The only reason I started a new story is because I am currently unable to get to any of my other ones (sticks out tongue at stupid computer) and I wanted to try out writing in slightly different style. If you like it I'll continue. I didn't really feel like editing so point out any mistakes you might see. So remember to review!! Also if you can think of a better title, tell me. I don't think this one really flows
Shallis
I've heard tell that usual to begin a story, humans use the phrase "Once Upon a Time." A good phrase, I suppose, although where I come from, time is mostly irrelevant. We live quite longer than you humans, a good three hundred years and then we're gone. Just the foam of the sea. And of course, the foam of the sea doesn't think about time. So we used a different phrase. "On a Far Wave of the Sea." And so I shall begin my story.
On a far wave of the sea, I was sleeping. This may seem like a very uneventful way to begin a story, but I assure you, it was the first key moment that would change my life forever. Most who would tell you about me would start with when I first saw Prince Thylan. (Thylan is telling me as I write this that he would assuredly start the story there as well, as he was undoubtedly the most important and prominent figure in my life. Ha! The conceited boy. Now he's telling me that he's not a boy but a man. Perhaps if he acted like it I would call him such.) As I was saying, I was asleep and letting myself drift in the underwater waves and currents that pulled me here and there.
Now I have a habit of sleeping with my arms out past my head and that is how I was then. I woke up upon feeling a sharp, splitting pain between my fingers. I pulled them to me and looked at them. The thin, translucent webbing (almost like this thing on land that you call a spiderweb) in between my fingers was splitting apart and starting to bleed. I was quite startled by this, having never seen anything of the like before.
I glanced towards where my hands had been, searching for the cause of this. There was nothing but water. Although, upon looking closer, the water almost looked as if it changed. As if there were some sort of barely distinguishable wall there. Confused and a little frightened, I quickly swam in the other direction.
In fact, I swam all the way back to the city. Well, we called it a city, though it really is nothing like one. You would probably simply call it a reef, as it is merely a bunch of brightly colored coral and seaweed deep within the ocean. Still, it is and ever will be my city.
Most of the merfolk stayed at or around the city, though I wouldn't necessarily say they lived there. Merfolk are never content to live anywhere. We swim here and there and wherever we want to, because we must. It's in our very being, the wanderlust. It's our ocean and we must see it—all of it. Maybe that's why I felt so trapped there. Thylan tells me I'm rambling.
I swam practically straight into my mother, the Lady Muirgen. Growing up, I never really understood why my parents were called Lord Cavan and Lady Muirgen. As a result I was also called Lady Shallis, but there seemed to be no reason for it. We didn't really rule the merfolk, we had no real power over them. I was told that we were an "important" and "old" family, whatever that meant. I'd never heard tell of our beginnings. I'm rambling again.
I ran into my mother.
"Shallis, watch where you're going," she said with a slight laugh at my clumsiness.
"Mother, I'm bleeding!" I said holding up my hands. "My fingers are splitting in half!" Maybe I was exaggerating...a little.
She regarded my split webbing thoughtfully. "What happened?"
"I was asleep and all the sudden they were just...splitting!"
"I'm sure you just cut yourself on some coral, darling," she replied. "Be more careful about where you're swimming."
"But—"
She swam away.
I frowned. What were the chances of my getting cut in all the spaces between my fingers? Not very high, in my opinion. However, there wasn't much to be done about it. So I sat on some coral and watched the colorful fish swim by. Except I didn't call them fish, of course. After all, do you naturally refer to fellow people as "humans" when you're just looking at them? Probably not. We called them Felni. Translated it would mean "like us." A sort of general term for all sea creatures to refer to each other as, to differentiate between us and the things on land. Of course, most sea creatures didn't exactly talk, but I'll get to that later.
Sybil
I'll never forget the day I first saw Prince Thylan. You would think that would be how Shallis would start, but no, it's me. The kingdom of Enstrom is a series of small islands. The royal family lived on the largest one, to which I was moving to on my sixteenth birthday. Before this I lived on one of the smaller islands. Thylan's Uncle Sam found me there, a simple orphan girl who liked to pretend to ballroom dance on the seashore. He decided to bring me to court. I think the original idea was that perhaps Thylan and I would be married someday.
In any case, he told me that with my lovely golden hair and punctual blue eyes I would fit in just swell. (His words, not mine. I presumed this to be a compliment, though I was never quite sure what he meant by my eyes being punctual.) And so he brought me to the big island.
When we stepped off the boat, Thylan was there waiting for us. He sat on the shore, dark and brooding. He did that a lot really. He was a very moody prince. (He is now glaring at me as Shallis laughs.) He was one year my senior, his parents were pushing him to get married and his father ruled with an iron fist (or so it was said), so I suppose he thought he had reason to brood. Anyhow, that aside, we got along quite well. We could often be found roaming all over the island together and I was known to be the only one who could get him out of his dark reveries.
Sometimes we would take a boat to one of the other islands. The one closest us was small and...well, eerie. No one lived there. There were houses and boats and tables and chairs, but it was completely abandoned. It was as if the people had just up and left one day, without taking any of their belongings with them.
Thylan told me that his great grandfather had come to the island and driven all of the people to drown in the sea. He seemed to like telling me odd stories about the cruelness of his ancestors. Perhaps a way to deal with it without brooding. I'd heard the stories of course, but I wasn't sure if I really believed them. King Daevrin was quite nice to me, even if his son did act the part of a troubled heir to a long line of cruel kings.
Thylan
As Sybil has so kindly pointed out, I was not a happy prince. I'd grown up ever hearing stories of how my forefathers had conquered this or that, killing everyone in there path. What was I supposed to do? Go along with them, or not? And then there were all those silly girls in their frilly dresses and nothing in their heads. I despised them. They were always fauning over me and batting their eyelashes wildly as if they'd gotten dust in their eyes. Shallis tells me to stop complaining and actually write something important.
I can't think of anything very important to say. I suppose I could say something else about the island. They had been a sea-faring people, who lived off of marketing fish to trading vessels. Until they disappeared. It was said that either my great grandfather came to the island, angry over some petty issue and threatened to kill them all, but instead they ran to the sea and drowned, or that they simply vanished. Since I've never found people to simply vanish into thin air, the former seemed much more likely.
So my great grandfather was responsible for the drowning of an entire island. A small island, granted, but an island all the same. What a legacy, eh?
My father was known throughout the seven seas to rule Enstrom with an iron fist. I could say else about him, but then I would have to jump ahead in the story.
I liked sailing. The wind and salty sea breeze made me feel alive. I did it a lot.
My favorite color is green. Shallis is now taking this away until I have something more important to say.
