’s song, containing the power of her singing, for one did not have to sing to hold true power. The bar fell silent, everyone staring at her, a regular fist-pumping the air, though she was too busy glaring daggers at the intruders who sought to sully her bar with their aggression to notice or care.

“What did you say, girlie?”

Four against one, big, burly men, rough around the edges. Still, she stood her ground, not caring if they towered. What did they think they could do against her?

“I said,” she forced out through gritted teeth, anger shooting from her eyes as her skin heated up in hot flushes of angry patches. “Get the hell out of my bar. I’m sick and tired of you bothering my staff and my patrons. We don’t need the business of the likes of you here!”

Her words were barbed and sunk deep even as they sized up to her, fists balled-up and shoulders hunched.

“I suggest you shut your mouth, girlie, before you get what’s coming to you,” the biggest of them snarled, missing a tooth as his moustache bristled. “Get the fuck on with your job, bartender.”

But Adagio was not about to do that, sinking into a fighting stance, remembering the dojo. That was why she had gone there, wasn’t it? Not only to be near Donnie.

“I think you’ll regret that. You’ve done enough.” Her voice was silken sweet like ribbons of honey, giving pause even to them, infused with power. “Leave now and no one will get hurt.”

It should not have happened that they backed off and muttered, grumbling among themselves, yet Adagio had changed. She was no longer the man who would have sought some more diplomatic answer but she was strong and powerful and ready for a fight. Someone clapped her on the shoulder but all she cared about was the approval of the siren who had watched it all go down.

Well done. They won’t be bothering you anytime soon.

Adagio swallowed hard.

They should never have tried to push in on my bar. It was always mine, from the first time I set foot in here.

That’s why you have to protect what’s yours, what’s ours. Including Donnie. They might be back but if anyone tries to cause trouble again, but we’ll be ready for them. You’ll learn… It’s not about being ready immediately, after all.

The men swore, grumbling about getting their own back, that they’d never been treated like that “by a girl” before, as they left but she cared not for the friends that they threatened her with. Being “Adagio” was power in itself, crushing the men down into the dirt beneath her heel as the bar cheered and regulars tried to buy her drinks that she could not take while she was on the clock.

She smiled, exulting in their praise.

She was Adagio and she had so much more to show the city, even if she was sure there would be more to challenge her out there.

Always with Donnie by her side.

Part Eight

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Taking on a New Life
Part Eight

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

The bar grew boring to Adagio, though she didn’t want it to be. All she wanted was for things to go back to her version of normal, though she knew how to do everything so well there that it was no challenge at all for her. However, working on autopilot where things did not interest her as much at least meant that there was more time for her to talk to the siren, passing back control between the two of them as if it had suddenly become the most natural thing in the world.

So, what happened to you before I met you?

Adagio’s mind wandered, finding the siren inside. It was still strange to her to have any mind and consciousness in there, feeling the shape of the siren in some medium place, floating as if she was a hippocampus type creature that did not fall prey to the wiles of gravity at all. Of course, in one’s mind, there were no such things as gravity, but it was still a little disconcerting to Adagio, coming from an outside perspective. But she spent a lot of time looking in those days too.

Don’t you mean before you met me? It’s more polite to phrase it that way.

The siren snorted and Adagio felt rather than saw her roll her eyes.

Maybe. But this is us talking – we don’t have time for politeness in here. Besides, you can feel what someone really means, here, in someone’s thoughts. You know this.

Adagio sighed. Talking to the siren was exhausting sometimes but she could not deny that it was interesting, conversation that kept her going while she smiled and poured drinks and made sure they got to the right people in the bar with a cock of her hip and a flirty smile, all timed perfectly right.

I was in the armed forces, back then.

Combat? Fighting?

The siren dug around in Adagio’s mind as she squirmed.

Don’t do that, you know it makes me feel weird. How’d you like if I fished around in your mind for stuff like that? It’s invasive.

Everything about this is invasive. I wouldn’t have to do any of that if you’d just talk to me, you know.

That was true, in a way, though that didn’t make it any better for Adagio. She still had a lot of adjusting to do, not even a year passed since the siren took up residence in her mind, changed her body from man to woman, taken on a new form.

But she had to play ball, the give and the take between them tentative, something that still had to be maintained.

I was never involved in combat, but I went through training and helped in communities where our presence is needed.

She paused, thinking back.

Some combat, but not front lines, I didn’t mean to say that. But we used weapons, not our fists and feet, not like in the dojo. Somehow, doing that feels more real, you know? It feels like cheating to use hunks of metal to defend yourself, even though it’s fun to shoot targets still.

She paused again, something twisting inside her. Why did it make her feel sad that she hadn’t done it for a long time? It was not as if she was not able to do it, she could go back to it at any time.

I never considered you for a fighter…but you’re right, it does seem strange to fight with tools. That’s not how we do it.

Your song? Adagio pressed. And you said “we”? What do you mean by that?

The siren warmed to her, a soft feeling seeping into Adagio’s mind, so tangible that it prickled at the tips of her fingers.

Not only that. And there are others, others like me. We’re here, in this world, because we were banished, at least two of us, though I don’t know where they are. After we were separated and our necklaces destroyed, we lost the powers we had when we started in this world, the power we had stored from stirring up unrest and chaos. You’ve felt that strength from causing what you’d say is “trouble” too, haven’t you?

Adagio considered that. Sometimes, it was true. She was at her strongest when there was strife around her, whether or not she had caused it. She didn’t like that though, not feeling it was in keeping with her old life and self, wanting to keep hold of that. Growth and change, however it was forced, were things to bear in mind but there was only so much that she could lean into without forgetting that she had a lot more to her than what the siren had transformed her into.

