Long ago, I went to a youth group to study our holy text. One thing that had been bothering me was the fast-and-loose way the cleric would incorporate holy verses in his sermons, so I decided to craft a fallacious but nice-sounding sermon for the cleric during our study session. Instead of the obvious flaws in my textual argument being pointed out, the cleric applauded my sermon as profound and told me to share it with others.
Ever since then, I realized that I was cognitively set apart from all the people around me. They might have thought I was one of them, but I saw them from outside of their limited perception of reality. These people had banished memory and critique. In their place were only sentiment and 'official' sources.
I could keep playing along with the theater of thought. When an angler would chat with me as I weighed their catch, a spur-of-the-moment absurd argument would leap from my lips and lead them convincingly toward an unexpected conclusion. People would come to me only to hear me speak as my words were poignant and powerful despite my deliberate use of sophistry to entertain.
My listeners would call me wise. I politely dismissed such compliments. No one was better than me — just at different parts of their journeys. The listener just had to learn a bit of critical thinking, especially in picking up on deceptive acts. Still, they demonstrated I had a magical gift, and so I became known as the lorelei of the village — a siren whose voice gathered crowds.
For years, my playful argumentation and winding lessons followed whatever fits my fancy. I remember being truly happy even though I knew something was wrong with this world, which was so full of what should be easily curable foolishness. Why were people not mastering their thoughts or history? Don't professional teachers know that without such masteries, their minds will become easily entrapped in a house of mirrors and illusions?
How foolish I was back then.
"The councils have selected the new king of the Seven Oceans — Duke Linden," my scrying mirror declared. Its hand was warm in my hand as I had held it for so long. "The selection is a shock to many, especially the loreleis who Linden has demonized with claims that they lead young men astray and crash their ships among the rocks."
It was utter nonsense. I never used my gift to crash any sailors upon the rocky shore. I didn't even like men.
I didn't know how to feel.
A friend of a friend messaged me to pack my bags and remember that I shouldn't take things for granted. Her words felt insensitive. How was I taking anything for granted?
I looked around the lake, which was the home of sirens like me. Countless people with broken hearts poured their attention and tears upon their scrying mirrors. Some searched for why a monster like Linden would get selected by our councils. Others wondered how to escape the Seven Oceans for safer waters outside the reach of the vengeful and cruel King who hated sirens like us, but was there a land where the ocean did not touch and protected from the rains? Would a siren even want to live in such a place?
Most sirens could not manage such a trip due to the cost and just the logistics of leaving our lake system this far inland. We had legs, of course, but being on dry land would keep us separated from our food sources and natural habitat. Switching would be uncomfortable and filled with countless unknowns. We only had a little experience outside of the Land of Thousand Lakes, which was a district of the Seven Oceans.
While almost all sirens spend all their time with their scry mirrors for entertainment or information, a handful sought answers about what they could do. So many memories and stories they would hear, but oddly, not a single bit of actionable advice.
"Organize," many of the scry crystals cried, but none of us knew how to do that. Few of us had strong friendships with our neighbors. The lakes kept us in our own little circles, and even then, we didn't talk with each other much because so much of our time was spent working, sleeping, and scrying. We didn't have any time in our schedule to organize. If we did organize, how would we afford food and rent? The lakes were not cheap, and many of them didn't have any fish anymore. We had to import our fish from the sea. How does one fight back when doing so would bring the deprivations of starvation and homelessness, not to mention violence, imprisonment, and execution?
This wasn't a fantasy land filled with humans and internet celebrities. We lived in the magical world like everyone else.
While most continued to scry fruitlessly for solutions, I took a walk on the water with one of the merfolk on the weekend while I was still processing. One of the others walking with me noticed I had a smile on my face.
Commission of Ichika (our protagonist) from Naze
"Ichika, how do you handle knowing all the things you do and still function?" she inquired of me.
"By grounding my vision of a better future in reality, in which I do my part," I replied with a determined voice. It was a bit of a canned response, like a slogan, but I meant it. "Our situation may seem overwhelming. How does one person stop a king with armies if they come for us? The answer is one doesn't. When we move from thinking about resistance from the point of view of what we can do individually, we find ourselves paralyzed with the magnitude. You start dividing that burden among many people in accordance with what each of them can do, and you will find your share of the burden manageable, though your contribution no less heroic."
As for my name, 'Ichika' used the character for 'One' and the character for 'contemplate; sea'. My mother said it was because I would often be seen alone by the shore, where I seemed just to be thinking or singing to myself. Being alone in moderation was good for me, but these days, I needed to spend more time with others, not less.
The woman didn't seem to like my answer. I think she wanted something passive—a kind of 'how can I feel better' answer. While my past self may have peddled in distractions and illusions, this crisis required me to set aside the art of sophistry and pick up the duty of pedagogy. The best answer I could give her was to do something and be with others. The source of her question's resolution was in solving the problem — not in ignoring it or in drowning herself out through endless distractions. Pacing oneself was fine, but one still had to have something between those pacings.
Another person who had joined us on the water walk asked me how I knew so much about these subjects. The answer was simple — I looked for the knowledge I wanted to have. In my case, I wanted an honest history that cut through the countless illusions the Kings and Queens of the Empire had told us. Some in the walk had balked at me calling our country an Empire, but an honest history told me and those who studied it otherwise.
A week before the council selected Duke Linden, my aunt and uncle had taken me to the Clam Opera House. Such performances were generally beyond my means, but for their generation, my elders could afford such luxuries. We had gone to the restaurant after the show, where I was a dysfunctional mess.
