This fic introduces Nereida, my OC for Aelia's mother, and some backstory to explain why she isn't present during the series. While I haven't sketched out her design yet, she's based on a luna moth (though with a sea green colouring rather than the lime green typical of the species). Her nicknames for Fulgor and Aelia come from the translation of their names - fulgor is Latin for lightning, brightness, or flash; while Aelia's name may derive from the Greek aella, meaning storm or whirlwind. (Nereida's own name is taken from the Greek nereid, or sea nymph.)

Warnings: Fantastic Racism, OC POV, unhealthy coping mechanisms (Nereida has Issues).

Warning

Nereida drifted through the flowers of Joyceland, brushing her hand along leaves and petals as she passed, and tried not to cry. After so many years—oh, it was good to see her home again. It had surprised her, how much she had missed the familiar flowers and the sounds of other insects at work around her; almost as much as she had missed her children and her husband. The land beyond the wastes had its own patches of lush growth, but the flowers that grew there were strange and unfamiliar, and even as she harvested their seeds and studied their growth, she had longed for the blooms that she knew.

Not that these were exactly the same flowers that she had left behind, seven years ago. Nereida saw new colours and shapes, growth that clung to the ground and sprouted in a riot of twisting stems rather than the tall straight stalks she was used to. That would be Aelia's work, no doubt. Nereida felt her heart swell with pride. One hand went to the bag at her side, which held vial upon vial of seeds and tiny cuttings. With these, Aelia would be able to do even more than before, and Nereida couldn't wait to see what living works of art her daughter would create.

The other hand still held her pollen launcher. As she noticed strong, healthy, innovative plants, Nereida could also see the soft bright green that always meant new growth—and she could see the broken stumps that must have sheltered the new sprouts as they unfurled themselves from the earth. The Yuks had clearly not ceased their destructive activities, and Nereida felt the old anger wake and burn within her. Her hand tightened on the launcher. She almost hoped that she would see a Yuk, so that she wold have a chance to test the skills that she had honed through long hours of solitary practice out in the wastelands.

With an effort, she relaxed her grip. Time enough for that later; for now, she wanted to see her beloved husband, she wanted to see her brightly shining son and her stormy daughter. Nereida tilted her head up towards the Great Flower and prepared to climb.

From somewhere to her right, she heard laughter—familiar laughter—and pivoted towards it as though pulled. Aelia? Leaves and flowers brushed past her as Nereida made her way towards the sound with the same single-minded determination that had kept her on course for so many years. Over the rustling, she began to hear the rise and fall of conversation, and as she got closer, she began to make out the words.

"—worth it, don't you think?" said Aelia.

"Absolutely," replied an unfamiliar male voice. There was clear admiration in his tone. "Truly magnificent, Aelia—you've outdone yourself."

"It's the same kind of formula as the Exuberansis," said Aelia, and Nereida could picture her daughter sliding her fingers along the stems of her plant, as delicately as any parent with their child. "But I found a way to delay the explosive growth until certain conditions are met."

"Such as foolish Yuks trying to cut it down," said the male voice.

"Such as that." Aelia laughed again. "General Lukanus's soldiers will get a nasty shock if they try to log this plant!"

"And they will deserve it. You are amazing, Aelia. How did you manage it?"

"Well—"

Nereida pushed her way through the last of the leaves and stopped short. That was certainly her daughter kneeling in the dirt beside an unfamiliar plant, but the insect who stood above her—

She plunged a hand into her bag, found one of the small spheres of compacted pollen she had kept close through her seven years of searching, shoved it into the small woven basket at the end of her launcher, and let fly. Her aim was perfect. The globe of pollen struck the Yuk squarely in his side, and he staggered. Aelia leapt into the air, hovering a foot or two above the ground.

"Acylius!" She turned, furious, in the direction of the shot. "How dare you—" She saw Nereida, and froze. "Mom?"

"Aelia," said Nereida, reloading her pollen launcher without once taking her eyes off the Yuk, who was blinking down at the pale purple pollen covering his side. "Get behind me. You—Yuk—I suggest that you get out of here before—" She raised the launcher threateningly.

"Mom, no!" Aelia darted in front of the Yuk.

