The man wakes with a sudden jolt, drenched in a cold sweat, his body tense from the shock that ended his nightmare.  He sighs as he comes to, and crawls out of his hempen hammock, desiring to calm himself by watching the stars.  He's a tall figure, with broad shoulders, and braided, pink hair.  The man steps outside of his canopy-based treehut (Not unlike ekow houses), and walks along the wooden pathways until he has a good sight of the sky, and ocean.  There's no one else awake at this hour, far as you can tell, but the canopy-supported village looks like it houses about fifty families.

He gives an uneasy look to the sea.  It was the same dream as always.  One that has repeated several times over the past fifteen years or so. His daughter, slithering out of the waters in the dead of night, coming to slay the father in his sleep.  He knows it's a completely irrational fear, but it always comes back.  What was the source of it, he wonders.

Tialoc was really no different than the other youths deemed worthy of becoming a Shaman.  He'd proven to be both a skilled warrior and a diligent student of the occult in his earlier years, and became a natural candidate for the rather unusual tradition.  Even among his tribe, the practice was often questioned - handing over young men to The Sirens for the entirety of their adolescence.  The safety of the practice wasn't the issue - The Sirens never harmed the young men - a he knows is because they very well rely on it to survive - and all return with a mastery of the mystical arts.  The practice was more questioned for its history with the tribe as a whole, and what it implied for the boys who would be taken under, and many years later, return as men.

All members of Tialoc's tribe know the story.  In centuries past, there was a great war amongst the Gods - Urmaresheron, the Architect, attempted to rise above the others, and recreate the world in his image.  His tribe had sided with the power hungry God, and ultimately lost the war as the others united against him and banished him to a deep sleep.  The aftermath of their lord being sent into such a slumber had an unexpected aftereffect - the Floating Temple of The Everhungry was buried beneath the waves, and his human followers forever warped with the Pokemon of the seas.  The other Tribes stripped his own for their transgressions, and barricaded them within a thorny maze deep within the swamps of what would one day be Kingler Island.  The Gods also saw to it that the Pokemon around their village would be very hostile, and the surviving followers of The Everhungry would ever watch the nameless tribe from the seas, keeping them locked away from the world.

In time, however, the followers of The Everhungry realized a problem.  The aftermath that warped them, had also caused all the males of their "new" species to be become sterile.  In order to survive, they...experimented, and found that they could indeed reproduce with humans still - always producing daughters.  As such, The Sirens forced an annual exchange upon the nameless tribe - they would borrow their most promising male youths, grant them mystical powers, and later allow them to return to the surface as a man.  These men would become the Shamans of the tribe, and would never take a bride.

Which is where the controversy usually began - the village's leaders would never father children.  Granted, this wasn't impaction enough to cause people to do things like turn to polygamy, but families would tend to be rather large to try to offset it.  There was always concern about the Sirens requesting more boys the next year, perhaps, and brothers among a family would sometimes purposely avoid doing well at tasks considered a man's job in hopes they wouldn't be chosen.  It created a very strong dynamic to the culture of the tribe - That in order to continue to have spiritual leaders amongst the tribe anymore, they would need to sacrifice their sons to become eunuchs.

Or, at least that's what most folks believed.  The Shamans never speak of what occurred beneath the waves.  The truth is, they are still perfectly normal, healthy adult males.  And married men - to a Siren.  Each boy who is taken under, at some point before returning, marries one of their kind, and starts a family.  Even after returning, most of the Shamans have a secret practice of sneaking away during the night to try to meet their mate in the shallows, and upon their death, the Shamans are buried at sea - returning to their family.  In reality, as time passed, The Sirens proved to be just as shackled to this fate as the tribe they were to ward - such a thing was simply part of life for them.  There was no malice, resentment or oppression at work here, but the tribe never really saw it that way - even the boons the Shamans brought to the village (better being able to combat 'Demons' (Pokemon), farseers, medicine men, and all the small conveniences that aura, channeling and pscionics can provide ) wasn't going to offset that.

Tialoc himself though? Well, things didn't exactly end up a happy story with his own secret life.  Even in this dream, you can tell he tries not to think much on those times, the happy or the bad.  It's rather difficult to get a sense of what it was like to grow up in that environment from this experience.  But what you do get a sense of is the way his powers manifested...greatly disturbed his mate.  She became withdrawn from him, even before he returned to the surface, and afterwards he had no luck at trying to meet her.  He spent many a night sleeping under the stars, waiting and waiting, and the one night she did come, she came with a coral knife - attempting to slay him.  He struggled with her, and she ended up slicing herself in the scuffle, retreating back beneath the waves, cursing him the entire time.  He never saw her again after that day.

Many sad years passed until Tialoc noticed that often, when walking by the shoreline, a young figure would be peering at him from beneath the waves - the same pink hair he had come to develop, and a youthful, toothy grin.  A Shaman's hair color typically changed in their time with The Sirens, aligning itself to a demonic element.  And far as he could tell, no one else ever emerged with pink hair...

This had been going on for years - by now, the girl was likely fifteen.  Even now he occasionally catches sight of the girl, always darting away as he looks.  "...Why does she watch me, then flee?  What did I do to deserve this isolation?  Why do I fear the worst for what this means?" He sighs as he turns his gaze to the stars.

...As he does, a figure appears, composed of the clouds above (Like that one scene in The Lion King, but with http://0.tqn.com/d/ds/1/0/m/8/-/-/xerneas_01.jpg and glowy stars)  <Be at rest, my chosen one.  Your fears are not without merit.  Your mate...she grew to fear you because she did not understand what you had become.  Fear grew to hate, which grew to panic.  Do you wish to know, what it is you are?  Why she fears you, and how you may be able to change that?>

Tialoc slowly backs up a few steps, startled, fearing he's hallucinating yet again. "...What are you, demon?"

The creature chuckles.  <Demon?  Perhaps some would view me in such a light.  I am The Banisher, child of man, and soon you shall meet another one of my chosen ones - watch for the man who bears my sigil, and you shall have your answers.>

The clouds fade to their original shape...and the vision begins to blur as you wake.