Rift Plate 021 · Lantern Codex
Siren Anemone
A rooted fey colony sings through water, shells, and familiar voices until every living thing faces the same pool.
- Plate group
- Lantern Codex
- Classification
- Fey
- Field account
- Recovered
Recovered natural history
Field record
Low-tide chorus
At low tide the stranded fish faced one cove. So did every gull. In the lantern light, translucent arms opened by the hundred around a face of pearl nodules and pink muscle.
The hymn came through the teeth. Childhood voices were in it, and names nearly remembered. Listeners went deeper until crooked shadows broke the chorus into notes that fought one another.
Colony arrangement
It stays rooted and brings the cove into formation. A low soothing note turns boats toward the pool along with the animals and people. Separate tentacle choirs give each body a note of its own, then punish anyone who leaves formation. Familiarity it can imitate. An unexpected interruption is harder to use.
Read the environment
Signs of its presence
Stranded creatures point headfirst at the same tide pool.
Hold a shell against the jaw: it hums there, not at the ear.
Familiar voices finish sentences with memories that aren't right.
Survival doctrine
Field precautions
01
Break the meter
Use irregular noise nobody has scripted. Without shared timing, the separate lures contradict each other.
02
Expose the root disk
Force the colony to relocate. The pale disk beneath it cannot sing or defend itself well while exposed.
Recovered Field Plate
01
Primary form
An upright figure appears rooted into a rock or anemone base, with the torso rising from a fixed lower mass.
02
Detail studies
Fine tendrils and the small clustered study beside the figure reinforce the marine, rooted silhouette.
Continue through the folio
021 of 100 recovered plates