"Aelia, move," Nereida snapped.

"No! You don't understand. He's a friend!"

Nereida let the launcher drop in sheer surprise. "What?"

"Er," said the Yuk, peering out from behind Aelia. "Hello. I think there has been some mistake…"

The introductions that followed could only be described as 'awkward'. Nereida glowered at the Yuk, who remained obstinately solemn despite being coated in pollen. She still didn't believe that this—Acylius—was immune to the effects as Aelia claimed he was. More likely that the pollen of flowers that grew outside the influence of the Prism did not have the same effects, which meant that there would be a lengthy period of cross-breeding ahead of her. (Beauty and new kolors were all very well, but practicality was a necessity when one lived in a warzone.)

"I'm very pleased to meet you, ma'am," said the Yuk. He bowed to her, and Nereida pressed her mouth tightly closed so that she wouldn't sneer. Did he really think that she would be won over by a veneer of civilised behaviour? Still, impossible to confront him on the matter now. Aelia was already upset and inclined to take the Yuk's side; and if he were a good enough actor to fool her daughter, Nereida had no doubt that he would find ways to twist any accusations she might make.

A display of tolerance, then. If the Yuk could pretend that he respected her, then she could do the same. "The pleasure is all mine," she said, grateful for the way that her voice rasped from disuse. It would disguise any sarcasm that might leak into her tone.

Aelia still gave her a suspicious look, but she didn't say anything.

"How did you meet him?" Nereida asked later, after Acylius had cleaned the pollen from his carapace and disappeared back into the tunnel that apparently linked Yukdom directly to Flower City. It took an enormous effort of willpower on Nereida's part not to tear out the supporting stones that held the entrance open—how could Pyro have allowed this hole in their defences?

She had insisted on staying with her daughter, rather than going back to the Great Flower—claiming that she wanted to ask about the work that Aelia had been doing. Acylius had accepted this, or seemed to accept it, anyway. Aelia had not been fooled in the slightest. She had kept shooting hurt looks at Nereida whenever Acylius looked away.

"We ran into one another in the outer fields," replied Aelia, a little stiffly. "He'd escaped from the Stump and stolen a war machine so that he could cross the swamp and see Joyceland for himself. He'd wanted to come here for a long time, but this was the first time that he'd managed to get away." She softened, a smile curving her lips. "He was so excited by everything. I spent most of that first day telling him all the names of everything, while Fulgor complained that we were boring stick-in-the-muds."

Nereida didn't like the dreamy quality in Aelia's voice at all. "Escaped?" she asked, allowing some of her scepticism to leak into her tone.

She expected Aelia to become defensive, but instead her daughter giggled—as though the situation was in any way amusing. "I know, it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But Acylius used to be considered—well—a disappointment to his mother. She thought, and Krabo thought, that they could crush his spirit and make him into a proper Yuk." She smiled with clear pride. "It didn't work. I think they've reclassified him as a delinquent, now that he's done so much to help us."

Nereida hummed in dissatisfied acknowledgment of this information.

Aelia's face fell, and she looked at her mother pleadingly. "Please give him a chance. He's really not like any other Yuk. And I—"

Nereida thought that she could guess what her daughter would say, and she couldn't bear to hear it. "Let's leave the subject for now," she said. "How are your brother and your father? I have missed the three of you terribly."

"He has been a big help," Fulgor told her. "I kind of thought that he was a spy when I first saw him, but he's proven himself. We've gotten early warning for plenty of Krabo's plans, and he's helped spring me from the Stump's dungeons a couple of times. And there's been at least two attacks that he thwarted directly." He chuckled, strumming his guitar. "Bakrakra must be spitting mad, but he's her only son, so she doesn't dare do anything really drastic."

Nereida hummed in acknowledgment, making a mental note to verify those stories—and wondered who she might ask. Aelia was clearly biased, and now it seemed that Fulgor was too. "And the tunnels?" she asked. In the three days since she had returned to Flower City, it seemed as though every Joyce in Joyceland had come to congratulate her about Aelia's fantastic botanical work and Fulgor's brave defence of the land against the Yuks. Nereida found it difficult to believe that Fulgor would have overlooked the obvious problems of a tunnel directly linking their home to that of their enemies—even if, upon closer inspection, the tunnels were certainly too small to accommodate any sizable war machine.

