Valerine Excerpt...

 Valerine hated birds. She despised the way they chirped and cawed in the morning, so deafening she could even hear them from under the depths of the ocean’s surface. And now, as a human herself, walking on two legs on the sandy grounds of the Quatik Lands, or so they called them, at an eerily early dawn hour, the birds were louder than ever. They crowed in the distance, singing songs of lovers old and new, of lost kings and dead babes alike. Lerine could almost understand them, but she promised that her Siren’s Song was far superior than any tune the little beasts could muster from their nasally throats. She was the best singer in all of Pavilion, or so she believed herself to be. Yet she suddenly remembered that her beautiful aquatic body was not of her own anymore, but of the man they called Edmind, a low-life pirate, and a commoner’s son at best. His grubby black hair was unruly atop his head and her voice—his voice—a true travesty, an unfamiliar presence from her soft lips. Valerine hated it. It was low and rough and completely impractical for a Siren’s Song.