I'm not sure at what point exactly I started needing water to survive, though I'm certain that statement sounded moronic. I don't just have to drink it. I need to breathe it. Surround myself in the sea or else I just can't breathe. That's not something I've ever told Rogue about. Suffocating if I spend too long on dry land is an awful weakness to risk becoming common knowledge, not to mention the other problems that come with people knowing my heritage, and the more people I told the closer the knowledge was to common.

While we were in Sabertooth we were close enough to the ocean that I could make an excuse to go to the beach about once a week and get in my mandatory swim. Salt water would sate my need for closer to two weeks, but it was nice to have a few days leeway in case something happened. I'd also go down just before a job. No sense in only giving myself a few days to work before I had to run home.

I'd swam just before the tournament too, but I hadn't had time in all the hassle changing guilds afterwards. After we finally got all of our things moved to the new apartment I was planning to take a train to the beach the night before-a sign of how desperate I was-but Rogue insisted I go to the welcome party Fairy Tail was throwing. Now my breathing was shallow. Inhaling hurt. Singing had been hell. I couldn't put off the swim any longer.

Fortunately for me Magnolia was beside a lake. I've had to settle for that a few times before. It varied from lake to lake, but fresh water had never given me more than three days to work with. I wouldn't be taking long jobs for a while.

Rogue was still having me stick with him until we knew our way around town, so I'd snuck out early in the morning to go swim. The closest point from town to the lake was by the girls dormitory. I didn't want anyone spotting me there and getting the wrong idea. I especially didn't want them seeing my clothes and getting a horrible idea. I tucked my clothing under some bushes by the lakeside and crept into the water.

Even on my skin the cool liquid felt like sweet relief. My lungs ached thinking of how good it would feel in my gills.

I don't know when I started needing water to survive, but I know I was only a few years old when Weisslogia noticed something off about me. It was another year before we realized what. I wouldn't say I'm inhuman, because at least two of my grandparents were human, but since I'm half siren at least two grandparents weren't human.

The shift isn't swift, but it's painless. I've changed forms enough times in my life that I don't even feel it as my legs merge into a tail, fins stretch out of my arms and back, and webbing grows beneath my fingers. What I do feel is the scales creeping up my neck, the awkwardness of staying upright, and the sudden difficulty breathing air.

I dove under the surface, enjoying the feel of the water moving around me. Comparing a lake to the ocean is like comparing swamp water to wine. There's really just no comparing them, but if you wander for long enough in a desert even swamp water looks like nectar. I don't want to say I don't like my life on land, but it would probably have been easier for me to have moved out to sea when I first found myself on my own.

I was practicing barrel rolls when I heard the first giggle.

When it was joined by a second I ducked behind an outcrop of rocks and peeked out. Rogue hadn't shut up about how friendly a place Fairy Tail was supposed to… well, he'd talked about it more than he usually does things. Nonstop jabber or just being talkative, I didn't care how great the thought the people in the guild were. If I didn't even want Rogue knowing I was half fish I sure as hell didn't want a bunch of girls I only formally met a day ago knowing.

Maybe I could pass it off as a takeover spell… but I didn't know takeover magic, and I knew at least three members of the guild did. If they expected me to demonstrate more forms or even just shift between human and siren they'd see right through that story. I might be able to tell them it was a onetime thing. A curse I subject myself to on a dare or-ohholycraptheywerecompletelynaked! They were going skinny dipping? At six in the morning? Where they mad?

One of the girls, Levy, I think, drifted closer to me. I backed up, mind running full throttle trying to think of a way out of this one. I really had no idea they were coming out. I could excuse it that way. If I wasn't looking when I was caught… but I was still in siren form. They were closer to my clothes than me. If I changed back I'd be naked too and then no matter what I said…

I caught myself humming and forced down the noise. I'd managed to enchant the guild last night, however accidentally, but that wouldn't work here. I still had a while before I'd gotten enough water to breathe easy again. I wasn't sure I could sing for that long, and the second I slipped on a line the spell would be broken and then I'd have every single one of them, naked, having followed me however far out or deep into the lake I went, with no clear memory of how they got there. Not a good idea.

I dove underwater again, finding a section of the lake close enough to make sure they didn't get near where I'd hidden my clothes, but deep enough that not enough light would reach me for them to be able to notice I was there. I could see them though. Really see them. Forget getting caught in siren form. If anyone ever found out I saw the entire population of the girls' dormitory wet and naked I was a dead man. I'd never tried to get on Minerva's bad side. I was sticking to that plan with Erza too.