I can sense my brethren, but I know they are not in any danger. Perhaps they are not trapped in objects like I was, though that was only a curse of another gone wrong. They would have called it a spell, but, when ending up like this, I can’t see it as anything else.

Adagio started, a glass sloshing over in her hand. That was a surprisingly tender side of the siren that she had not delved into before, but the lift that pushed back from it told her that the siren was by no means willing to go into any further detail on that one. And that was okay too. They didn’t have to know everything about each other right off the bat, not all at once, not all the time.

They are well and safe. That is all that I need to know.

If we continue our training, our sparring in the dojo, Adagio offered, we can find them, make sure they’re okay. It sounds like there’s been a lot of trouble in your world.

Taking a deep breath, her hand balled into a fist.

We’re equipped to deal with everything we need to.

That self-confidence had not been something present in her back when she’d been Knight, a new development, a quiet resilience that spoke of all that the two of them had gone through together. Maybe that too, in a way, was just how things were supposed to be, growing and developing, finding more even to day to day life than may have been expected previously.

The siren was quiet. But they knew where each other stood.

The shift ended late at night, easing into the colder months of the year, though it was not yet cold enough for her breath to frost in the air. The siren took the lead, piloting their body for the moment, seemingly fascinated with just how it felt to breathe in and out, the contrast of warm breath pouring over her lips where cold air was dragged in curious to one liked here.

I never had to breathe through my mouth before, only nostrils. It’s strange to do it like this.

Adagio could only laugh.

“Hey – Dagi!”

She stiffened, the siren turning around inside her as if she could physically see behind without looking.

Hey!

You don’t have to answer him from in there.

“Hey,” Adagio said verbally, lips moving, though she had to think about what she was saying, Donnie approaching – for of course it was him. “What are you doing here?”

They hadn’t planned to sing that night and her mind could not help but jump to conclusions. Had he come out just to see here? No, but yes – he couldn’t possibly have been walking home in that direction.

Donnie’s smile, as it was, sent her heart softening, melting, easing down from its frantic place.

“Come get a drink with me.”

Normally, she would have rebelled against something like that – who wanted to be told what to do? That wasn’t fair, not fair at all, but she was the one in charge and what she wanted too perfectly matched up with what he laid down for her. It was hard to push back against anything like that when it worked so well.

So, they walked, a light pattering of cooling rain prickling down, glistening on her cheeks. It was too easy to laugh as they ducked into another bar that was quiet and kitschy, the type of place that was a hole in the wall that one could miss if they did not already know it was there before going in. Their cocktails were fruity and a mix that neither of them knew, even if they were delicious – not something that would have gone down well with the casual, rougher clientele of their usual bar, even though the money there was good.

Still, it was good to try something different and the hint of alcohol loosened their tongues, making things that were big topics all on their own a little easier to broach.

“Hey, Dagi…”

She warmed to his use of his nickname for her. Of course, only Donnie got to call her that. Adagio scowled inwardly at the thought of anyone else being too familiar with her. That wasn’t something that either she or the siren wanted, not in the slightest.

“Yeah?”

She tried to act casual, sweeping her finger through the condensation on her glass, the moisture that collected on the outside. All she had to do was to play it cool, not to push too far…

Why not?

Adagio had to hide her smile that time too.

Because there are other ways to get what you want than going in all guns blazing.

The siren frowned.

You’ll have to explain to me about guns… Something to do with the shooting range? Combat?

Not now!

For Adagio really needed her attention to be in reality right then and there, ignoring the presence of the siren as much as she clamoured to know what was going on. That was something, in Adagio’s world, that could only be told from life experience, which the siren, unfortunately, simply did not have in the same way. The tales left untold between them would come out in time, but the beauty of their developing friendship would mean that things changed slowly, in the natural fashion.

“So, I was thinking…”

“Oh, that’s a dangerous topic already,” Adagio teased, poking his arm where it lay across the table. “Thinking too much about things is bad for you. Why don’t you spit it out? Things will be easier then, you know.”

Donnie blushed a little, his gaze sliding away from hers as if it had burned him.

“I… Uh… Well, I was thinking…”

He’s adorable, isn’t he? The siren commented. What’s he getting at?

If you are quiet, you’ll find out sooner rather than later.

“Look, anything you have to say, it’s going to be okay,” Adagio said, a little more warmly than she had intended. “You don’t have to worry about words with me.”

He was bold enough to meet her eyes then, even though all of it seemed like too much for her. It was quick, so quick, and so awfully slow in other ways all at the same time.

“I was thinking that your apartment is a little small for you, you’re making good money now.”

“Huh?”

She blinked. That hadn’t been what she’d been expecting at all! Something more dramatic, at least, surely?

“Yeah?”

She pressed him on, sitting back in her chair, the siren watching quietly. That made a change.

“Well, I want to help. But, what I mean to say is, I think we could help each other. What if we moved in together?”

The last words rushed as if they were all trying to get out all at once, blending and blurring into one another as he tried to force them all out. Adagio sat up a little straighter, heart pounding.

“Really?”

“I mean – not like that!”

He was bright red by that point, holding his hands up, shaking his head, though the crux of what he had said, what he did mean, remained.

“I mean, we could both save money if we moved in together – and we get on so well!”

Go on, you’ve got to help him out. The siren prompted her. It’s not all that much fun to watch him squirm for so long, you know.

“Yeah, we do.”

She gave him an easy smile, the kind of smile that was one more often shared between friends than those that were, well…anything more than friends. There was no sense to her in putting labels on things that did not need labels putting on them, shaking her head a little, lips tugging up a little higher. Her possessiveness and feeling of a claim to him were there to be inspected, at some point, though there was a part of her, the part that had been Knight alone before, that knew too that she had to have his consent if she wanted to have him.

