"Your eyes don't match", he told me.

I know. I've looked into my eyes my whole life.

"Did each of your parents give you one eye each?
And if they did, who has the ice blue? Your mother?
Or your father? And the amber? Who has that?"

I look up at him from my mismatched eyes, and he continues.

"There's a story about people, whose eyes don't match.
They aren't to be trusted, something about fairies.
Touched by the frost, like the ice blue of your eye.
They come in from the woods to steal your soul.
And they stay long enough for the pain to take root,
like the gnarled origins of the oldest trees."

I wrap my arms around my waist. "I am not from the woods,
and my parents are not fairies." I pause. "I mean, they could
be fairies, I suppose. Maybe they are sea fairies, and that's
why I am a Siren, maybe I rode into the world on the tip of
a wave, maybe the ice in my eyes is from the frost of the oceans,
and maybe my parents sent me to land because they could not keep
me at sea, and maybe they're watching the world through my eyes,
a little bit, wanting to know I flourish, I take root, I live.
And maybe there's ice in me but also the warmth of fire,
maybe that's where the amber's from, maybe my soul is stardust
and moonbeams, and maybe..."

I stand up, so my mismatched eyes are level with his.

"Maybe this world is mine, and this is my story; maybe you just
get to be in it for a moment, and maybe I decide when I write you out,
and maybe if you're nice, I won't let you suffer - too much - and maybe
I am going to stay long enough, or maybe I'll vanish and leave the world
empty. You don't know. Nobody does. That's my ending to write."

Penned by my hand on the 9th of Phaestian, in the year 865 AF.