Just as I was getting settled in there I heard someone ask Juvia how deep under water she could go. No doubt she could at least reach my level. I had a strict policy about not swimming down too far in the ocean, but in the lake it was probably safe. I doubted there would be many strange ancient predators who'd take badly to me using light magic just outside of Magnolia.

The lake was deeper than it looked, but not so deep that water pressure was unbearable. I took me a few seconds to reach the bottom. Without light I crashed face first into mud and clay, and took a moment to shake myself out of my stupor. I didn't want to be branded as a pervert on my second day at Fairy Tail, but that was no reason to make an idiot of myself.

Holding my hand out, I channeled as much light magic into it as I dared and began exploring the lake floor. I'd probably never go this deep again-I'd never get into the water just beside the dorm again either-but it didn't hurt to check the lake out a bit.

When I maintained that Rogue only liked Gajeel's singing because he was a fanboy, he told me I still shouldn't have done that because we needed to be trying to get along with our new guild mates. I knew the really skinny one was into art, and you could make sculptures out of clay. Whether or not the clay on the bottom of the lake was the right type or even if he did sculpt wasn't something I knew or even cared about. It was the thought that counted in the end, and as long as I looked thoughtful it would be alright. I scooped up an armful of what looked like it might be good clay as I went along the lake floor.

I was trying to mold the clay into an easier to carry shape when I bumped face first into something for the second time that day. Don't laugh. When you have a fish tail and human arms with useless little fins sticking out it's much easier to just keep swimming than it is to stay still.

I backed up and brightened my light to see what I'd hit. Something smooth and leathery and… crap. What was that? A mosasaur? A fricken Cedeus? I extinguished the light completely and prayed that whatever it was I hadn't woken it up. I've never had to adapt my fighting style to my siren form. The largest thing I'd ever run into in the ocean was a large squid, and even if that thing had been interested in me it hadn't been any larger than I was. I didn't want to try and fend off this thing.

I didn't stay in the water long after that, hurrying up to the surface on the far end of the lake. When I surfaced I could still hear laughter drifting over the lake, so there was still no going back for my clothes. I wasn't going back down there, and I couldn't leave yet, so for lack of anything better to do I got to work with the dull task of washing mud out of the clay.

Just look like you're trying to make peace with these nuts.

I'd only been at it a minute when a sparkle caught my eye. Buried in the clay was a piece of metal. As I worked it out I uncovered a whole amulet. It was too filthy to really make out, but I didn't think it would make any difference if it wasn't. The piece of trash was so old and worn that there was just no telling what color the metal it was made of had originally been. I tried to rub some of the clay off and found a rune etched into it. Digging the clay out of that would take more than just my nails-which were going to require some digging clay out of too for that matter.

By the time I'd uncovered all of the runes I could still hear the girls on the other side of the lake. A few of the runes resembled Fioren characters, so I imagined that it was an older version of the alphabet. I didn't recognize the other characters, but if I remembered properly Gajeel's not-a-girlfriend and Laxus' not-a-boyfriend both worked with runes. Once she put her clothes back on I could ask her what the symbols said.

Next I worked on whatever had been embedded in the center. It was too dark to be a ruby, but too light to be a garnet. It looked like it had once been a thirteen pointed star, but only eleven points had stood the test of time.

It wasn't my kind of thing, but it was still an interesting trinket. I had a small collection of odd trinkets I found on the ocean floor. Not sea shells, that's too common. Old fish bones and tourist trinkets that had fallen from cruise ships. This could be the start of my lake collection.

-x-

STA: Two things. First: please, if you ship Gajeel, Levy, Laxus, or Freed with anyone, don't try to convert me in a review. GaLe is not one of the pairings I'm big on but I seriously think it's going to happen. The not-a-boyfriend is just a joke about some of the gay moments Freed's had. Second: I won't normally update this fast. I just hate only having one chapter of something posted.

So yeah. Sting's half-siren. I'm pretty sure that siren aren't supposed to actually be aquatic, but whatever. Aside from Kid Icarus-which has machine-gun-staff wielding angels fighting aliens under the orders of a goddess and is thus is not a valid source for anything-very recent media portrayal I've seen of them has basically made them mermaids, so I will too. Mostly, saying "siren" just sounds nicer than "merman." Usually I don't make this huge an edit to a character for a story, but the plot I wanted involved a lot of stuff that depended on the breathing underwater and struggling on air thing. I'd sort of been planning to do this with Jellal, but I found a better role for him.

Next chapter: Gray screws up on a mission.