Hello everyone! Welcome to my entry of Kiyo's monthly prompt contest; it's my first time doing this, so I'm very excited to see how I do! This is also going to serve as my annual holiday one-shot, so I'm essentially killing two birds with one stone. The prompt of this contest is "Fairy Tale Retell", but with the restriction of non-Disney adaptations, meaning that everything that Disney has made, from "The Little Mermaid" to "The Prince and the Frog", is not allowed for this prompt. My story is based of the archetype of a swan maiden, or in Japanese, a tennyo, starring Eve and Add. I hope that you guys enjoy, and please leave comments, favorites, and follows if you like it a lot!
Eve- Code: Empress
Add- Mastermind
Code: Hagoromo
In the world of Elrios, there is a family of scientists, known as the Grenores, who are avid researchers of a long-forgotten race: Nasods. They work tirelessly, almost greedily searching for their buried secrets. Long ago, this advanced race of sentient machines vanished from the records of man with little notice. No one knew how they disappeared, but their technology, their code was left behind in scattered pieces around the world. And so, some humans, such as the Grenores, dedicate their lives to reviving this miraculous race. Their results prove fruitless at most, but humanity's stubbornness and drive did not diminish in the slightest.
It is here where our story begins. A fleeting moment of fulfillment, and the sorrowful longing of a queen.
…
Lake Noahs is greatly praised for its aesthetically pleasing visuals: a wondrous lake reflecting against the protective trees of the nearby forest. Little specks of land dot the body of water, creating a makeshift bridge that connects Ruben to Elder. This lake is the pride of nature, and humans even speculate that supernatural sightings happen on its surfaces.
One night, a young man sits by the edge of the lake, taking care not to dip any part of his body into the water. He heaves a sigh tiredly as he toys with a small metal disk. Moonlight bounces off the disk in muted beams, and the man tilts his device around to pass the time.
"When will I find the secret ingredient to unlocking the Nasods? None of the machines that I make have the same ingenious design as them."
Letting out a pained groan, the man shoves the disk into his coat pocket and stands up to leave. He hears a sudden splash, attracting his gaze to the direction of the sound. Cautiously, he glides from island to island, heading deeper into the vast lake. A glint of metal harshly draws his eyes, and almost by magic, he walks swiftly over to the biggest island of the lake. He was greeted with the sight of two very curious objects: machines shaped as rabbits, dressed in stylized armor. A folded piece of clothing rests under the weird devices, but the man pays no mind to it.
The design, the simplicity! No doubt about it; this is Nasod technology! A boon, he thinks. Maybe these rabbit-like machines are the key to uncovering what is missing from his own inventions. Without glancing around for anyone, the man grabs the two Nasods and the clothing that they are guarding and prepares to book it back to his laboratory.
"You. What are you doing with Moby and Remy?"
"Huh?" he dumbly blurts out, awkwardly holding the stolen objects close to his chest. Standing before him was a naked girl. She shone with the moon, illuminating the water around her with specks of white light. Her skin, smooth and flawless like a baby's, attracts his eyes, fogging them with small pebbles of lust. Her silver hair is down, brushing against her shoulders, as it sways with the light breeze. Amber eyes glower at the white-haired man, silently intimidating him to submit. Yet, the blue core on her forehead draws the majority of his attention. Is this some kind of new accessory that he has never seen before? It can't be. Based on his observations, it looks attached to her head.
"My clothes too. You're stealing my belongings."
The man snaps out of his lustful gaze to clutch the items in his arms. "You should have been more careful with your stuff."
"Moby and Remy should have been guarding my clothes."
"You mean these things? They weren't moving when I saw them."
Her orange globes do not narrow, unlike what a human would normally do, but her stance becomes more offensive, as if she's ready to lunge for her possessions. Add notices the shift and eyes her with a creeping smile.
"What are you? You don't look human," he asks slowly, tauntingly.
"I am Eve, queen of the Nasods," she responds back. She announces her title with echoing dignity, the true voice of a ruler. Even the man falls awestruck, gaping with his mouth hung open like a guillotine.
"Now, hand over my possessions," Eve commands. She slowly trod through the water towards him, ignoring her blatant nudity on display for the world. His mouth snaps down harshly, chopping her authority in half, as a twisted smile accents the mad gaze in his eyes.
"I don't think so."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm not giving these back to you. You see, I'm a Nasod researcher, and I happen to come across the linchpin for my work. Do you think that I'll let these, much less you, slip away?"
She understands then why her people advised her not to enter Elrios, the reason why they disappeared into their own heaven. It is inhabited by people like him, who are going to use her, potentially abuse her, treat her as an experiment. The menacing aura around this man increases oh so steadily, but the queen refuses to yield, refuses to lose her faith in this world. It is the reason she traveled here, after all, against her people's wishes.
