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She comes into this world one silent, hazy evening, in a dry, lacklustre hospital room. How she comes into this world doesn’t matter. She comes, and she is. A lump of flesh with a little beating drum inside of her. And she stays, in a little box in another dry, lacklustre room with all the other little boxes.
The drum beats, beats, beats and she breathes, breathes, breathes. She hears nothing, sees nothing, knows nothing and she is nothing. She is nothing until is something. Something to someone. Small hands, soft skin, a soft voice. She is held in those small arms that wrap around her, delicate, like the wings of a little bird. She is held close and flush in those arms and she hears a song. She hears for the first time the song she will love for the rest of her life. A beautiful song that calls her home and its melody that will haunt her when afar. She hears this song and later she will realise, she has always known this song- from before she was and forevermore even after she is.
And then, she is alive, alive, alive and she moves and twitches and cries and she wants to sing back to that beautiful song because she is in love and she is drowning and held afloat by a sweet, sweet love.
"Hello, my baby sister", the Siren sings," I love you so very much."
The spell is cast and it is final. Baby Sister will know this much later. Years and years into a life that was never hers, after she rips and shreds the tender heart of her beautiful, cruel siren. Her Siren's eyes are gold, brown and the colour of love when she cries for Baby Sister.
"You left me. You left me." The Siren weeps, weeps, weeps and Baby Sister's heart is dust, dust, dust. Her arms extend and she wants rip her chest open, past the flesh and bones, all the way to her crumbling heart. That poor, pitiful thing. Branded at birth with her Siren's song, never to beat to its own tune. She opens her chest and uproots a dying plant. Not yet a tree. Rotted remains of a future that never came to be. A life where she might have left and there remained a Siren that never sang her song again because the thing she could have become took all of her love away.
Baby Sister tears away that ugly, rotten thing and carves out a place inside herself. A place where the Siren can reside and call home and know without a doubt, that it is forever.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry", she prays, prays, prays, "I'll never, never. Ever again. I love you." She can, she will. She was so, so wrong, but that's okay. She has promised and she will spend all that is left of her lifethatisnothers to make up for it. She might be Baby Sister but she isn't a baby anymore. She hugs her song, her life, her Siren and holds her close. The empty house in her chest awaits its occupant.
It's okay. I’m here. You can come home now.
Baby Sister knows. Knows just as surely as she knows that she was really, truly only born when she was held in her Siren's arms- that she is blessed and she is cursed. Her Siren is poison and it is her ambrosia. All that she is, all that she will ever be, is Baby Sister. No less, no more, no Other.
She cannot be Other. She need not be Other.
She does not want to be Other.
Wet, full-body sobs die down into quiet whimpers. Her Siren comes home. The house is empty no longer.
Her Siren is happy. Her Siren smiles. Her Siren sings.
"Sammy".
Sammy is alive, alive, alive.