The reason was that I had realized how much of a fool I was. I had always assumed something was wrong with the Seven Oceans, but never really taken all the disparate knowledge I possessed and properly lined it up. What I discovered horrified me. People had always wondered why I didn't take pride in coming from the Sea since they accepted the illusory duty of adoration of one's home sea. My epiphany had taken cautious distancing to the urgent need to rectify or flee my country, leaving me in dire straights.
When my aunt and uncle talked about the necessity of supporting the continuation of Queen Meb's reign, I lashed out in my anguished lack of control. I condemned Queen Meb and the whole regent selection process. Lectures of our country's history blasted out of my mouth and obliterated all other topics. It was definitely not someone pleasant to be around — a problem.
"Ichika, it could be worse," my aunt told me. "It could be Duke Linden who takes the throne."
My aunt had desperately petitioned the persuadable councilors day and night, trying to get them to switch their vote for the current queen. My relative did not want to hear anything about what was wrong with Queen Meb. It was all about defeating Linden. Giving voice to history or critical thought had no place in my aunt's mental ecosystem because the consequence of Linden's ascendency was too dire for us sirens, especially for a lorelei like me.
Still, I had to respond.
"Look what you are doing, Auntie. If we keep selecting between a future that is worse or even worse, we will find ourselves at a dead end."
"Yes, but that is why we have to keep petitioning to change the system and get better nominations for regent," my uncle replied heavily.
"Look at how that has worked out," I retorted in a boiling rage. "The world has gotten far worse."
"What do you mean worse? When we were young children, those with the gift of the lorelei like you were considered cursed and ostracized. The world is much better for a lot of us."
"We should look at the bigger picture. Yes, people like me who can enchant our words can live more freely, but that requires you to miss all the others who have slipped into suffering. Fewer of our waterholes can sustain us due to overfishing and pollution from the alchemists who dump their reagents into the streams that feed into our waters. As the rents for our reefs increase and the fish further and further away from shore, my generation can feel extinction pressures. Almost all my friends have completely foregone having children because they don't know how they can support even one or how that child will survive as things become worse at a frightening pace."
"Even if that is the case, why would you not buy more time by backing Queen to our regional council, "
"I do not disagree, but I don't think she will win," I stated firmly and with an edge to my voice.
"Why?" my aunt wondered, fear entering her voice. Linden winning was her greatest fear.
"She has lost the faith of too many of the merfolk. Every day, she lies about what she does with our armies in the lands of our neighbors, and every day, our scry glasses now give us the truth of her hypocrisy from the point of view of her victims. If you dig back over the last century, it is the same thing over and over as our royals trick us into letting them kill innocent people in order to fill their coffers and the coffers of their friends with the fruits of plunder and conquest. Even if you make this argument that it would be worse under Linden, too many merfolk who would have backed Meb have either switched to Linden or are sitting the selection out."
"But you don't know that."
While I could have never known with certainty back then, I had enough information based on what I was hearing from too many of my generation that I could make a reasonable prediction. After so many similar conversations before the selection, I ended up more isolated than I had ever been before. So heavy was the knowledge and so broken my ability to speak to others that I just couldn't talk to my fellow sirens properly anymore.
Despite my family and friends' desperation for the alternative, Duke Linden did get selected. All those who backed Meb, like my aunt, found the illusions woven around the incumbent's bid to keep the throne unraveling and reality set down upon them with the weight of the ocean deep.
I took to recording my thoughts. It served as a way to process what I had come to understand and to share my insights with others. I had a talent for seeing past certain illusions (not all) and a way with words. We needed to respond to Duke Linden's transition to power urgently. I felt that my purpose would be to assist people in seeing through the dangerous illusions clouding their vision and colonizing their minds. By bringing these people back into reality, we could maybe do something to survive King Linden's reign before it was too late for people like me and many others.
My job was to sort shells by color and size at a calm counter station upstream a bit. Even though I should have been working on weekdays, I found myself just pulling out my magical mirror and doing more recordings. How was I supposed to work in a situation like this? It was like I learned I potentially had terminal cancer but still had to do a job that I hated. Shouldn't I enjoy the last moments of my life? Honestly, I didn't know if King Linden would actually eliminate people like me, but he said he planned to. I was partial to taking his word for it. Regardless, it was an intensely difficult time for me to focus on clam shells when the situation was like this.
I remember someone asking me why my family was panicking like King Linden's ascendency wasn't widespread news. It went to show how little people paid attention sometimes. These people were so far removed from reality that it was painful. For those who could empathize with my plight, I was flailing about trying to get a movement started that could stop King Linden before his armies could crush the lives of so many innocent people.
One night, after a long day of not working and just recording my thoughts, I felt entirely alone in this overcrowded and excessively expensive lake for what had to be the umpteenth time. Then, someone threw a rock into the water near my reef. This stirred me from my depressed laying about and drifted up the shore, where I saw a woman with crimson eyes and white hair — a homunculus from the Fire Kingdoms.
"Why are you here, traveler? I have no place for you to sit in my home beneath the water and nothing for you to eat. If you lost something in the water, I would be happy to fetch it for you."
The homunculus pulled out a magical scroll and wrote on it with her index finger. Her alchemical abilities allowed her to transmute some ink along the path her appendage took across the page. Upon finishing her writing, the woman of Fire turned the parchment back to me so that I could read it.
"Oh great, siren of the Thousand Lakes, I have sought you for you know of truth, and I wish to assist you in spreading that truth by being your warrior."
She was just one person, warrior or not, but with me, that made two. The homunculus looked so surprised by my expression of pure euphoria that someone in the world cared enough to join up with me. Meeting her became the spark I needed not only to improve myself getting out of my passive-aggressive slump but, far more importantly, to start a movement.
But before I got ahead of myself, there was something I had to do.
"What is your name, comrade?"
"Anya," she wrote with flourish and pride. She had a name that meant resurrection. Fitting for supposedly unkillable homunculi.