Fulgor rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. "He says it's so he can come see us all whenever he likes, but really it's so he can come see Aelia. He's been totally stuck on her since they first met, and she's just as bad. When it was first completed, I thought that I'd have to stand guard on the entrance so that she wouldn't disappear in and go see him whenever she wanted to."

Nereida couldn't help the twitch that rippled through her at the thought of her daughter under all the weight of the earth, heading into the heart of the enemy stronghold. "Does she? Disappear inside?" she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

"No, she's smarter than that. After I—" Suddenly Fulgor coughed, his fingers jerking across the strings of the guitar in a chord so off-key that it made Nereida wince. "I mean, after a while, Acylius made the tunnel into a maze, so that even if Krabo thought to send someone down there, they wouldn't be able to come straight through. Aelia's too smart to risk getting lost down there; she never goes in without Acylius."

"Prince Acylius? Sure-sure-sure, he helps us!" Daltonio peered down into the vat of red pollen. "Isn't the blue pollen looking super? So vibrant! Aelia will make lots of pretty new flowers with these."

Nereida couldn't stop a fond smile from curving her lips. Daltonio hadn't changed a bit in the years that she had been away.

"About the prince helping you…" she said.

"Wha? Oh, yes! The Yuks sent a metal bird to attack the Prism during the last Summer Festival." The little green insect shuddered. "Still have bad dreams about seeing those claws around our precious Prism. I thought we were washed up for sure! But then, another bird comes out of nowhere, and crash!" Daltonio threw up his arms in dramatic demonstration of the sound, and narrowly missed striking Nereida in the nose. She drifted backwards a foot or so. "It runs right into the first bird and knocks it off the Prism! And then it keeps pecking at the first bird—pecking and pecking—even when the beak was all smashed up! And he kept right on going, until his bird fell apart around him!" He nodded. "Gave us enough time to charge the Prism. Saved the day!"

Nereida shook her head. This didn't make any sense—Acylius could not possibly be what he claimed to be, but Daltonio was too direct and transparent an insect to lie. "He really hasn't done anything..." Bad? Destructive? Cruel? "…questionable?"

Daltonio suddenly scowled. "Didn't say that."

Her heart stopped. "Oh?"

The little green insect folded his arms, and his scowl deepened. "He stole my first dance with Aelia in the Summer Festival."

Eurekas didn't look up when Nereida knocked on the door to his laboratory, but he lifted a hand in silent acquiescence to her entry. Nereida found a place among the piles of equipment and examined Fulgor's biological father while he finished working on…whatever it was that he was doing. She didn't quite know what to make of Eurekas yet; she had never expected to meet him. But she was still more inclined to trust him—who had risked everything to ensure a better life for his son—than some Yuk princeling, however rebellious he claimed to be.

Eurekas twisted something into place on his latest creation, set down his tools, and turned around. A circle of glass magnified one of his eyes to enormous proportions, and Nereida couldn't help a snort of laughter. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it, but Eurekas only rolled his eyes and pulled the securing band roughly over his antennae. He set it down on his workbench.

"I apologise," said Nereida, once she had regained control of herself.

Eurekas waved a dismissive hand. "You are more restrained than Fulgor." His tone was affectionate yet exasperated; a feeling that she knew very well indeed. Fulgor seemed to bring it out in most people that he met, and Nereida relaxed slightly. "Is there something that I can help you with?" asked Eurekas, cocking his head.

She stiffened again, remembering why she had come. "Yes, actually, you can. I came to ask your opinion on something."

"On Prince Acylius?"

She made a face. "Have I been that indiscreet?"

A faint smile touched Eurekas's mouth. "Not precisely. I am more used to observation than interaction; even before my imprisonment, I listened more than I talked." He leaned back against the bench. "But even if I had not heard of your questions from my son, I would have expected you to ask. You distrust Yuks. To find out that one is…"

Nereida felt herself go even more rigid as she waited for Eurekas to say it. His eyes narrowed slightly, and there was a brief pause before he went on.

