When he arrived at the edge of the water, he did not wait for the hand to appear, simply choosing a particularly large rock and throwing it in.

" Can you quit throwing shit in my water?" the woman complained, rising up just as Sif thought she would.

Sif shook his head no.

She huffed at him.

" Why'd you leave yesterday? I thought you were going to kill me?" she questioned. " Or did you decide to become a wicked little cat? It's much easier to become powerful if you eat human flesh like I do."

Sif immediately rejected this. He found it distasteful in the extreme; he could not hurt the very people Helna gave him to protect.

The water woman tipped her head again.

" Such a goody two shoes," she said. " Come closer, cat. I'll tell you something."

Sif narrowed his eyes with disdain. He would not be so obviously tricked.

She reached a scaled hand up to beckon him.

" You can't talk at all, yeah? You can't even miau miau or hiss or purr?" she asked knowingly. " Come closer, come closer. I'll tell you how you can regain your voice."

Sif didn't expect that she would know this, and unfortunately it was information he very much wanted.

As much as he was cautious of her, too, he would need to get closer to her in order to kill her. So what if she fought back? He was in Helna's body now, and she seemed to be built roughly as Helna was.

So, still a bit hesitant, he shuffled closer to the water's edge.

" You won't kill me if I tell you how to speak?" she asked, sharing a look of mutual suspicion.

Sif nodded his head yes; he had no problem with lying, especially to something like this. And he vaguely wondered whether it, too, would lie.

He shuffled forward a couple steps, leaning forward, body tense.

" You're an animal spirit in a human body," the fish woman told him. " The only way for you to speak is to steal a human's tongue."

She seemed very smug, and laughed at him.

" Ha! Try to stay being righteous like my bitch of a sister, acting better than me!" she crowed, satisfied. " Or perhaps you'll steal one of your people's tongues? There are many beautiful young women here, who speak like honey! Or maybe, since you're really a male, you'll steal a tongue from a man? The coven that houses you? Or perhaps-"

Hearing not only his people, but his dedication to them insulted was too much. Sif sprang forward as he would when catching a mouse and trapped the woman in his arms, strangling her. But she was stronger than he expected, and the water deeper. They locked together in combat as she dragged Sif under, clawing at him viciously; he dug into her with his own nails, beating her, and bit into her. He may have lost his claws, but he did still have sharp canine teeth; even as he was losing his breath, he remained thrashing her around with his bite, blindly satisfied with the taste of fish blood and turgid flesh filling his mouth.

Truthfully, this was the most difficult fight Sif had ever been in. When he was a cat, he had never gotten old enough to brawl about with other cats for territory, and after his first master had died, Helna had taken him in and protected him. It didn't help that he abhorred water, while it was this thing's natural element. He couldn't breathe, and even as he gouged into it, he was breaking his own nails along with its flesh.

But it seemed the water woman didn't count on Sif being as strong as he was either, and he had had the element of surprise. After thrashing around, the water clouding with blood, he was elated to feel the monster growing weaker; they bounced off the rocky bed of the creek, and his lungs felt like they would burst, but the water woman was no longer succeeding in clawing him.

He pushed up off the bottom, and blindly dragged himself to the shore, able to resist being dragged down. His socks tearing on sharp rocks and mud, he hauled himself up, and threw the water woman out.

With her throat mangled, she gasped for breath, staring up at him hatefully as he clambered out of the water.

" You... bastard..." she heaved. " Not even... my own sister... would kill me! You bastard...! You've..."

But she did not finish the rest of her sentence; her gills flared strongly once, and then ceased to move.

Sif hacked up water, his throat burning and tears streaming from his eyes. He was freezing from the cold water that had soaked through his shredded clothes, and bleeding from the gashes her clawed hands had left behind.

But he had won, and he had learned how to speak. It was complete victory.

Really, he thought as he regained himself, the fish woman was pretty pitiful.

Her body was morphed and distended, only the face and arms that of a woman; the legs were vestigial and hung in an unseemly way from a round, scaled body. She didn't look like Helna at all.

If this was what eating human flesh got you, Sif sealed the idea off in his head permanently. Even if someone came to kill his people, like the ones who had killed his first master, he wouldn't so much as take a bite of them. He regretted it immensely already that he'd have to steal a tongue.

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