Chapter Three: The Sisters
May 14, 2013
Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from the Winx Club properties by writing this story. This story is written for pleasure's sake. All rights reserved.
Thanks for the reviews, Ella Anders, Scourge From BloodClan, miko647635, Chibi Horsewoman, SharpieMassacre and Ultimate Bohab!
Dafne spread the pilfered beach towel on the sandy shore and kicked off her shoes. The beach was small and nobody would be interested in such a small stretch of sand. She gingerly sat down and placed the laden plate of finger foods and bottle of fruit juice she had made off with from the kitchens beside her. She loosened the long aquamarine scarf around her neck and let out a sigh of relief. Finally, she felt like she could breath easy again.
Music began to fade as the night continued on into its darkest hours. Dafne welcomed the oncoming darkness. She had spent so many years at the bottom of lakes and oceans with darkness as her only constant. She had never thought it would happen, but it did: her family had been reunited. Bloom had found her way back to the world of magic and her parents had been rescued from their bleak stone hell in Obsidian. The curse of eternal winter that had hung over Domino had thawed off. Now, they were on Andros celebrating Prince Nereus's promotion to heir apparent to King Neptune's throne.
Above Dafne were the six pale moons of Andros that shone light on the surface of the sea. Twenty years had passed without her and so many things had changed. She was glad to be away from the party. Standing with Bloom's friends, she had felt way too old to be with them and dance like them.
"Isn't there somebody you want to dance with? Like someone you have a crush on? I'm sure he would willingly dance with you," Stella had asked.
Dafne had given her a smile betrayed her real age. Despite still having her barely teenage body, her mind was far older. "The last boy I had a crush on…it was Prince Willis Kincaid. He is currently happily married to Lady Andrea with two children, I think."
"Well, that's awkward…" Stella had stuttered nervously and had promptly stopped trying to get Dafne meet some of the more available dignitaries and specialists.
After that, Dafne had kept to the shadows like a wallflower and spent the evening thinking about how she would pick up the pieces of her life. People had stared at her warily, namely because of the scarf around her neck. The long bluish green scarf that she wore symbolised her nymph-hood. It was a colour that only the sacred nymphs of Ethemera could wear, and apparently, she was the last one. It saddened her to think that she had been the only nymph to survive the war.
"Dafne, are you crying?" Bloom's worried voice interrupted her contemplation.
Dafne raised her head and saw Bloom tentatively making her way to her. Then she felt her face and realised that her face was not wet with sea spray, but with salty tears.
"I guess I am crying," Dafne admitted while wiping her face with a handkerchief.
Bloom sat down and held her older sister tightly to remind her that she had a real body. "What's wrong? Is it because of what Stella said? I mean, I know she's a little mean but she doesn't mean to hurt you."
Dafne smiled softly. "It's not that," Dafne tried to explain. "It's just I'm so glad the way things are now. Everything, it's been fixed. I never thought that this would happen. I thought that I would never see you again, Bloom."
Dafne let Bloom cradle her. She welcomed such a warm embrace. "You had been such a small child and we had rationed so much of our food to feed you. We watered down our milk a lot and I had been scared that it wasn't enough. I thought you had died after I sent you to Earth. I remember you used to cry so much because you were always hungry." Dafne raised a hand to her younger sister's face, as if to wipe away long gone baby tears.
Bloom kept awkwardly silent. She had no idea what to say to such a depressing admission.
Dafne straightened up and disentangled herself from her sister. "I'm so glad that your parents had found you and that they had learnt to love you unconditionally. I'm so sorry that I couldn't raise you or be with you. I had never meant to send you alone," Dafne confessed as she wiped her face with the kerchief again. The tears refused to stop falling from her eyes. "It's so hard seeing you as you are now. I want to know what happened to you in those sixteen years. I want to know what your favourite things were and what kind of childhood you had. I want to be your big sister and teach you things, but I can't anymore. You're all grown up."
Bloom struggled to find the right words. "Dafne, it's alright. Everything turned out alright. I mean, we can't always have things go our way but everything turned out better than expected," Bloom said, trying to placate her sister. She did not think she could find the right words to comfort her. How could she? There were no guides about how to comfort a sister that had essentially returned to the land of the living. "And there are a lot of things that you can still teach me. I have no idea how to be a princess. I wasn't exactly raised in a castle."
Sensing her younger sister's doubts, Dafne brought Bloom's head to hers. She lowered her voice conspiratorially, the way a sister would. "You shouldn't be ashamed of Mike and Vanessa, you should know. Mom and Dad owe them so much for raising you. In the old times, we would have given them wealth beyond imagination as compensation, but this isn't the old times and money does not make happiness. What we can do is make you into something they would be proud to call a daughter. One day, I'll teach you how to pretend eating the goldfish."
