Part 5

It was yet another winter at the Hissing Lobster when Sirene decided to tell Vaust about why she came. She had never told him once in the hundreds of years she had been coming, but decided now was as good a time as ever.

"Vaust, a moment of your time?" Sirene asked him. It was the end of the day and the tavern was empty, so she didn't feel reluctant to use his name.

"Sure Sirene, what's on your mind?" He asked.

"Let's go sit in the lounge chairs. It'll take a bit."

Once they were seated, Sirene looked down and breathed in and out a few times, her eyes closed.

"Sirene, are you okay?" Vaust asked.

"This is something I've never shared with anyone other than my Master." Sirene said quietly. "It's about why I come here every winter, and why I've done it every winter for the past twenty five hundred years."

"That's before I built this inn." Vaust said. "Why else are you coming to the middle of the woods?"

"The graveyard, Vaust. I buried my parents there when I was twenty years old." Sirene said, starting to cry. "This long overgrown village is where my long life began."

Vaust's eye twitched. What kind of insane coincidence is this? He was sure nothing had ever existed here. "I never knew of any village being here."

"That's because I scrubbed it from history, Vaust. A village where everyone died."