“Any bright ideas?”

Leila’s mind raced as the question was raised. In fact it had started to long before Hakuren turned to look at her. And after the boy finished the question, the stop of her train of thought didn’t show signs to be stopping soon.

Greek mythology. That row of heavy books, enormous in volume, with hard covers decorated delicately with classic patterns of golden leaves and flowers. Leila had read about sirens, long ago. Beautiful creatures that lure sailors to their drowning death with mind-overtaking song.

A Siren’s song was the next item on the living list - the crumbled piece of scripture in the groups possession, which updated its contents as events proceeded.

How exactly do you collect a song? A song is voice and sound, music and spoken lyrics. Sound is vibration of particles of whatever medium available at the moment. The vibration is not substance, but pattern: a pattern that can be recorded and recreated at will. It’s the same song no matter heard through the morning air or under the evening sky. Man has technology to capture that, she believed.

Some may argue there was more to music and song than vibrations through the air. They spoke of meaning and emotion, of heart and soul. They say it’s not the sounds in the air, it’s the stirring in the heart of the singer and the listener. Leila was not sure if she ever felt that, but she could figure, and she did not disagree. The firing of neurons must be expectable, must follow some patterns, at least to some extent. A song can be touching to more than one person must mean that the triggering of emotion, like vibrations of gas molecules, must be replicable. It’s not the medium that matters concerning what you hear as long as the sound waves are the same. Patterns of emotion are, she decided, more or less like patterns of the vibration of particles.

A song is, boiled down, information. How does one, then, collect information?

She tried to recall. She had heard the Siren song, she could remember it.

Yet that also meant remembering the broken vision of dreams, and the feeling of nearly drowning. She couldn’t. Or rather, didn’t want to.

Leila looked up at Hakuren, inside whose mind, she speculated, a thousand thoughts must have been processed in the same interval. His eyes still gazed at her after the seconds of an interval of time.

“No.” was her answer, as it always was when she didn’t have one. The difference this time was that, out of no apparent reason that was within her understanding, she made an attempt at an apologetic smile as she uttered the single syllable.

Also, “Leila Noelle.” An abrupt, and perhaps unnecessary addition to the cache of names and introductions the group had delivered. Neither of the newcomers were likely to hear it, anyway, as Jasper - surprisingly - spoke up.

It seemed directing the investigation at the villagers was to be the next objective.

Leila still didn’t know what a Siren song was.