If he chose to go elsewhere…stopping him would not be an option. No matter how much the siren seethed at such a notion. If he didn’t want her, there was nothing that she could do about it – fighting for him, of course, but not forcing, never forcing.

You have strange customs here.

Adagio pressed her lips together.

It’s the right thing to do. I’ll tell you more about it later, but you cannot force this issue.

At least it seems like he likes us.

Me. He likes me.

The siren scoffed, though it was more playful than before.

Whatever you say. We’re both in this together.

If that was so, it was not something that they understood as well as they could have. But that too would be just another thing that came in time.

“Relax, Donnie, I think it’s a great idea!”

Adagio could not be sure whether she was holding her enthusiasm back or pushing it forward, only that she had to keep it at just the right level for the situation. Too much and it would look like she was angling for, well, what she wanted, what she had not honestly admitted in full, eloquent language to herself. Too little and he might turn back from it altogether – and she so very, very much wanted to be around him more.

Would living with him be like me living in your head, us sharing a body?

Adagio stifled a laugh, covering it with her hand, lest Donnie ask questions that she didn’t have any sensible answers for.

No, not at all. You’ll see. This is just one that you’re going to have to see for yourself, in time.

Patience had never, however, been the siren’s strong suit.

They chatted more freely, the tension held in Donnie’s shoulders relaxing as he moved into talking, the condo that he had in mind for the two of them, to be fair, a little out of his price range if he was going for it alone. Maybe it was merely mutually beneficial for the two of them or maybe it was something more, though Adagio knew which of the options there that she hoped it would be. All it took was a little push in the right direction for things to move on and she’d be right where she wanted to be.

Maybe it was Donnie making the first move for her.

Her heart pooled in her chest, a liquid puddle warming and teasing, curling deeper into her. Even the siren was quiet, surprised by the sensation, the all-encompassing glow that spread through her body as if it could flow through her veins, her nervous system.

This is new.

But that was all that the siren had to say on that.

They poured together over his phone, the alcohol slipping from their systems, more clear-headed and keener to see just what they could afford. It was a new step, a big step, but the right one for the two of them, even if it was something that would take a considerable amount of planning.

Adagio smiled, genuinely. Finally, things were looking up.

And she sincerely hoped they would continue that way.

Does it always feel this way?

Adagio grinned, speaking by way of her smile in answer to the siren. It was hard to feel gloomy at all when there was so much good going on for her. She had her good job at the bar, so many singing gigs that she couldn’t keep up with them all, whether they were at the bar or the more lucrative ones, further afield, that she was slowly considering, even if still playing hard to get.

“Hey, Adagio – what’s next on?”

Olivia flipped her hair back over her shoulder, which had grown curlier and even had a reddish-orange tint to it, mimicking Adagio. The siren laughed.

There’s your little protégé.

Adagio had to suppress the urge to roll her eyes.

Yes, but you don’t have to say it like that. She’s going to be useful.

More so when she knows how to act properly. She’ll be an extra set of eyes here, looking out for the things we can’t.

“Table sixty-four wants mixers, the usual.”

Adagio fired off commands rapidly, though she could not deny that she had a particular kind of liking for the young woman who had become her shadow. She couldn’t deny her such things, the attraction to her something that simply affected some people, a good kind of control and power that swept over her, enjoying the need to take someone under her wing. Olivia bustled off, though Adagio could be helpful too, showing her tips and tricks, how to stack glasses, how to dry them quickly. Little things went a long way in that business and it turned out that Olivia had a voice on her too.

She could even be a back-up singer for us, someone to add depth to our vocals.

Adagio smirked, tapping the side of her nose, though only the siren was there to see it.

Give it time.

For the one thing that she had to teach the siren, quicker than most, was the art of patience. There was no rush to be had at such a time, moving on, step by step, showing her the ropes and setting her up.

She’s changed so much.

Do you think we could get her to do her hair all the way like us?

Even the set of her shoulders is different.

Sometimes, it was hard to tell which of them was talking at any one time, their thoughts blending together so seamlessly that they moved and thought as one.

You know, I only went along with it because I knew she needed a push.

That was definitely Adagio’s thoughts, however, the siren drifting in the background.

Only went along with it?

Adagio shook her head.

Because Olivia needed a push, I let this carry on, though don’t get me wrong, seeing her change to suit us…that’s a good feeling. I can’t explain that. But pushing Olivia is getting her noticed, as if she was always meant to be like this. She’s changing, but in a good way, and there will be many good things in her future, her career, if only we can drive her forward.

The siren sighed.

Honestly, what is wrong with you? Sometimes you can do this for the fun of it. What else is there to amuse yourself with in this kind of life too?

Adagio knew that too, but kept that thought deep down, hidden, private just for herself. Some things did not have to be shared and, over time, they had learned to keep things secret where needed. But only certain things could be set aside, meaning that they had to be diplomatic with themselves as to what they kept for themselves.

It was finite. It could be wasted.

Not all had to linger at the bar, however, Adagio getting her shifts done, taking her stage time with Donnie and raking in all the money that the two of them could ever have needed. But that left time for other things, for going on, for finding out who she was again.

She ducked into a shop in the afternoon before one of her evening shifts, hands shoved into the pockets of her fluffy, padded jacket. It was not all that cold yet but, still, Adagio felt that she needed to ward off the chill of the day, winter not being her favourite season. It was always so grey and drizzly, rarely with the white illumination of snow at all to set a gleam about the cityscape, a season where little good seemed to grace the concrete jungle.

Where we come from, we didn’t go into the cities much. Likely for the same reasons you’re looking for an escape from it now.

