Her isolation was an imposed penance...

...not her choice.

She was there to pay the price for her transgressions against her people.

To make good for her sins against the sea.

Not that Amabel had done anything wrong.

Not really.

In fact if her people had been more reasonable, and if their laws had been more just the young siren would have been lauded instead of punished.

Praised...

...instead of persecuted.

She gazed out of the dreary looking harbor, at it's dark grey fog enrobed waters and sighed.

The verdict of her people, of their elders had only confirmed what she had already come to believe: fear guided far too many of their laws, and that those laws weren't very just. Or very fair.

It wasn't, after all some whalers that she had rescued from the briny deep. Or some fowl mouthed pirates that she had delivered from the ocean's cold remorseless embrace.

They were children.

Sweet, innocent, round faced little children whose eyes and features were no different from the young of her own kind.

She had heard their cries when their ship had hit the reef. She could smell the blood of the dead and the dying upon the waters from miles away.

Hesitation, any hesitation would have signed their death warrants...

...but she didn't hesitate. Not for a moment.

She bundled the three youngsters in her arms and carried them to the nearest shore. She waited out the storm there with them leaving only after first light, only after she heard the band of approaching humans.

As for herself? She was immensely proud of what she had done and she basked in the memory of that precious moment with those dear, sweet little foundlings...

The counsel of elders saw things very differently.

They were enraged, furious that one of their own had acted so shamefully! That a siren had bothered to save even one human was scandalous, that she had saved three was a sin that was almost unforgiveable!

So now she was forced to keep watch on the very rock from which she had plucked the children. Forced to remain amidst what remained of the doomed ships crew, forced to endure whatever fate the next human she met would bestow upon her. They wanted Amabel to learn just how wrong she was. To understand just how merciful was the heart of man really is. Would the first to see her spare her...

...or would they send her to a cruel and terrible oblivion? This was how they justified their actions. This was how they avoided spilling her blood. Chance would be either her savior or her executioner.

She stared mournfully at the ship wreck that still bobbed and swayed on the water's surface.

It wouldn't belong now, as she knew from experience, for the pickers, and salvagers to arrive. It wouldn't be long before the area was swarming with humans each one looking to profit from the sailors misfortune.

It was then that she a the ghost of light, a very dim light appear on the rocky shore.

Her heart beat a little faster.

A little harder.

She watched as the light, slowly but steadily grew brighter in the fog...

...seemed to fade...

...then grow brighter still.

She leaned her weight on her right hand as her ebony hued hair cascaded over her pale and exposed chest.

"Soon..." she whispered. "...soon."

She stared down at the disembodied skull that bobbed in the water around her.

Her heart sank like an iron anchor had been chained to it.

How, she wondered could any human see her for what she really was, how could anyone see the good within her...

...while she was surrounded by the mire and filth of the grim specter of death?

"Their coming..." she whispered. "Soon...soon..."