I woke up, and I was hungry. Persistently, gnawingly hungry. I sat up, my mass of hair swinging down to cover my face. I didn’t even bother raking it back out of my face. I could hear my sister’s sleeping in the next room. Especially Sonata, she snored like you wouldn’t believe for such a small thing.

I got up and went to the kitchen of our little apartment and put the banged up coffeepot on the stove. There were still some cans of soup and other things that the little do-gooder had dropped off last week. I thought about opening one, but I knew the hunger that raged wasn’t one that food could ease. It was one that the means of sating was long since gone.

I took a deep breath, forcing down the ache with concentration. When we had lost our Song, everyone we had enchanted broke free. Everyone, including the landlord that was letting us stay in a decent place without rent. It had taken most of our not inconsiderable savings to pay the back rent and electric. We had a little set by and we could manage if we rationed it carefully, but until we could beat our hunger, we had retired to this home, populated by simpletons that had given in human drugs and were fighting to sober up. We were better off now than we were a few months ago when Fluttershy had found us, but we still had a long way to go, as evidenced by the dilapidated apartment we resided in.

Appropriate for us, I suppose. The loss of our song robbed us of the ability to feed on emotions, and it had been like denying a heroin addict his supply. The first weeks had been the worst, the sweats and the delirium. Aria had been hit hardest, her temper fraying like a worn string. She had exploded on Sonata one night, worse than anything I had seen in my long life.

We all felt the pain differently. Sonata hadn't laughed in almost a year, and Aria had retreated so far from us I rarely saw her outside of meals. I managed to keep myself awake for long hours into the night trying to figure out just how in The Depths I was supposed to help my sisters and the guilt at my inability to protect them.

The coffeepot whistled, and I poured the steaming water into another pot where I had instant coffee grounds sitting. While I let the coffee steep I saw Sonata stumble in, barely awake and her hair falling around her shoulders. It was such a matted mess, I doubted that she had brushed it in days.

“Coffee,” she murmured.

“Hold on,” I said, too tired to even bark at her, even if I had been upset. It had been a long time since I felt the need to browbeat her. I poured us both a cup. We both sipped the bitter drink black, Fluttershy hadn’t brought much sugar and we had saved it back for making other things.

“This can’t go on,” Sonata said when she woke the rest of the way up. “That pain is always going to be there, isn’t it?”

I sighed. “Probably,” I admitted. “We got too dependent on our Song. We need to realize it’s gone and move on.”

“We could get it back,” Aria said as she moved into the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. Her eyes held deep bags under them. “It may not be as strong as before, but it might possible.”

“How?” I asked, whirling on the girl. “How are we supposed to regain something that had been contained and channeled through gems that were conveniently destroyed about a year ago?” I wasn't angry, just tired.

“I don’t know!” she snapped back before looking down. “Maybe the portal…”

“The portal is barred from this side for us,” Sonata said. “The wizard made sure we couldn’t return. I tried once, and it burned.” She rubbed one hand in memory. "It isn't possible."

“Well, we can’t stay here forever,” I said, hands wrapped around the barrel of my coffee mug. “I should go check on that waitressing job I applied for last week.”

"They let someone as haggard as us apply?" Aria asked grumpily. Her eyes hadn't raised from her mug.

"Yes," I said. "Because I didn't look like a wet cat when I went in."

“How did you manage that?” Sonata asked.

“We may have lost our Song, but we can still glamor ourselves a bit,” I said. “We can’t become much, but it should hide our, well.” I swept my hand down my body, indicated my overly skinny and pale frame. “If nothing else, we can get out of here and keep some sort of food handy.”

“That’s all well and good,” Aria muttered. “But I’m tired of being hungry.”

Not even Sonata replied to that, we all knew the kind of hunger she referred to.

Throwing the glamor up was hard, and it made the ball of pain inside flare for a moment. I was surprised when I had discovered we could still do that. As the spell made me seem like an average young woman, I started feeling that pull again, a tug as though I was on one end of a rubber band that wanted to snap back to its regular length. I shook my head and went out to the restaurant on the edge of the Downtown drag, its owl mascot glowing happily in the afternoon sun.

“Hey there, Red,” the lady behind the counter called as I walked in. “Checkin’ on the application?”

I nodded, sliding up onto a stool at the counter. “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound meek. I pictured the pink-haired girl in my mind. I needed this. My sisters needed this.

She poured a glass of soda and set it before me. “Hold tight, I’ll see if the old man has made a choice yet.” She slipped to the back. Soon after, the ‘old man’ came out and leaned against the counter, a stack of papers in his hand, my application on top.

“I’ve looked this over,” he said, a frown on his rather young face. I didn’t know why most of the staff referred to him as the old man. “And I have to say, I’m a bit undecided.” he leveled his gaze on me, the icy stare boring deeper into me than anything I had ever seen before.

“Give me a reason,” he said, frown smoothing away to neutrality. “That isn’t the practiced answers you gave me at your interview. Tell me why you want this job so bad.”

I blinked, looking down and away from the arctic glare.

“My sisters and I were evicted,” I started. “We’ve been staying at a halfway house, but,”

“It’s in a bad part of town and you want out,” he said. “I looked up the address you wrote on here. Not a very nice place, mostly full of crackheads on their way out, one way or another.” He speared me with his gaze again. “I can’t hire you if you or your sisters use.”

I turned my arms out, showing my arms. “No track marks,” I said defiantly.

“Surely not,” he said. He shuffled the papers and handed me one. “This is consent to a drug test. Sign at the bottom.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the first paper I make all the employees sign before they start working,” he said. “C’mon, don’t got all day here.”

I stared numbly for a second, then grabbed the pen and signed my name to each of the pages he presented me. After the last, he scribbled out some information on a notecard and handed it to me.

“I’ll have your timecard number and a uniform for you on that date. Don’t be late.”

As he turned away, I spoke up one last time.

“What made you decide?”

He turned, then set the papers down and rolled his sleeve up, showing the puckered scar of a needle mark and a few scarred lines.

“I’ve been in that particular house,” he said, rolling his sleeve back down. “And worse. No one as young as you should be there.” He disappeared into the back again.

I left, feeling something I had never felt before.

Gratitude.

As I walked, I found myself being pulled by that strange tug and found myself at Canterlot high. I walked to the statue that had been erected over the aperture of the portal. Seized by a strange urge, I reached out and touched the mirrored surface.

And the hunger coiled in my belly disappeared. I could feel the heat building to a near searing sensation, but I reveled in the fact that the pain of hunger was gone for a time. When I could no longer bear the pain surging through my blood from the barrier, I pulled my hand free.

And my hunger remained gone. I didn’t know if was gone for good or just for a time, but it felt good.

This bears some looking into. It may not be permanent, but at least I could get a good night's sleep tonight.

Author's Note

For those of you wondering about the title, Raison d'Etre means - loosely - reason for being. I thought it appropriate for the Sirens for two reasons.

1: They had lost their Song, essentially their reason for existing from their point of view.

2: I find Nightmare's song of the same name to be very fitting and a good parallel for how I'm going to handle the Siren's redemption. If you feel like it sounds familiar, it was the first opening to the Claymore anime.

Yes, you read that right. Redemption.

Stay tuned. This will turn into a series as well, more than likely.