Once Upon a Time (She Drowned Misguided Sailors)
Ursula was a siren. She wasn't one of those ridiculous mermaids who were so loving and cheerful and beautiful. She'd always been different. She had tentacles, not a tail. Her voice didn't make people happy, it dragged them to their death. She lured sailors into the depths of the ocean, and then she killed them. She used their blood for potions and their voices and memories and everything else for magick. It was what kept her sustained.
Then they called her a cannibal. Cannibal. She wasn't human. She was better. She was more evolved and more powerful than some useless human. She didn't eat sirens. She ate humans. Survival of the fittest. Her species. The pretty little mermaids just smiled and laughed along with the humans, the lesser species, and she made sure that she wouldn't be the one being put in a circus tank when they got bored of her.
She ended up in a tank anyway.
There were no sources of water on the Isle.
Uriah wasn't her son. When he was tossed in the tank with her, his name was Aaron. She renamed him. When he came, he had red hair and giggled and he had scaled skin. Now his hair was black and ice-tipped and he was very, very good at luring in men- tell them that a beautiful woman was asking for them, sing softly to lure them in, even though his singing voice wasn't that good. Or rather, it wasn't good at all. It was terrible when he arrived, all high-pitched and gurgly and happy.
Now, his voice was soft and enticing and cruel and maybe not perfect, but wondrous in its own right. And that was all her. No one else. She had forced the potions and poisons down his throat to make his voice beautiful. He would deliver her men to show how grateful he was.
Too bad he wasn't.
The poisons had damaged his lungs- when he wasn't singing, his breath was raspy and harsh. The potions broke down his brain, he couldn't feel anything. No emotions. No pain. No heat. Nothing. The eternal singing lessons had kept him from school- he had no friends, no allies, nothing.
The Kings and Queens took pity on him. But not on her. She was made into a court jester. Singing for a bunch of brats whenever they told her. Left to starve on human food. And her son, maybe one she didn't give birth to, but her son nonetheless, laughed. Told her she was pathetic, even when he was the one hooked up to oxygen tanks because he couldn't breathe, let alone sing anymore.
He killed her when she told him he was now worthless.
He hadn't planned to.
And that made it better.
He broke the tank.
He died too.
(But Hayley honoured him, and left her to rot, because she was nothing anymore, not scary, not beautiful.)