I wonder how long it will take Nata to realize she's dead. Aunt Cantata isn't going to come back no matter how many times Nata stops swimming and just bobs there so her mommy can 'catch up'. Everytime this happens, I just reach out a forehoof to grab her and tell her that she'll ruin the game if she does that.
Game.
That's what is this is to her, but only because I told her so. Lies are always easy for me, and technically Aunty lied to Nata all the time to keep her happy, even if she called it something else. It was probably still a lie, anyway.
My name's Aria Blaze, I'm a siren which is a fancy way of saying I'm a monstrous half-breed that results when a unicorn stallion and a seapony mare get real close. Sometimes I'd try to tell Nata this in a lot more detail, but then Aunty'd get real mad. Nata, or Sonata Dusk, is the daughter of my seapony mother's sister Cantata Dusk. I don't know why Aunty has a siren name when she was just a regular old seapony but it isn't important, especially now that she's gone.
My cousin, Nata, is pretty dim. I mean, she still acts like a little foal and doesn't understand anything I try to explain to her, and had to be kept happy all the time and be reminded to do everything. Even when she was doing that we had to remind her of what was right in front of her. She still likes to play really silly things and act like a baby. She also thinks that clams can sing. Outside of all that, I guess she's okay. I mean, she was the only one I played with when we were both really little. After all, who was I supposed to play with, the sea cucumbers? We did almost everything together, since it was just us two and Aunty in her cottage a few reefs short of the Barren Sea's barrier. She didn't send Nata to school, so I had to play with her a lot, but there were other sirens and seaponies in the village.
Nata doesn't know who her father is, but if I know anything about anything it's that Aunty knew. What I didn't count on her doing was telling me with her dying breath. She also made me promise not to tell Nata, and for now I won't, instead I'll find him and make him love Aunty's little Sonatina like he probably should have, I mean she once made a shark smile... or maybe that was after I smacked it for trying to eat Nata's face when she only wanted to pet him. He saw more stars in a minute than a pony in the Overworld sees in a week because of me.
Still, Nata's going to be pretty upset. I mean, seaponies die real different from most creatures. They die of sadness. Also oldness, but mostly sadness. If you make a seapony very sad, so they can't do anything but be sad - too sad to even cry any more - then a seapony stops singing, and they die. I think sirens die like ponies, but then again I don't know much about ponies. I've only seen them in murals and heard the songs of sailors.
I don't like it when creatures die. Not because Nata is asking me where dinner is, and I keep telling her we'll have to catch it and she asks how do we catch a dinner... and it's kinda annoying... but because Aunty didn't take to stonework very well. No way to move stones means no cairn. No cairn means she's just 'sleeping' in the house where I left her, when I went to go tell Nata about our 'game'. Dead things attract living things, and not just any living things either but the kind that eat dead things. Get the picture?
So here we are. Every time Nata and I went into the nearest village with Aunty to get new shell necklaces for our birthdays or Nata's favorite kelp, we were often mistaken for sisters. Aunty was sea green with light purple eyes and silver streaks in her fins that were straight like Nata's and mine. I'm purple and green, not quite Aunty's green though. Nata is blue with purple hues. It wasn't that great though because we'd always get our cheeks pinched and told how cute we were. No one could remember a time when I wasn't under Aunty's care, and I'm only old enough to remember that she's my aunt and not my mom.
If Nata does find out that Aunty's dead, which she probably won't since she forgets stuff easily and I can trick her into being happy or just lie again, she'll probably start crying and it will probably be worse than when her pet starfish ran away. Her clown fish also ran away, but not the same way. He 'ran away' eight times and I 'found' him eight times, except I think that one of the ones I caught for her was a girl, but she never noticed and was ecstatic when her fish was 'returned' to her.
My mind is filled with so much right now, and I don't know what to say and I probably shouldn't say anything unless it's just a little white lie. I just don't know what'll come out of my mouth. Right now, I need to worry about other things, like the whole reef that's in front of me. Ponies live a far in the north, but navigating the Overworld is weird, and most ponies don't even live on coasts, because they're apparently too dumb to realize that the ocean is where all the food is. So, we should probably work our way somewhere north, or just a place with a city or a map. I'm too young to try Surfacing and it's a pretty scary thought to even go towards the shallower reefs, so Nata and I will just stay around here, where everything is safe.
I need to catch us a dinner anyway.