"...close to your daughter must have been a shock."

"One way to describe it," she conceded. "What do you think of him?" Eurekas was a Yuk who had rebelled against the demands of Acylius's mother; by both culture and experience, he would be less inclined to trust Bakrakra's son.

Eurekas did not answer immediately. His gaze drifted to a piece of equipment whose function Nereida could not even begin to guess. "He is not what I expected," he said, at last. "He was only a few months old when I was imprisoned, but I expected that he would grow up to be as cold and cruel as his mother. There was no one in the court to provide a mitigating influence. Even if there had been, Bakrakra would have removed them as soon as she realised." Idly, he picked up one of the tools he had been working with and examined it. "Instead, he has forged a path for himself. I heard the whispers of the Stump, even before I met him. The common people don't know what to think of him; he is so different to anyone who has come before. And if I had not known better, during our first meeting, I would have thought him a Joyce from his bearing." He set the tool down again, and looked at her with a wry smile. "Not the answer you were looking for, I think."

"You spend more time here than you used to."

Nereida did not take her eyes from the Prism, and Pyro did not approach her. He must not be sure whether she wanted company, and Nereida felt her mouth quirk into a self-deprecating smile. In all honesty, she wasn't sure either. It seemed that she had spent many hours here, watching the kolor fall in rippling sheets from the altar's basins, but no inspiration had lit her mind. Perhaps the Prism only granted such insight to those—like her husband—who devoted their lives to tending it.

Or maybe she was unworthy of its help.

"I missed it," she said. "There is nothing like it, beyond the desert." The falling kolor cycled from dazzling yellow to vibrant orange to bright pink to brilliant purple to vivid blue and back again, the essence of every flower that the Joyces had ever grown. If she looked hard enough, Nereida felt, she might see the imprint of everything that had bloomed in her absence—everything that she hadn't seen, everything she hadn't been able to save.

"Ah." Pyro's voice was closer now. "So it has nothing to do with avoiding our daughter."

Nereida said nothing. There was no point in trying to deny the obvious—though her heart ached at the memory of all her recent conversations with Aelia. Each one had been as brief and sterile as Nereida had been capable of, always circling around the topic that she still refused to discuss.

"She missed you terribly."

Nereida grimaced, but did not take her eyes from the Prism. "I know."

Pyro's voice moved closer still. "She still does."

"I know that, too." The guilt was terrible, far heavier than the loneliness had ever been. Nereida had thought she had known exactly how guilty one could feel, that she knew the limits of the sick twist in your stomach and the tight vice around your throat. That she knew the way it bowed your shoulders and weighted your wings and dragged you down. Nereida closed her eyes, and the last kolor that flashed before her gaze was a soft twilight purple.

She hadn't known as much as she had thought.

A faint rustling made her reopen her eyes, and at the edge of her vision, she saw the bright flash of Pyro's purple-and-gold wings as he came up beside her. "Are you still concerned about Prince Acylius?" he asked.

She whirled on him. "Of course I'm still concerned about Prince Acylius. What I cannot understand is why no one else is!"

Her voice rang from the walls of the chamber, far harsher than anything that had a right to be in the presence of the Prism, and she flinched. Pyro looked at her steadily, and Nereida turned her head away. When she spoke again, she kept her voice low, but she couldn't smooth out the rough edges. "He is a Yuk. He is the son of Queen Bakrakra, whose soldiers have wreaked immeasurable destruction on us for years. They have done their best to destroy our home. They have ruined our work. They have ruined my work. They have ruined Aelia's work." She took a deep breath, and her fists clenched. "And we have accepted the heir to this, this, nightmare—because he is capable of pretending courtesy?" She flung out an arm. "There is, right now, a tunnel that provides a direct path from their city to ours, and I seem to be the only one who is worried about what might come through it!"

"Thus far," said Pyro, his voice as serene as ever, "the only thing to come through it has been Acylius himself. I understand that he has taken precautions against it being used by anyone else."

"So he says."

"Fulgor can testify as to the truth of those precautions," said Pyro, still mildly. "He once got quite lost in those tunnels; it took the combined efforts of Aelia and Acylius to find him again."