Adagio started.

Who said I was looking for an escape?

It’s obvious. Who’d want to be here at such a time? The city is somewhere that you come when you have something to do, no more than that. There is life here, of course, but it is not a place to live.

Adagio considered that, though she could see the siren’s side in her mind. She saw open plains that stretched down to cliffs, disappearing into a stormy, wild sea, foaming with white water and oceanic horses that dived in and out of it. The sky roiled above in the glory of the storm, other sirens in hippocampus form darting back and forth, spinning through the sky as if they were flying, though they had no wings to speak of.

We didn’t need wings to soar.

Their power was held deeper than mere wings, after all, though the others that Adagio saw in the siren’s memories made her gasp, ponies with wings, others with horns, all with powers that made her catch her breath. All that overcame over, however, was the sense of space that lingered in the siren’s memories, swelling forth with the beat of her heart, even giving Adagio the sense that her “tail” was moving, dropping completely into the siren’s mind for the want of her memories.

Do you see?

Adagio could see, yes, but that did not mean that living her city life took everything away, changed everything that existed in her reality. Setting the clothes that she had been looking at, considering buying, back on the rack.

Let me show you a bit more of my world then.

For there were little things that had not made it into her life as a woman, as Adagio, Knight lingering behind, wondering what had come of the self she had once had. The blending of personalities could not be overruled, of course, and whereas the food court at the mall had plenty of offerings, there was one thing that Adagio wanted to show the siren.

Here?

It was a restaurant that stretched out into a large, outdoor space, clad with laughter and the sizzling of meat. Adagio grinned, knowing exactly where to go, what she wanted to order, even though she could feel exactly how the siren was pursing her lips at her.

Really? This?

Adagio chuckled. Some meat turned, doner meat, fascinating the siren, but the majority was barbecued, sloppy and messy, a blend of other cultures that focused on flavour rather than form. Maybe there could have been neater and tidier ways of presenting it, but it was exactly as Adagio wanted it to be, choosing a burger and a kebab skewer, though the marinade dripped from the kebab, smeared across a paper plate.

This doesn’t seem very proper at all, not for you.

Adagio smiled, eating, the burger thick and juicy. It had been a long time since she had not eaten delicately, as if she always thought that someone was watching her, though it was not truly a concern. She was just overly conscious about the face and the front that she allowed others to see, how she could change, what she could become.

The siren gave the impression that she was looming over Adagio’s shoulder, wrinkling her nose.

But it’s so…messy. Why would you eat something like this?

Adagio laughed subtly, scooting her chair back as laughter drifted over to her.

Because I can. This kind of food is what I’d always stop by for before. Sure, I had a hot dog the other day, but I don’t always want to be finicky about what I’m eating. It’s not right and don’t I have enough standing to not worry what others think of me?

The siren considered that, sharing in the taste, the flavours seeping forth.

It is interesting… And you are right. I suppose we would eat raw fish before, as you can see our forms are suited for swimming too.

To demonstrate her point, the hippocampus-type siren flipped over, tail waving faintly.

That could be a messy endeavour too, though raw fish never tasted like this.

Adagio grinned.

Then I guess you’ve never had tacos either? Fish tacos?

That had the siren’s attention, zeroing in on Adagio, who was currently in control, as if she was hiding something from her.

Fish? There’s better fish here?

Adagio chuckled and shook her head. Luckily, she was far enough away from other patrons of the grill type restaurant, as casual as it was, that no one gave her a second look. For all they knew, she could have been reading a book or listening to something. The anonymity of being there was oddly alluring in a way she had not expected.

When no one knew where she was, who she was, things around her were quieter than they otherwise could have been. That was nice too.

Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get some fish tacos too. How much of the taste can you get through this?

Adagio stepped back mentally, allowing the siren to take precedence. Technically, they shared the same name, but the one who was addressed as that daily took precedence, simply because it was easier that way. Sometimes, they too needed things to be easier.

Mmm…

It was a contemplative sound, though the flavours that burst forth filtered through to Adagio’s senses too, feeling the shifting tastes wind into one another. She could not help but giggle at the siren’s delight, something raw and plaintive, though it was almost infantile in its presentation. Maybe something like that, the newness of a human world, was not something that the siren had even tried to experience before.

Well, it would be up to her to change that if they were, by any means, to get along with each other.

Yes, you’re right. The siren’s thoughts and words wove into her mind as if they were being passed between the two of them, hand in hand. This is good, really good.

This is fine too when we are not trying to impress people. It’s all well and good to think about how we are perceived and what impressions we give, but it’s not all about that. Sometimes it’s just me. Just us. You and me.

Adagio tried to hide a smile, but she could not conceal the one that rose inwardly.

It’s hard to get away from you. Maybe the two of us are in a weird kind of relationship that’s more than friends now?

Oh, be quiet.

Sometimes, the best things shared were shared in peace and quiet. Allowing things to simply be as they were, their thoughts drifted, considering all that had changed, all the good in their shared life, even though they could never quite anticipate just what was going to happen next. There was always a change, something different to come, and maybe it was even that very lack of control that kept and made things so interesting for them.

They didn’t always have to lock onto everything to make it work. Olivia was one example of that, regardless of how much they liked her. They could teach her and shape her but taking control of her, no… No, that was not something that could be done, regardless of how they thought things should go.

She is a separate person.

Adagio smiled.

You’re learning. But that’s just how we’ve got to get by here.

For their situation was hardly normally even as the two of them, sharing control and delights at the same time, sank their teeth vivaciously into the meat, tearing it free, relishing in simple pleasures. They could get caught up in the rush and hustle and bustle of the city as much as they liked but there would always be those quiet moments to come back to, that would serve as the undercurrent.