"Those are very important belongings. I cannot go home without them. Please, may I have them back?" She softens the tone of her words, hoping that the change will hint at the underlying urgency that plagues her.
"As I said before, no." He reaches out to grab the naked queen by her delicate arm. Emotion breaks her calm and dignified demeanor as she stares back at his crazed eyes. His smile grows, shadowed by the moonlight, sending a dreaded shiver through her bare body. She finds herself paralyzed by this stranger's demented grin, absorbed by the unnatural pink color of his eyes.
"I'm going to take you home and make you my bride."
…
"Mother, are you alright?" Ophelia mechanically asks, bringing in a tray of homemade stew. Her mother continues to stare out the window, initially ignoring her daughter's call.
"Mother," she harshly snaps.
"Relax, Ophelia. I was merely observing the lake." Eve takes the tray from her and rewards her with a grateful smile. As she slowly drinks her meal, Ophelia stands there obediently, as if she's waiting for an order.
"Oberon is getting better at cooking."
"Yes, he is. He's learning even more advanced recipes, so he'll be able to make a decent-sized feast soon."
Eve only finishes the bowl halfway before she returns to the window overseeing Lake Noahs. The body of water glistens even during the day, but today, it seems abnormally surreal. Eve feels the tears well up in her amber eyes, and she cannot stop the flow of salty despair that easily breaches her orbs, but she refuses to make a pitiful sound in front of Ophelia.
"You're crying again," her daughter slowly says as she walks over to rub her fingers against the queen's flawless skin. "Why do you cry, mother? Is father not keeping you happy?"
"That's...not really the case. Add is surprisingly considerate of me."
From her conception, Ophelia has always thought of the interactions between her parents as odd. Other than to do experiments together, Add never spends time with Eve, instead choosing to take long trips across Elrios or locking himself in his lab. Her older brother, Oberon, often tells her how Eve was always guarded with her husband, never smiling in his presence. Despite the words that she had just said, Eve is not content.
"Then why are you so unhappy, mother? You spend all of your time looking at the lake."
The queen is hesitant of releasing her inner wishes. How can she reveal to her own daughter that she wants nothing more than to leave Elrios and never return? Ophelia may be her creation, but it was made with him: someone who never saw her as anything but a tool. Even though she loves her children, they also served as a reminder of her stripped freedom.
To return home, she needs her royal clothing and her two original assistants, Moby and Remy. But Add keeps them locked up in his laboratory, and he makes sure that she can never get inside his workplace.
"I miss wearing my royal dress, Ophelia," she says, speaking half of the truth. She does miss wearing it. That dress is a symbol of who she is as the queen of the Nasods.
"And I want to see Moby and Remy again. If I could spend just one day with them, then I'll stop looking at the lake."
Ophelia's blank stare turns soft. Unlike her mother, she spends most of her time in her father's lab, guarding his sacred shrine whenever he leaves for a long business trip. For a reason she cannot comprehend, her mother's dress is encased in a capsule next to his messy desk, perfectly intact. Moby and Remy are left deactivated in the corner, hidden by piles of paperwork and broken machinery. When Add was home, he was constantly making improvements to Oberon and Ophelia, whether it's injecting more El energy into them, or adding a new component to their already vast library of skills.
"I'll see what I can do, mother. Please smile soon."
…
"Sister, I do not think this is a very good idea," Oberon meekly objects, surveying the stairs that leads to the living room frantically. Ophelia firmly presses her hand over the fingerprint scanner, undeterred by her brother's rather frightened demeanor.
"Please try your best not to draw attention. Father is due to come home any minute now, and we must give these items to Mother before he does."
The door to Add's laboratory slides open with ease, but Ophelia walks in stealthily as she commands her brother to guard the entrance. She first spots Moby and Remy, which she picks up gingerly from the abandoned corner. Taking out a small handkerchief, she wipes off the dust that accumulated on her mother's prized possessions. They remained unmoving, but Ophelia feels a connection, a spark of gratitude coming from the two sleeping machines. Setting them down onto Add's desk, which is consumed by piles of paper decorated with thousands of random numbers and offhanded questions, Ophelia get hypnotized by her father's surprisingly neat handwriting. Words like "El energy?", "Missing ingredients," and "Failure" litter the top of the stack.
No, this isn't the time to dwell on her father's bizarre mind. She starts to type on the monitor set up on his desk, desperately breaking through the many walls that he had placed to protect his research. She hears Oberon shuffling around, pacing back and forth in a frustrated manner.
"Sister, hurry up. This is going against-!"
"Silence, brother. Our original purpose is to make mother happy, remember?"
"Even so, this is going against father's programming!"