"Goldfish?" Bloom's brows arched in confusion.
"We eat goldfish because it's good for our skin."
"What! That can't be true."
"It isn't."
"Oh good. You were just joking. There are some things that I still don't understand about this world." Bloom let out a sigh in relief and brushed her unruly red hair out of her face.
"We still eat the goldfish, Bloom. It's just that it doesn't have any proven medicinal purposes to brightening our skin." Dafne flashed a smile made Bloom queasy.
"You can't be serious."
Dafne reached for the bottle buried in the sand and popped the top. She took a small sip. "The trick is to drink it with water and hold it in your mouth until you can find a discrete way to expel it—unless you actually want to eat the fish."
"I don't think I can do that." Bloom took a swig of the bottle and reached for the platter of hors d'oeuvres.
As the night continued on, the sisters looked up to the sky expectantly. Bloom looked at her phone for the time. The fireworks were supposed to go up any minute. They basked in each other's presence. Bloom's inner fire comforted Dafne. It was evidence that she had not completely failed when she had sent Bloom away.
"What happened to Politea?" Dafne asked as she let the sound of the waves crashing sing in her ear.
Bloom's lips stilled for a moment. She had not expected this question. "Darcy and Stormy had absorbed Politea's powers."
"And Politea?"
"She…faded away."
"She died?" Dafne craned her head to see her sister's face.
Bloom shrugged. She had no desire to talk about it and Dafne could sense it. "I don't know. It's hard to know what stays dead and what doesn't in this world. You're the prime example."
Dafne curled her toes in the wet sand. She saw yachts out on the dark ocean filled with dignitaries vying to get the best view of the fireworks. She saw merpeople's heads bob on the water's surface.
"Why do you care about her though? I thought she had betrayed you to the witches," Bloom said. She began to draw runes in the sand.
Dafne did not answer. Instead, she sighed and plopped herself back on the towel, stretching her limbs as far as she could. She looked to the stars and the moons, recognising none of the constellations of Andros.
"The war with the Ancestral Witches was much more complicated than that," Dafne explained. "Dad had his part of the war to fight on the frontlines of the Lemuries. He had to stop the Army of Decay from spreading their plague to the other nations. I think you know how they crystalise their prey and feed off their energy. You must have seen it in Magix. It was horrible. For three years, he wouldn't come home because he was afraid that he would get us sick or accidentally bring a parasite to the capital." Dafne gathered a ball of damp sand in hand as she explained. She was reluctant to bring up memories that she had spent twenty years forgetting.
"Mom had her battle to fight with the factions and other families who were secretly trying to get the Dragon Flame too. Everyday, she renewed the sacred barriers surrounding the city to keep the darkness out and banished cultists from the kingdom. As a family, we were doing horrible things to keep the realm together and our family on the throne. As for me, I was the last nymph of the Temple of Ethemera. Valtor and the witches had attacked Magix and sacked the temple of its relics. They had killed all the acolytes and the nymphs. The only reason I survived was because I tried to stay at Alfea and fight the army coming down from Shadowhaunt."
"But Politea betrayed you. She didn't do anything when the Ancestral Witches took away your body in the Infinite Ocean," Bloom said.
Dafne raised herself on her elbows to look at Bloom's face. "Bloom, is that what you saw in the Room of Faraway Reflections?"
"Well…yes," Bloom said after she thought long and hard about what she had seen.
"Are you saying that she betrayed me because she didn't do anything to stop the witches? Or are you saying she betrayed me because I'm your sister and you helplessly watched me die, so to speak?" Dafne said carefully.
Dafne was splitting hairs and she knew it. Bloom knew that she did not mean for it to come off as hurtful or accusatory, but Bloom could still feel the question burn her ears. Bloom had no idea how to respond. There was a fine difference between the two things Dafne had said.
"Dafne, I don't want to talk about this. It's all over now," Bloom evaded. "Anyways, none of this matters anymore." The orange-haired girl avoided Dafne's eyes.
Dafne did not need to hear Bloom's answer as she could read it on her face. Over her years watching her, she had learnt what kind of girl Bloom was. She was one of the bravest people ever born. She had thrown caution to the wind and embraced magic. She had left her only home and the people who had loved and raised unconditionally despite being an orphan, and ventured back into world she had came from. She had fought some of Cloud Tower's nastiest witches and defeated Valtor, but Bloom was incapable of facing her own inner weaknesses and feelings.
Dafne sat up and sighed. She thought long and hard as she stared at the endless expanse of ocean before them and then, she turned to Bloom. Bloom's bright blue eyes had a doe-like fragility and innocence. Bloom had turned out to be all that Dafne and her parents could have ever hoped for and more, and she was afraid that what she was about to do would break the quiet familial joy that surrounded them. However, Bloom needed to understand and Dafne knew that she would be strong enough.
