Carmen stood in front of her vanity, frowning at her image in the mirror. Stray wisps of spring green hair floated about her head in a lime halo, and her cheeks were flushed from spending an entire day outside, tossing her fishing pole out and reeling in her catch. Her eyes, blue, were open wide and her perfect, small nose was slightly upturned. Overall, her face looked tomboyish, but pretty. But the girl didn't see it this way. The nineteen-year-old saw only the face of a girl who wasn't good enough for Micah, a girl who couldn't even grab his attention during their fishing lessons or on the bulletin board. A girl who, in her mind, was a failure in the art that her peers had perfected long ago: Love. Carmen was, in many ways, like the other girls in Sharance. She loved to be outside and attended the festivals and stayed away from the dungeons most of the time. She enjoyed eating at Blaise's Diner and knew to stay well away from Marion's long, lethal syringe. However, she was different in many ways also; her brother kept her from interacting with any of the town's boys, and forbade her to stay out too late gossiping with the girls. He was always hovering over her shoulder, watching what she was doing, and keeping her away from the dungeons altogether. He was the reason she was treated as an outcast of sorts among the other residents of Sharance and why Micah had recently taken to ignoring her.
She hated the way that Sophia could talk in opposites, make her situation look good, and cause the blond farmer to fall for her. How she could wear those corseted dresses and tight-fitting bathing suits, and just act like a magnet, drawing Micah, her Micah, to her. He had been acting more and more distracted during the lesson that day, forgetting where to hold the pole, making mistakes with reeling in the fish left and right. She thought that he was just sick, or maybe, she had hoped, it was because he liked her. But when Sophia showed up on the beach, surrounded by her clique of girls, he had excused himself, dropped his pole and ran to meet her. She had been heart-broken, watching them embrace and then run off together to Gods-know-where. And it just made matters worse when Carmen had learned that they were to be married the very next day.
The girl sank to her knees and sobbed for a good fifteen minutes into the floor boards. When she felt as if she had no more tears to cry, when slowly stood up, feeling light headed, and walked out the back door. She felt strangely calm, as if she were detached from her self, when she stood on the very edge of the peer and stared own into the water, absent of fish at the moment.
"Gods of the Water and Fire, Wind and Earth, I beg you to help me!" she cried into the air, holding out her arms. "Aquaticus, I pray you take Sophia de Sainte-Coquille away from here, where Micah will never have her." She cursed her enemy, collapsing onto the planks at last, where she slept fitfully, unaware that her prayers and curses had been heard.