And there was more to consider, how things would proceed with Donnie, the stirrings deep in her belly. They had not talked more about the condo, though she wanted to see more, to do more, already mentally going through everything that she needed to pack up. There were things to keep from her life as Knight and things to pass on, though it was another chapter in her life to close when all she could do was move forward, step by step.

Things would change, some that she would or would not be in control of. And that was okay too, as her skills in two minds, one body, grew. She had to learn and daily learning was the best way to get through, even as she sank back into old pleasures, simple delights, the kind of things that grounded her in her reality with the siren.

Taking on a new life had not been easy, but they could only do it together. And, with what Donnie had broached with them, things were coming together even better than they could have imagined. A new life stretched ahead, growing closer to him, though there was a part of her too that wondered why she didn’t just ask him out, why she didn’t do what might have been the next logical step. Yet the ride to get there, the journey itself, maybe that was too intoxicating to pass up all that easily.

Experiences were not to be set aside when they offered so much. Adagio smiled. The siren rested.

Things were looking up.

Part Nine

View Online

Taking on a New Life
Part Nine

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232

Adagio wandered. She didn’t have anywhere to be, one evening, though she retreated just a little in her mind, allowing the siren to take the wheel. Strangely, it was relaxing to drift in another part of her mind that, to be fair to her, she had not even realised had existed before. How could she have, when there was so much that needed her attention in daily life? Not everything was automated, like breathing, and even sometimes that act itself became something that she had to think about.

But it was good to relax, a passenger in part in her own body. She could see more, experience more, all because she didn’t have to use up solely her own brainpower in the execution of that more. Without having two consciousnesses inside her, she didn’t even think that that would have been possible at all in any other way, but, truly, there was no way for her to tell.

That was just one thing that Adagio would have to trust in. That everything was okay, that things were as they were meant to be, which was, at the very least, something that she could not change.

What is this place?

Adagio glanced up, the siren directing her.

“It’s… Oh.”

Well, that was awkward. Maybe she should have focused on things a little more, where they were going. It would have made things a little easier, at the very least, to explain what they were doing in what could only be described as the red-light district. The theatre was open, advertising a burlesque show for later, and an adult toy shop was on the corner, along with other businesses offering very adult entertainment.

The part of Adagio that was still her “old” self, though she rather liked the new self that she was growing into too, blushed heavily. The heat of it crept across her cheeks and down her neck as she shuffled her feet awkwardly, the new shoes digging into her heels a little too hard to be comfortable.

“Er, well…”

Don’t you know.

“Of course, I know, but it’s not something I’ve really talked about…”

Is it a bad place?

Adagio winced, a nervous giggle breaking her lips. She’d never seen the siren so confused before!

“No… Depends who you ask. It’s the red-light district, where there are more, uh, sex-focused shops, people who work in…adult entertainment…”

Hah! And are you embarrassed by that? I didn’t know your kind were squeamish about that sort of thing!

“I’m not! I just didn’t think you were going to wander in here like it was a totally normal thing!”

Their relationship had developed, words flowing more easily between them, even though they kept some thoughts to themselves. They were almost more like sisters by that point, the siren teasing Adagio too easily for what was a normal, light embarrassment.

It’s strange to see your kind, humans, doing things like this. You’d think that they could find partners for this. And what is this?

She drew Adagio’s attention to the adult toy shop and lingerie store even as Adagio raised her hands and backed away, battling for control.

“Ohhh no, I’m not letting you drag me into there, no way, nuh-uh, not gonna happen.”

Oh, come on! Don’t be like that!

They bantered as Adagio managed to wrestle her back, though it was surely somewhere that, one day, they would return, more for personal reasons than anything else. They had no need of business there, of course, with the bar going as well as it was, Adagio’s interest flighty, searching for something to interest her, to keep her entertained. They’d done that a few times, sewing a seed of mischief here and here, all to draw chaos, though it was mostly all harmless mischief, nothing more than that.

Mostly. Not always. But they didn’t usually stick around for long enough to see what happened, whether it was instigating an argument in a restaurant or riling up the new waitress at the bar. Keeping her regulars happy was one thing but she still wasn’t ready to take any roughness off those that were there to cause trouble, fiercely defending her bar to the exclusion of all else. No one should have dared encroach on her territory, to take away those good tips from her, to mess with “her” staff, even if they were not really her staff.

Adagio sighed. She still didn’t know what to do about that. But there was only so much, to be fair, that she could do. At least, without escalating things further, which was, of course, something that could be considered.

Yet new and interesting things were shinier and more apt to catch her attention…

It was hard to tell who had the “wheel”, so to speak, as control of the outward body to their personality was passed back and forth between them so easily. It was better to play it like that, accepting that the two of them shared one body, rather than fighting back and forth, though there were some friendly battles too when Donnie was around. If someone was going to instigate more playful bickering between them, it really was going to be Donnie.

Donnie took them to see a condo, the two-floor duplex offering great space and management, all so that they would not have to worry about it themselves. It was strange to the siren to consider living with someone, though she mused with Adagio, mentally, that she had lived in close proximity to her siren sisters before too.

Not in the same room or cave, wherever we rested, but we were always near. We were not related.

Why did you call yourselves sisters then?

Are we not sisters too? It is the same thing, the type of relationship that we have now, to what I had then, with them.

But she couldn’t stay locked up in her own mind with the siren for too long, not as Donnie tried to draw her attention back, eyebrows raised at the price.

“Well, it would work, but we were looking for something maybe one-hundred lower a month when you look at the repayments. Do you have anything in that ballpark?”

