WIP Wednesday | She's a Maneater 🧜🏻♀️
^Gorgeous Siren Ayla doodle by the endlessly talented @lycheecatee🌹
TYSM for the tags @redaresss & @woundedsoul12! I am obsessed with Angry Zea & Southern Gothic Ronnie. 💕
For whatever reason, my busted, burnt-out brain has been spinning tf out on Siren Ayla. She first appeared in the little legend I wrote to go along with that mermaid picrew a few months back, but I've since started a proper one-shot for her and her doomed Emmrich-at-Sea. 😂
And it's been fun y'all (and just what I needed).
Ayla had met and devoured more than her fair share of mortal men.
Possibly none quite so handsome as this one, but it was hard to be sure. They had all begun to blur together. Benign in their predictability. Their sameness. Their pathetic tendency to capture and attempt to claim that which was not their own.
The sea. Their lives. Even Ayla herself.
But this one??
…This one was different.
Otherworldly. Bright. Shiny as a newly formed pearl.
She leaned even closer to get a better look, instinctively salivating when she felt the man's pulse race through his fingertips where his hand still lay upon her arm. Holding her gently, despite his fear.
Ayla was unable to discern the exact quality this particular man had about him. Couldn’t even begin to describe it. But there was something strange behind his eyes. They were gorgeous things, the color of seaweed and seahorse purses, a brownish green with flecks of gold that shimmered like scales.
He wasn’t looking at her like she was a thing…but…
Well…she couldn't exactly put her fin on it. But whatever it was, it was intoxicating. Ayla had never seen it’s like and feared she never would again.
She needed this man.
Needed his soft touch and strange eyes. Looking at her as if she wasn't something to catch…
…But to cherish.
And for the first time in her life, Ayla attempted to ignore the all-consuming urge to tear him apart. It wasn't easy—far from it. She could feel it raging, roiling around beneath her skin, thousands of whispering voices joining together to scream at her, demanding she rip him limb from limb.
But even stranger than this man's eyes was her sudden and steadfast desire not to.
"What are you?" she whispered.
He blinked at her for a moment, too stunned to speak, before answering. "…I beg your pardon?"
She leaned back her head and laughed. "So polite. Even as he stares death in the face." Ayla grabbed his neck and hoisted herself onto the little dinghy, her tail still trailing in the water as she settled herself atop the man's lap, soaking his pretty shirt and trousers.
"…Too polite for a sailor…" She trailed a finger across his jaw—ridiculously angular and defined—leaning closer until their noses touched to study his eyes some more. She bit her lip in confusion, assessing his shocked face. "…What are you?"
He cleared his throat. "Not your dinner, I hope," he replied, wincing when she leaned back to let out another delighted cackle, his expression softening into a smile when she offered him a sweet one.
"Not tonight, handsome," Ayla purred.
Taggin' pals below! Show us yer WIPs if ya got 'em (and wanna) yea salty sea dogs! 💕
