Chapter 400
Lorelei
I open my eyes.
Something is here.
Not the storm—the storm has been raging for hours, maybe longer. I have learned to sleep through storms. The water may churn, the waves may crash, but the cave is deep, the walls are thick, and I am tired.
But this is not the storm.
I sit up.
The egg is brighter than usual. Its glow fills the small cave, casting shadows on the stone walls, illuminating the scars on my body, the wounds on my back, the weariness in my own eyes reflected in the water.
My heart races, for some reason.
Then I hear it again.
A sound.
Not the crash of waves. Not the howl of wind. Not the cry of seabirds or the splash of fish or any of the noises I have grown accustomed to in my years of solitude.
It is something else.
Something I have never heard before.
Curious.
I transform.