The market must have been poor as the sales agent showing them around grew flustered, her movements short and jerky. Her black hair was cut too sharply around her cheekbones, though her face was round and cheerful, nothing about her or her estate agent outfit matching up in the right way. Adagio hadn’t even caught her name but, considering how many condos they were heading out to look at, taking their time to buy the perfect one together on a shared contract, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

“Well, uh, we might be able to work something out there…”

While working out the details of at least one that the two of them would be able to add to the list, Donnie shot Adagio a sidelong look, winking. Her heart turned over in the best of ways, the strangest of ways, though to say that she was not falling would have been a lie, how her skin prickled and tingled, heat coursing through. Was she blushing?

You’re blushing, you’re blushing.

Will you cut that sing-song voice out?

Of course, the siren would not. It was too much fun to her to poke, well, fun, teasing and playing, more comfortable with her life now that the two of them had made their piece with each other. There was not much of a walk to the next block of condos, a maintained set with a garden, though the condo that was up for sale was in a bad location, with little access to the shared public areas that they’d want to make use of.

Adagio pursed her lips, flipping through a brochure, while Donnie backed off with a shake of his head.

“No, not for us, but thank you.”

“But sir! Maybe your girlfriend would like to look around first! You can’t just make the decision without going in!”

Adagio stiffened, but her lips parted for the lash of a whip even as Donnie swept his arm around her, hustling her away. There was heat in his cheeks too, but no time to shoot a sharp quip back at her while Donnie ushered her away.

“Hey, hey, hey, no need to get worked up now, it’s cute that they think we’re together! Isn’t it? Come on, Adagio, is that a smile I see? I think it is!”

His voice grew higher-pitched and her stormy expression softened, although the frantic beating of her heart could not be quelled so easily. Did he mean that? Mean what? Her thoughts pinged back and forth intermixed with the siren’s, though it was confusing and frustrating, two lines of thinking coming awkwardly up against one another in a moment when all the gears needed to be turning far more smoothly than they were.

Yet it was good and they could relax into that good, however it presented itself. It felt good, simply so, to have Donnie’s arm around her as Adagio relaxed a little into it, though she still huffed, puffing out her cheeks filled with air. She grunted and shook her head, arms folded across her chest, yet it was hard to hold the image for long with Donnie teasing her, poking her in the ribs.

That he was acting, to her, like something more than a friend… Adagio swallowed hard, unable to help the blush from rising further, pulling at the tips of her ears. She hadn’t had a blush like that on her since she had been Knight and she wasn’t so sure that she liked that part of the feeling anymore.

The end of summer and warmer weather was nearly all gone as they moved into the later span of Autumn, the colder months rising, bundling them up. It had more people than ever hustling into Adagio’s bar to seek comfort in warming alcohol, though they still had not found a condo that they liked. It was the biggest purchase that either of them would have made, even together, in their lives and needed due consideration, something that was a binding commitment between them.

But what she did not expect was for Thanksgiving to rush up on them so quickly. And, with that, came a whole new set of added complications for someone who was coming up to a whole year (give or take a short few months) of living in one body with two consciousnesses.

“So…” Donnie broke the silence as they sat at Adagio’s kitchen table pouring over condo paperwork, choices for them, prices that would or would not work for them. “I was thinking, I’m not going home for Thanksgiving this year, but I’m going to join a few friends for it. Everyone’s welcome to bring a plus one, so would you like to come with me?”

Adagio pretended to consider the question, pursing her lips and rocking her chair back onto two legs, the old wood creaking. That was one more thing that would need to be replaced when they moved into the condo, eventually. Though they were, most likely, coming up on a good choice, settled with a financial advisor too, though Adagio would not admit that she had scared off the first one with her hard-headed attitude. It was just the way she was.

“Sure, sounds good!”

Her chirpy tone was pushed forward by the siren and she rolled her eyes inwardly.

I had it in hand…

You let it linger too long. You’ve got to jump in while there’s a chance, not leave the opening drag on and on and on and on!

The siren’s complaints clashed with Adagio, yet it was merely a conflict in personalities, one more thing that they would have to work out. Yet if they were sisters, that sort of thing was only to be expected, forced into closer contact with each other than sisters or anyone else ever should have been. Sometimes, Adagio wondered if she was ever going to get used to it.

Donnie’s smile, however… It was a wonder that she hadn’t officially made a move on him yet, though it was not something that, quite honestly, she had ever had to do as Knight. Sure, there had been a couple of relationships and some flirting, but that was the extent of it. No one had made her tingle inside like Donnie did, her heart fluttering and butterflying, teasing back and forth, all restlessly so.

What about you? She asked the siren, floating in the back of her mind, keeping one ear on proceedings so that nothing slipped by her attention. Have you ever had anything like this?

Like what? A relationship? Nothing like what is in your world, what is here. There were only female sirens, though there were some ponies that wanted our attention in other ways too. Sometimes we stayed with them for a while, but there were no attachments.

And does this feel different to you?

The truth was told in the siren’s hesitation, the silence stretching out.

I… I think so.

Either way, it did not matter with Adagio there to ensure things remained on an even keel, that she did not take advantage of Donnie when he meant so much to her. Their relationship may not have been following a normal path in the usual sense of things, but there was nothing normal about Adagio’s life, not after her transformation. So, it made sense for things to, well, be just a little bit different.

She made sure she dressed nicely for Thanksgiving dinner, though lamented openly to Donnie when he drove her there that she was not able to help with cooking.

“I want to make a good impression with your friends! What if they don’t like me because I didn’t bring a side dish?”

Chuckling, he poked her shoulder, the spot that his finger touched leaving a warm span even after the digit had left her proximity.

