Sonata sat at a picnic table under a lightpole in the park, nearest the traintracks she could find. She wanted to be near a river, but also thought that the others would feel the same way, so: compromise, river of goods with a diesel roar.

Her fist clenched her cellphone as deep in the purse as possible. Burying her

family

friends while still clutching desperately after they split up. Lose your magic, lose your bond, lose your purpose to round things out.

Not that she'd had much of a bond or purpose to start with... She'd always been content to follow Adagio's lead, much the way a toady follows a cur (though she'd always thought more of it as a remora and a shark).

But getting their amulets shattered had broken so much more than just that, so now Sonata sat under a park's lightpost near the train tracks clutching her surviving link to her past.

She wondered if crying would help, so she tried it on for size for a minute or three, then gave up and elected for fuming at everything. First she hated on the fountain some hundreds of feet away, then the cicadas, then the passers-by on evening walks, then the traffic, then the train, then the moon, her skirt, her phone, her friends, her life, herself...

She went back to crying for a bit.

Sonata hated being alone. Hated being lost and unsure. Adagio always had a plan, a goal, an objective. Sonata hadn't, and hadn't wanted one... She had Adagio, and Aria, and that made thing easy and happy.

So what was Sonata without Adagio, she thought. Always a weak bottom-feeder unwilling and unable to take responsibility for herself.

"No, this is all wrong...."

She squeezed her phone tighter, feeling the battery hatch give just a little and the clamshel top twist slightly askew.

"I hate this," she said, to no one in particular. "I hate being alone. I hate having to choose. I hate having to think. I hate that she lost, making me lose..."

She could call. Adagio's and Aria's numbers were there in her phone. She could--

This is your fault!
Get away from me!

--get yelled at again, told exactly how useless she was.

So she couldn't call. Alone. Far, far upstream.

"I don't want..." What didn't she want? To be alone? To be reliant? "I don't want..." Doubt? Pain? She'd heard that life was full of those, and remembered a time when that seemed more true.

"If I tried saying how I feel, would it even reach you before I disappear?"

Disappear...

She had lived alone before meeting Adagio. Had she appeared when Adagio came along? Surely not-- a siren was a siren, regardless of company kept. So what was Sonata, then? What was she before, what had she been, and what was she now? Were they all Sonata?

"Oh, I can't decide!"

She was a siren. A siren meant-- what? Predator? Fear? Power? Song? A siren was a creature with the power to use the magic of song to dominate her prey. Dominate why? Adagio

lost

knew. Sonata-- didn't.

"Get up, you worthless circus monster."

She hated walking. It reminded her of how much she'd

lost

changed from what she used to be-- but maybe thah wasn't all a bad thing? What was she thinking, she'd been happy with Adagio calling the shots, even where it had taken them to this world, and taken their magic amulets and their friendship--

So was all change bad, then?

But she loved to dance. To move her body, alien though it was, to the sounds she sang with one thought and feeling.

"Mother says I was a dancer before I could walk."

And her amulet was shattered. Her magic in this world lost. What was a siren without her magic?

A train roared past. Its horn was deafening, blaring into the night. Its roar reached into her lungs and shook. Its metallic clatter shook the earth forever. And then it was gone, slowly echoing into the distance.

She wiped at her eyes. Something so insignificant, yet so powerful, yet so transient. Had she been the train?

Her stomach growled at her pitifully. She'd have to ask Adagio-- She'd have to figure out what to do about fixing that pretty soon.

She cried a little again at that.

She'd had her fight and she lost, but not enough. Only enough to leave her broken and alone in a scary, alien world.

"This was a triumph."

She was a siren. A siren meant song. But without her-- magic, what did that mean? Could she still sing?

"Os i usti meditabitur sapientiam, et lingua eius loquetur indicium."

It-- didn't sound right. It hurt. Everything was wrong.

She took a deep breath and screamed at the world,
"Я сошла с ума~а!"

Her phone chimed.