The Nymph rises from her light and troubled sleep, feeling tears upon her cheek as she takes a shuddering breath. The empty void torn into her breast aches with grief as the vestiges of a familiar nightmare fade from before her waking eye. Time after time, she sees her sister push her away before the Gods fall upon her; she sees the faces of Man, twisted with rage and hatred as they fall upon her Sisters.
She should hate them; she should feel nothing in her heart but the cold desire for revenge, and hear nothing but a raging voice in her ear, demanding the deaths of those who robbed her ruthlessly of her family. When the nightmares become too vivid and her cold, dark surroundings threaten to suffocate her, she steps beyond the threshold of the Temple and turns her eyes down to the realm below.
The waters are poison, and the fields nothing more than ashes; an unnatural canker spreads towards the forests, tinging the crown of their trees black. The heart of the Nymph aches all the more for the pain that Nature suffers; she knows – she knows – that this is not their work. She and her Sisters' first love was for Nature; they had been born into existence with that love firmly settled within their breast.
Unable to sleep, unable to bear looking upon the grim walls of the Temple's innards any longer, the Nymph casts a careful look about herself before stepping into the sky's embrace.
The first time she returns to the realm of Man, she is deathly afraid; she hides herself from the merest breath of wind, trembling in the shadows. Her strength has waned, her power merely a shadow of what it once was, and her body protests even as she kneels beside the stream and stretches her hand out over it. She does not tarry long and is saddened to find that she cannot do much, but she heals what she can before fleeing back to the skies.
Since that occasion, the Nymph periodically returns to the earth to heal what she can. It is difficult, fatiguing work, for often the poison that claims the lands overpowers the little she is able to do and renders her efforts all for naught. But still she tries.
It takes several visits, but eventually she purifies the river that runs alongside a small, struggling village. Its inhabitants find that they can once again fish from its waters, and the Nymph's spirit is lifted at the joy and relief of the people. But then they turn their eyes to the skies and sing unto the Gods for the miracle. The Nymph retreats to the Temple; its gloom embraces her.
Truly, what had she expected, a cry of adulation from Man towards the Nymphs? They thought that she and her Sisters had plotted against them to destroy them; they had slaughtered them in vengeance for an act they had not committed.
She remembers that dreadful night as cold spreads through her being, the ache at her chest painful. There had been no mercy for them; no words of reason would reach those that the Nymphs had found a love in their hearts for. She had watched her Sisters fall to Man's cruel weapons, watched blood paint the ground and watched as in mindless savagery, her Sisters were forced into the flames that Man had once taught them the secret of.
She should hate them; she should yearn for their blood in kind. The thought has possessed her to truly turn the poisons of the land loose upon humankind for their terrible deeds – but always she dreams, and she hears the voice of her last sister.
Find justice…
No, she cannot turn her hand against them. Retribution oft seemed justified in the eyes of the Nymph, but she knew that her sister was always the wiser. What had taken place – the suddenness of it all…it made no sense to her. And so until she can truly make sense of it, she must bear her pain. She must bear the cries of Man to those who had aided in the destruction of all that she knew as she seeks to heal the land, to purify its waters and lift the corruption from its soil.
The Nymph rises from her bed, knowing that sleep will not come to her easily for some time. She steps beyond the threshold of the Temple, and with grace gives herself to the embrace of the skies once more.