“Oh, give it up – no one is going to think that! I didn’t bring anything either, I can’t cook, but I can help with the washing up with you too afterwards, we’ll do our bit. I’m sure you’re going to get on with everyone so well.”

Since when had he been such a cheerleader for her? It seemed that nothing that she did could look wrong in his eyes, though she was careful to keep any manner of the siren’s mischief from leaking through to that side of the relationship. Maybe a few more innocent pranks could slip through the net later on, but, well, it was better if she didn’t allow the siren to tease too much. Who even knew how the siren would behave after even more than a single drink?

Is that why you haven’t let me have anything to drink? I thought you were just a prude.

That’s not how the word is used…

But they were there, the car pulling up, and it was time for Adagio to tease down her impatience, her easily rising frustration, to remember to put on a face. It may have been unfamiliar territory but, damn it, she was going to ace it just like she did for everything else! Besides, if nothing else, it was good to have an entire day off from the bar, not to think, not to do, not even to work out and train at the dojo.

“Hi, everyone!”

The house was a bustle of activity – ten people, including Adagio. Donnie introduced her to everyone, but it was such a whirlwind of activity that she hardly remembered their names, struggling to match everything and everyone up with so much uncharted territory ahead of her. But one stood out to her, one person whose name she could not possibly forget when she was right there in front of her after so much time apart.

“Aria?”

The other woman blinked, her hair purple with blue streaks, tied back in pigtails that pointed back from her head a little more, in a fashion that was more adult than how Adagio had last seen her. She was as slim as Adagio with a violet tint to her skin – variations in skin shade being normal in their world – her eyes bored and cast off to the side as if she was not really all that interested in what was going on.

“Adagio?”

Ah, so she had finally met another of the sirens, the sirens who should not, truly, have existed in a world. Equestrian magic, however, had leaked through and there was no taking that back as the siren took the wheel quite firmly, letting things move on, meeting everyone. It was the siren who took care of the names while Adagio pestered them, both of them Adagio in that moment and no one, all at once.

What’s going on? Who is see?

In answer, the siren showed her a memory of Aria from a school that she had briefly attended, all in an attempt to sow chaos. The sirens singing, howling out their melody – though the memory cut off before it played out in its entirety.

That purple siren was here? Wow… Adagio considered that, half in reality and half in her mind. She’s beautiful, was and still is. What are you going to do now that you guys have found each other again?

She felt rather than heard the siren’s sigh.

I don’t know. This isn’t something that anyone, least of all us, could have planned for.

They didn’t have much of a chance to talk then, not with everything happening so quickly, and she was someone else’s plus one – a woman with long, blonde hair and a look in her eye that seemed to say something more than her words did. There was too much there for Adagio and the siren to keep track of all at once, trying to help with the food, being a good guest, though working in the bar helped a lot. The others appeared more than a little impressed at her ability to carry three plates at once on each arm, let alone her ability to carry multiple glasses at once without spilling a drop – sans tray!

“Wow, how do you do that?”

Adagio grinned, flicking her hair back over her shoulder, cocky at the best of times.

“It’s a skill. In my bar, things are so hectic that there’s no time to do things one thing at a time. You’ve got to be up to multitask!”

Her words could have been encouraging but they came out in a way that set her apart, the woman – Athina, the siren added in her head – backing off with a small frown.

“Oh… Well, haha, I don’t think I’d be cut out for that kind of work.”

“What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m an office admin. Nothing all that interesting really.”

Not interesting at all, the siren agreed with her, Adagio’s attention flicking away, as wayward as ever. She wanted new, she wanted interesting, and it was just a little bit boring there when there was no chaos to sow. Her fingers itched to be in charge – maybe cooking was something that she could do? Everyone seemed to love the host, praising her, praising her food, conversation flowing more easily for the sake of it being passed over hot, steaming bowls and plates of freshly prepared deliciousness.

Still, Aria was there and she was able to touch base with her, if only a little. They had to be cautious, however, considering that no one else knew who they really were, that they were not the people that they pretended to be. Even if Adagio had thrown herself whole-heartedly into a new life, an existence that had given her so very much to hope for, to cling to, to find a new passion in.

“So, you work in a bar, do you?”

Aria asked the question casually, as if she was interested, a forkful of meat dangling near her mouth.

“Yes, the best in town.” Adagio grinned, commanding everything as both Adagio and the siren, both together. “I’ll give you the address later, you should swing by some time.”

Oh, it’s so difficult giving covert orders… Are you sure we have to be so discreet?

The siren begged her to be a little more lenient but if anyone knew how far or not she could go it was Adagio. She had lived in that life and world for so much longer than the siren, as much as the hippocampus type creature within her chewed and champed at the bit, desperate to take things forward. Yet all good things could come in time, Adagio told her, exchanging contact details with Aria so that the two of them could talk properly at another time.

“Sounds good, boss,” Aria said, using the old term without thinking. “I’ll be sure to swing by.”

At least she understood what the order was.

You order her around?

Well, you’re used to chains of command too from the military. In a way, this is the same. At least in a way that I can liken it to your experiences.

No one, thankfully, batted an eye at Aria saying such a thing – maybe it had slipped into her vernacular a little more even without being around her other siren sisters?

Donnie, however, knew how to command her attention more than she could command others, soft and gentle, lurking a hair’s breadth under the surface. His knee brushed hers under the table and she did not move it away, catching her breath, heart pounding, leaping into her throat. It would have been easier to stop things between them than it ever would have been to continue it – but that was the exciting part, even to the siren.

This tiny touch, this moment… Even the siren was in awe, patient and still, simply waiting. You never know what is going to happen after it.

That’s what makes it the exciting part. I think. I don’t know. You say that like I’ve done this before!

