Chapter 3: Red Sails in the Sunset
2004. Malibu
Witching hour and the bedroom window is wide open; the white curtain flapping and billowing like the sail of an ancient ship bound for worlds of myth and legend. The night is hot and slow and rich, when the creatures of dream and enchantment bestir themselves to cast their spell. The soft plish-plash of the Pacific laps rhythmically in Patrick's ears, soothing and insistent, calling him to join it in the deep. He does not resist. It is easy to slumber, here by the sea.
And he dreams… of the ocean.
He is standing alone on a pale golden beach, the sand chilly between his toes as the ashen light shifts and heaves and withers into darkness. Slowly his eyes adjust to the looming contours of a large, black rock to his right. There is a figure reposed upon it; a shapely form from whose throat comes the most exquisite, transcendent song he has ever heard. The figure rises smoothly and slinks down the rock, slipping quickly to the shore. And her enthralling voice beckons to him on the breeze.
Patrick follows, gripped, and walks with no hesitation into the expressionless sea. The water is freezing, but he doesn't care. On and on he wades, until the water is everywhere and he can no longer feel the steadfast anchor of the seabed. And then he begins to sink. Not fast, like a stone, but steadily, inexorably, carried down gently by the strong swell of the current. He comes back to himself for a moment, struggling to break free, to swim upward towards the pallor he knows is the sky, but the invisible arms of the water gods hold tight. A beautiful face appears just out of reach in the cool, enveloping water: dark, feline, seductive. Tendrils of ebony hair stream like snakes around her head and her eyes are a curious charred black: an absence of light, a void he can't peer into. Her mouth splits into a smile, cat-like. He is something of a cat himself; he recognises her animal nature and feels a strange affinity in the gloom.
The creature glides unhurriedly away from him, lithe and lissom, her movements at one with the swell. She is like water herself, fluid and impossible to grasp.
"Wait!" His voice bubbles soundlessly in the liquid.
He wants to swim after her, right down into the indigo depths, as far as he can go, but he knows that he will drown. Pulled under by the heavy promise of an unknown desire he knows she will never grant.
She turns. Her smile grows wider, warmer. And then she slides into the void.
Patrick opens his eyes. The window is wide open, the curtain flapping and billowing in the murmuring breeze. He glances beside him, where the reassuring curves of his beloved wife rest serenely under the pure white sheet.
Note: So here's Lorelei presented as the dangerous siren of legend, luring Sailor Jane on with false hope and "singing like a bird". I don't think that sirens were supposed to swim themselves (they had wings), so I turned her into a kind of mermaid to fit what I wanted to say. I added the rock because we saw Lorelei hiding behind it in the actual episode (and going for a swim).