Nereida couldn't stop herself from flinching. The way that Pyro so casually said 'Aelia and Acylius'—as though their names belonged together—

"And that, I believe, is what truly bothers you," said Pyro, quietly. "You know by this point that Acylius himself is not a threat to our people as a whole. But you seem to believe he is quite a threat to Aelia."

"If he breaks her heart," Nereida began fiercely—then stopped herself. Violent threats had no place in Joyceland, and certainly not in this room, with the Prism glowing above them. Her anger died, and left behind it only deeper guilt—for using a convenient excuse to disguise her true fears, for giving way to anger to escape her guilt, for taking it out on the husband she had been separated from for so long and missed every day. With a deep sigh, she rubbed at her face. "It seems that even peaceful Yuks bring out the worst in me. I will adjust, Pyro. I just need time." She wasn't sure how long it would take—for but Aelia and Fulgor and Pyro, and even for Eurekas, she would have to try.

Her husband took her hand. "Have you considered expressing your sentiments to Acylius?"

She blinked at him. He seemed to be perfectly serious. "You want me to threaten him?" she said incredulously.

Pyro smiled at her, managing to be dry and affectionate all at once. "I think that the prince's reaction may surprise you."

Aelia threw herself into Acylius's arms as he emerged from the tunnel mouth, and even from where she floated, Nereida could hear them both laughing. At gunpoint, she might even have admitted that their voices harmonised nicely, that their obvious delight in seeing one another again (even if their separation had only been for a few days) was rather endearing, and that the way they kept hold of one another's hands even after ending their embrace was very sweet.

At nothing short of gunpoint, though, she thought wryly, as the two pulled away from one another. She drifted towards them. As Aelia and Acylius noticed her, their animated conversation died away into silence. Aelia shifted, as though preparing to put herself between Acylius and her mother again, and Nereida felt a pang as she held up her hands.

"I come in peace," she said, trying not to sound as tired as she felt. "Acylius, may I speak to you for a moment?"

Curiously, the prince did not seem as tense or defensive as her daughter. "Of course," he said, gently withdrawing his hands from Aelia's.

"Mom—" began Aelia, her voice somewhere between pleading and warning.

Nereida tried for a reassuring smile. Judging by Aelia's expression, she didn't quite achieve her aim. "I swear by the Prism that my intentions are pure, my stormy wind."

Aelia still didn't look convinced. Acylius put a hand on her arm and gave her an—apparently—much more reassuring smile than Nereida had managed. Reluctantly, biting her lip, Aelia stepped back. Acylius waved an arm towards a nearby stand of tulips. "Shall we?" he asked.

Nereida nodded, feeling unable to speak, and the two of them walked towards the tulips. When they were out of Aelia's earshot, Acylius turned to face her. "How can I help you?" he asked.

If she ignored his lack of kolors, Nereida had to concede that he was quite good-looking—not tall and terrifying as his mother supposedly was, nor squat and rotund as other Yuks tended to be, but strong and well-proportioned. The bluntly spiked shoulders and the ridged nose gave him a vaguely exotic look, but the membranous wings prevented that impression from tipping over into dangerously different. He sounded pleasant, too; not just in the tone and quality of his voice, but his choice of words and command of language. Did Yuk rulers teach their children rhetoric and elocution? Or was this another part of what made Acylius a disappointment to his mother?

She could see why Aelia had grown fond of—no. She could see why Aelia had fallen in love with him.

"What has Aelia told you about me?" she asked.

He cocked his head, but that was his only sign of confusion. "She told me that you are a botanist, and that you taught her most of what she knows."

Brief and sterile. Nereida tried not to wince. "And why I left Flower City?"

"There was an…incident," said Acylius, choosing his words with obvious care, "when Aelia was eleven. After one of the attacks on Flower City, she went looking for Prima Flora pollen to bolster the Prism, and one of the logging transports followed her to Bramble Island. It was only your quick thinking that saved the Prima Flora from being discovered." He gave her a look that she couldn't interpret. "She said that you incapacitated two of the soldiers on the boat and intimidated the third into near fits, all with nothing but a forked thorn branch and a few pollen clumps."