The touch could not be held, however, the alcohol touching them lightly, good food helping conversation flow more easily between them. It was a weird way of looking at things, though Adagio was more than careful to not overindulge. After all, she had the siren to think of too and losing control over her body when her limits were exceeded was not something that she wanted to enjoy too much of, especially when Donnie was around. Considering that they were his friends there, she still wanted to make something of a good impression, doing all she could.

The evening, however, came to a close, softly and awkwardly, as if no one knew how to say goodbye. Although she had the names of Donnie’s friends catalogued in her mind, logged against each of their faces, a connection with them was not something that Adagio felt that she had made, shaking her head in the crisp autumn air, dry, brown leaves clinging to the trees.

“Do you think we’ll find a condo soon?” She asked, though it was a question, truly, that one might have asked a lover or a partner – someone that they were committed to. “It’s taking so long… We’ve got the finances sorted now though, right?”

That it was unconventional, clearly, had not passed Donnie’s notice either, making an odd, gurgling noise in the back of his throat and stirring the toe of his shoe through the dirt. The sidewalk was fresh and clean, the dinner having taken them a little way out of the main body of the city, to the outskirts where the suburbs were vaster and more expansive. No one could really tell whether property was more expensive in the city or out of it, as everyone got something different for the same value when trying to compare the two, but Adagio could not imagine living out there full time. There was too much hustle and bustle in the city to lure her in, to call the edge of chaos to her mind again and again, as much as she tried to tame that instinct.

Maybe it was as much a part of her to simply thrive in madness as the siren was. And Adagio was not inclined to change that, of course. It was the way of things and, really, what did she think could have ever come of her old life? No, that time was long gone, her time serving behind her, the man that she had been a fond but distant memory.

Time to live in the present.

Adagio smiled.

She would not dare, however, looking at his hand, their attention turning to condos again as they eased back into the car. She did not yet drive, which the siren thought was strange, and was already nagging her to get her license, all so that she could have a vehicle in a city with excellent public transport links.

It’s a symbol of freedom. I should know what that is.

But Adagio wasn’t listening to her, drawing them both back gently to reality, to what was there before their eyes. The white lines on the road blinked by, Adagio tucked in on the passenger side, a blanket thrown over her.

“I’m sorry the heating isn’t working in here anymore,” he lamented, fiddling with the dials again as if that alone would get things working. “I keep meaning to get time to fix it but, well… You know how things are.”

“Do you do much work with cars?”

Donnie grinned, the white flash of his smile brightening his face.

“Not much, but my brother did. He taught me a bit, heh… Anything I can’t do I can ask him about. I really should get it fixed, I don’t want you to be cold.”

Adagio chuckled, brushing a curl of russet hair back from her face. It was particularly springy and lively that day, just the way she liked it.

“You don’t have to worry about that, I doubt I’ll be in the car that much. But the condos… What about the one on Southside Avenue?”

Donnie’s brow furrowed.

“The one that was near the top floor? I thought you wanted somewhere with a garden.”

“Yeah…”

But not really. What she’d wanted was a tiny connection to the outside, to a more natural world that better suited the siren, even if the business of the city was perfect for her. The condo had been high up, giving them a viewpoint that made them feel as if they were looking out over their own personal domain.

“Let’s go back and see that one tomorrow. Do you think we can get in after you finish work?”

Of course, she knew that that was ever so slightly manipulative, but in a way that made her giggle and her toes curl more than anything truly wicked. He warmed to her, words gushing forth, yes, oh, yes – he would find a way to make it work. It was the first condo that she had shown any true interest in afterwards, even though it did not have that shared link to that natural world, a small smile pulling at her lips.

“Close to your work, close to mine… And other places too if we move on. It’s worth checking out again, though the interior needed some work.”

I have some ideas for that.

Chuckling quietly to herself, Adagio shushed her. It was still difficult to keep up two conversations at once, one inside her head and one outside.

Yeah, I’m sure. But if that’s the one we’ll see once we’re in there, hey?

For there was something stronger between her and Donnie than Adagio could have ever realised, blossoming and growing sweetly with the tender touch of Equestrian magic. Not in a bad way, of course, but sometimes fate itself required a little push, beyond what they were able to do for themselves.

The quiet of the road rolled by under them, Donnie’s older car rattling a little, humming a little, but not making too much noise. The peace of it all sank into Adagio, feeling safer than she ever had before, even the siren quietly present, as if the world around them had suddenly ceased to exist.

That’s a dark thought.

Adagio’s eyelids drooped.

Not in a bad way. Just in a way…that this moment is enough.

And sometimes that was all that a moment needed to be, sleepy warmth sinking into her limbs, dragging her down. With Donnie, she didn’t need to put on a mask, even though she still wanted to be her best self, yawning softly, safe and sound. Was there anything more that anyone in the world could have asked for?

Down and down and down, streetlights flickering by, heading back to the city. Neither of them had drunk much and yet it was him who kept her safe, eyes on the road, though his gaze flicked to her occasionally, caught by the siren.

He likes you.

Adagio murmured softly.

You think?

It may have been a given, though she was going to have to say something at some point, when things could not remaining quietly as they were forever. The hunt for a condo was, perhaps, ending after their time finding out what they liked – and what the siren liked was the expansive park nearby that particular condo, the one with a lake.

Perhaps there, she could feel a little like her old self again, just the same as Adagio allowed parted of the man, Knight, to linger, to meld and weave with her new personality. In a way, it was personal growth. But it was a kind of growth that the two of them, irrevocably, would have to undertake together.

Donnie’s fingers brushed the back of her hand, only vaguely noted in the arms of sleep.

Yet the drive rolled on, taking them back to the city, their new lives together stretching out ahead.