"Bloom, I'm going to show you something right now. Something you should never to share to another soul, not even your friends or our parents. I'm not doing this to warn you. I'm doing this to scare you and to show you the difference between good and evil because I love you."
Dafne stood up and stepped her bare feet into the sea foam that washed the shore. She waded deep into the water until she was thigh deep.
Dafne's body started to glow white with mystic power as she disappeared under the surf. Bloom felt the small fire in Dafne ignite and take shape as ocean waves engulfed her body. Flowing with the energies of transformation, the water wrapped around the older sister like a cocoon. Bloom gasped as she felt the surrounding energies pour eagerly into the cocoon. It was wondrous and immense, filled with purity and virtue until she felt the black power seep out of the light. Alarmed, Bloom stood up and tried to move her legs to maybe save her sister but could not. Her legs were rooted to the sand. The source of darkness was undeniable. Finally, the surf retreated back to the sea and revealed Dafne.
Moonlight shimmered off her wet fin-like wings and scale-covered chest. Her blue and gold wings were streaked black. Her crimson mane turned back to its usual gold as water dripped down her back. Bloom thought she had imagined that there were black streaks among the ivory ones. Dafne's long hair was held back with a crown of coral. As she stepped out of the surf, she revealed to have a golden top spotted with dark patches and a necklace of pearls and ribbons. Her floor-length cream silk skirt dragged heavily against the sand like shackles and her legs glinted like silver and gold coins. Again, more ink black blots striped her legs giving her the appearance of a golden tiger stepping out of the ocean.
"Dafne?" Bloom stuttered. She was not sure if the person that had stepped into the ocean was the same one that was coming out of it. She eyed all the black stripes and spots that were on her sister. They were shiny like the sludge stains of the Trix's Dark Sirenix forms. "Dafne, what are you?"
Dafne raised her arms and presented herself to her little sister. "This is what Dark Sirenix looks like on a fairy. The universe brands us black and makes our wings rot if we go back on our vows. I promised to help keep the Infinite Ocean safe when I undertook the quest and I broke that promise."
"You have Dark Sirenix!" Bloom's mouth became dry as she uttered those words. Saying it aloud made the red-haired girl shiver in fear.
Slowly, the ebony muck began to retreat from her scales and wings as the older sister stepped out of the water and dried off.
"This is the sickness that will eat at you if you disappoint the gods. We do not define what is good and evil in this world, the gods do and they have decided to show it like this. Mom and Dad have never seen this part of me and I don't want them to ever see it." Dafne shook her wings to wring them of water as they turned back to bright gold and blue.
"What did you do that made you like this?" Bloom managed after she stilled her racing heart.
She could feel the energy around Dafne sizzle and simmer like hot oil hitting water. It was neither cold, chaotic nor dark as the Trix's powers, but something much more explosive and violent.
"I did it for you, and Mom, and Dad. I thought that maybe I could use the powers in the Infinite Ocean to keep our family together and win the war. I thought that the gods would turn a blind eye to what I was doing. They didn't. The Great Dragon and the other gods don't care for what purposes we use these powers, just as long as it's not for personal gain in mortal affairs. I betrayed all the gods, the selkies and Omnia. Most of all, I betrayed Politea when she had helped me the most to get my powers, Now, I have to carry this curse until I die."
"But that's not fair!" Bloom trembled. "You were doing it to protect our parents and the kingdom. You lost your body trying to save me! This isn't fair!"
"I know," Dafne said. There was not a hint of regret in her voice.
Bloom's eyes began to glisten with tears. Everything she had worked for to bring her sister back to the mortal realm seemed inconsequential now. She had thought that everything would be perfect with her birth family as soon as she brought Dafne back to them. She thought that Dafne could fix the hole in their hearts and be the exemplary daughter and princess they wanted, but bringing Dafne to them as she was now would crush them. Bloom knew it for sure.
Dafne stepped to Bloom, reaching for her little sister's hands.
Bloom recoiled violently as she felt incredible power burn her. Dafne's dark power was so black that it could even burn the Guardian Fairy of the Dragon Flame. Afraid, Bloom took a step back as Dafne hung her head in shame. Bloom could not bear the incredible black power surrounding Dafne, but this woman was her sister and her savior. She could not walk away from her. Dafne had given so much for Bloom to survive and live a normal life.
Bloom shrouded herself in a protective aura and wrapped her arms around Dafne. It hurt to hold her but she knew that Dafne hurt even more. Bloom felt hot tears stain her shirt as Dafne began to weep from pain that Bloom knew she could not heal with magic or medicine.
Next chapter, The Sea Aflame! Politea is back and roaring for the blood of a nymph. Too bad she doesn't get the right nymph.