Nereida placed his expression: uncertain admiration. He wasn't sure whether to believe the story or not, and absurdly, that made her feel a little better. "She makes it sound as though I planned it that way," she said. "I only intended to create enough of a distraction for her to escape after leading them away from the Prima Flora. But the boat ran aground on the thorns, and they thought Aelia had been leading them into a trap—so they shot at her."

There was a quick, shocked intake of breath from Acylius, and Nereida went on. "They missed, or I would have done more than incapacitate them. But I was very, very angry, or I would not have been so reckless. It was only luck that let me disable two trained soldiers when I had never so much as picked up a weapon before. Moths and butterflies are not suited to battle." She gestured to her large wings. "We make tempting targets."

"So you left to find somewhere that you would not be targets," said Acylius.

"Indeed," agreed Nereida. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was as much truth as Acylius had a right to hear. She wasn't interested in discussing the intricacies of her motivations with him; today, she only meant to issue a warning. "I have spent seven years searching for a place that Joyces can live in peace—without being harassed by Yuks."

Acylius winced. "I am doing what I can to stop that."

"So everyone has said." She had doubts about whether any single individual was capable of overturning a thousand years of tradition, but to say so would be needlessly inflammatory.

He seemed to hear those doubts anyway. "I know that you don't trust me," he said, "and I don't mind. You have every reason to be distrustful. But I swear by the Prism that I love Aelia with everything that I am. I would never hurt her."

"Not you, personally," said Nereida. "But what about the rest of your people?" Acylius was silent. After a moment, Nereida continued. "I never thought that it would be easy to persuade my people to abandon this place, but I had hoped to take at least my children away from the war. Instead, I have come back and found both of them deeply rooted to this conflict. I might convince Fulgor to leave, if our people came too—there would be no need for a hero if we left our enemies behind—but I cannot say the same of Aelia. Because I know that she will not leave you." She shook her head. "You may not hurt her—not deliberately, at least—but what about this war?"

She expected him to get angry; almost wanted him to get angry. Instead, Acylius met her gaze calmly, and for the first time, Nereida saw the steel in him. "My people will evolve," said Acylius. "The process has already begun, and it will continue to happen. Our parasitic ways are not necessary or just, and they will end." He said it in the same way that one might say that night would follow day, or rain would follow sunshine. Nereida blinked. For a moment, she thought she saw a crown on Acylius's head—black and silver metal twisted together like climbing vines.

Then he laughed sheepishly, and the crown vanished. "I know that there is a lot of work to be done before the war can truly be considered over," he said, with a young man's smile. "But please, give me time. I swear I can do it—I will do it, even if it takes the rest of my life."

Nereida stared at him. Her mother had been a seer—Zephrine had been the one to teach Pyro to scry, many years ago. Nereida had never shown more than a touch of the gift, and she had never learned to reliably recognise a vision when it came to her. But it was hard to think of what else that image could be—or how it could be interpreted, other than as a glimpse of the king that Acylius would become.

"You know," she said slowly. "I think I believe you."

He blinked at her. "Really?"

She bit down on an unexpected urge to smile. "Believe me, nobody is more surprised than I am." She shook her head and made a shooing gesture. "Enough. I've said what I wanted to; I shouldn't keep you longer, or my daughter will be most unhappy." After a moment, she added, "Thank you for your time." Oddly enough, the words were not as hard to say as she had expected.

"You're welcome," said Acylius, sounding slightly puzzled. He turned away, then back again. "I never want to be responsible for causing Aelia pain," he said earnestly, "If I ever hurt her, you are more than welcome to do to me whatever you would have done to those soldiers, if they had hit her."

Nereida's antennae twitched briefly. "I'll bear that in mind," she said solemnly. This must have been what Pyro had meant about Acylius's reaction surprising her. She watched the Yuk prince flutter back to her anxious daughter—watched the way that Aelia cupped Acylius's face in one hand, how Acylius leaned in to touch his antennae to hers. There was such love in those gestures.

Enough to overturn millennia of war?

Nereida didn't know about that. But she remembered the vision of that crown—with black and silver entwined. And for the first time that she could remember, she wondered.