Ophelia feels pity for her brother. He was created first, Add and Eve's first child. As such, the limitations that came with being constructed first lingers in his code. His more cooperative attitude with his father is what plagues her mother the most. Nasods are machines with free-will. To be created with the restriction of loyalty to humans, to a single person, is desecration to her entire race. And Ophelia can see it in Eve's eyes that living in this world will overwhelm her soon, for it has already scattered her mother's pride the moment her father stained her arm with his touch.
She taps at the monitor with purpose, determined to get her mother's elegant dress by any means necessary. She effortlessly swipes away at her father's wall of passwords, her hands speeding up with every lock cracked. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ding.
An exhale of air releases at the pleasant sound. The container on her left opens up with a grand sweeping motion. Her white dress, accented with the amber of Eve's eyes and a feminine pink hue, rests on a disfigured mannequin. One arm is longer than the other, jolted in a twist that can only be described as excruciating. The detached sleeves are somehow stabilized onto the inhumanly perverted appendages, futilely attempting to add grace to their wicked form. There was no lower body, so the body is held up by a strong hook in the back, which fortunately did not touch the dress.
"Seeing this up close...it's so beautiful and yet so disturbing," Ophelia mutters. Her brother peers into the lab and lightly shakes at the sight of her mother's robe. "H-Hurry up, sister," he calls desperately.
She gingerly slides the crooked arm out of the sleeve, feeling the smooth fabric for a small moment. The texture is so much different from the clothes she and her brother wears that it brings a teardrop of anger streaking down her cheek. Her mother used to live a life of luxury that only humans can dream of. How dare they soil Eve and force her to long for her home forever? With renewed gusto, Ophelia snaps the dress off of the bizarre mannequin as if to temper her rage.
"Oberon, take Moby and Remy. Hurry."
"Y-yes, sister."
She quickly taps at the monitor, sealing away the twisted lifeless form that had the nerve of wearing such a glamorous gown. They both run out, trampling their way up the stairs and away from their father's sickening lab.
…
"Thank you, Ophelia, Oberon. I'll be eternally grateful to you, and I will not forget you." Eve had just finished explaining her true plans to her children, but they strangely do not feel betrayed. Her mother is smiling like she never had before, glowing with an emotion akin to happiness.
Ophelia struggles to push back her tears of pride as she watches her mother regain her glorious form. Yes, this is who Eve is supposed to be. "That dress suits you the most, mother," she whispers back, not trusting her voice to properly convey her message. Her mother did not cry with her, but Ophelia was gifted with a motherly smile, one of soft-spoken love. Oberon, on the other hand, stands by the door awkwardly, still looking out for Add.
"I must apologize to the both of you. I wish I could take you back with me."
"Do not worry yourself over that, mother," they both say to her, "Go now, before you're discovered and trapped again for the rest of your life."
She truly had the best children she could ever hope for. Eve taps Moby and Remy once on their foreheads, and their blank eyes ignite with the same mysterious amber hue as Eve's. They levitate to her face and nuzzles her cheeks, excited to be in her presence again. Eve smiles once again before opening the window in her room. Placing one foot onto the ledge, the queen heaves herself up and stares at the bright blue waters of Lake Noahs.
"Moby, Remy, let us return home."
Her tiny rabbit-like attendants hop eagerly. They press themselves against her bare back, seemingly ready to push her. Eve lets out a heavy sigh before jumping out of the window. Moby and Remy then ignite their propellers, lifting their queen up to the bright sun.
"This breeze...how I longed to feel it envelop my body."
Add, on the other hand, was briskly walking to his home and to his bride when he lifts his head to the sky and spots a strange figure heading towards the glaring ray of light. It propels faster and faster; its thin and pale wings shimmer against the heat, but the shape keeps going. He trails his gaze down the supposed path that it had taken...and finds Ophelia staring out the window.
It only takes Add a few seconds later to realize what happened.
…
And so, the queen of Nasods returns home to her heaven safely. She never looked back, never longed to visit the human world again. Eve resumes her rule beside Adam, ushering a period of peace and prosperity to her people. The gateway between humans and Nasods is closed forever, for they fear that if a Nasod ventures into that world again, they'll be bestowed the same fate as their queen.
Back on Elrios, however, a lone man gazes at the lake where he met his precious wife. Something is off about him though. He's not crying. Rather, a grin so inhuman, so lost in the depths of madness, reflects back at him. Then a lone snicker escapes his mouth. It escalates to a chuckle, and then to a wail of a hyena as he snaps his head to the crescent moon. The haunting sound of his maniacal desperation shakes the trees, but the moon, steadfast and unwavering, continues to shine down on the man, as if it's mocking him.
And at the bottom of the mysterious and beautiful lake...are two heads. One is distinctly female, with low cut black hair. The other has a broken mask, its golden v-shaped ornament snapped in half. Their eyes blend in with the abyss of the lake, but if one looks at them closely, they both carry content smiles on their faces. No inkling of regret can mar their eternal sleep.