The streak of darkness nobody could brighten

Alice

Wow, I thought as I watched Alicia move with the water. I had told mother I was going to get Alicia and bring her in for dinner. I knew she was out here in the courtyard, shielded by tall beds of coral and long strips of seaweed. And as I felt the current shift from time to time, I knew Alicia was controlling the ocean. This is what I wanted to see.

Alicia was the youngest, I was the oldest, I was the destined Queen of the ocean. But it ended up being Alicia, to say I wasn't a little jealous would be untrue, I was a tiny bit. Alicia lived up on land, she barely visited, only once or twice a month. She barely knows the Atlantis people and she seems so very unhappy and stiff when she's down here.
But aren't we all.
I would like to visit up onto land.... Someday, maybe when I'm married and wiser. Unlike my 3 younger sisters not including Alicia. I have found a source of information that proved to me I needed to be very strong to go up on land.

This source of information, was Alicia's journal. I knew Amber had one too, but she didn't have just one, she had millions, she was constantly writing in them since she could first spell, she was Atlantean's finest writer. She would make a fine woman one day with her skills.

I had snuck into her room when Alicia had left it this afternoon, she had taken out her brown scratchy journal and kept it in a large plastic container so the water wouldn't leak in and destroy the ink.
Our father has a chamber in the basement of our palace, it has been sucked clean of water, and only air remains in there. I had taken the plastic container with the journal inside and had fled to the room.
When I opened the first door and closed it behind me, I pulled a lever and a drain opened under my tail, suddenly all the water seeped out and my blue tail disappeared into pale legs.
I had taken shorts and what humans call underwear and even a towel, of course it had been in the emergency closet closest to the back door of the palace, but I managed to get stuff from it. We always kept it stocked up incase we needed to go to land for some reason.
Once I had dried myself with the towel, I took the clothes out of the stone water free chest and put it on, very shakily because this was only the 3rd time I had used my legs. Finally I opened the last door now that my gills had been replaced by lungs and inside was grass and 4 huge trees in a dome room. I had only been in here twice with my mother, and any other thing that grew on land had been drawn in our picture books with a special ink Amber always needed.
I shakily walked over hating the dirt under my toes from the grass and sitting at the base of the tree.

Finally I opened Alicia's journal and I flipped through the book to the right date March 1st Alicia's birthday 3 years ago, were she wrote about her first time on land. My blue eyes danced over the page.

Going up to land, it was both frightening and refreshing. The thought that I was finally free from the ocean and the too kind Atlantean's, it opened my mind to the possibilities that I could become someone else. No, someone more, me. When I was down with the Atlantean's under the sea, I felt as though I wasn't naive and everyone else was, I felt that people where too kind even though some people couldn't afford Shell shining and that everyone cared for each other even if some sea creatures ate to survive. No, me and the Atlantean's are all still naive. As I came up on land, it frightened me, people lived on the streets, the temperature froze so low one could actually die. And babies where killed and even sold. So these people where Humans?
I was told by my mother that part of being Human was that they make mistakes, but even the way they live is a mistake, the smoke they put in the air, the way they treat woman, the way the leave other countries to die for making them products. Worst how they dump everything in the sea, It's all sick!
But, there is a beauty in Humanity too.
A beauty that's excepting and kind, that makes people grow together even in hardship. Movies and magic that can be played on screen, the way children laugh on a holiday called Christmas. Even first crushes with girls blushing and boys awkwardly fidgeting, it makes you smile. Making mistakes is apart of being Human, but it is also in Human's nature to forgive, forget and move on. Something I know my life in Atlantis would never do. The people down there, they know nothing of drugs, stealers, beggars, war, blood, lost... Human's do, and look at them, there fine, there happy there loved, there who they want to be. Atlantean's don't get that chance. They are set to become this too kind, too nice, too appreciative, when really they should be learning from there mistakes, learning that even when you do bad, something good comes out of it.
My first friend was named David, he works in a blacksmith and offered me a job. At first I wondered why humans didn't just share, but now they need money to pay for food and needs, and only jobs give you money. I asked him why people did such bad things in the world and you know what he said. "Because we can't have good without it". We can't have good without bad. Humans are 2 words "coo" and "ky". But there a lot better then Atlantean's.

By the way, this is my new life, I always hated the name Alicia, it was too girly. My name is Ace, Ace too hell with a last name. Oh and David taught me to swear, it's a great stress reliever =P

Ace.

I bit my lower lip as I looked at Alicia's name, so she hated her name, she hated us, she hated our living. Well she didn't necessarily hate it, she just thought it was.... Hell? Swearing is so weird? Maybe there was more words then Hell, I mean there was shit and now Hell, and I think Amber knows some more... No that's not the point. The point is Alicia I mean, Ace, doesn't like it down here?! Isn't she supposed to be queen, isn't she supposed to be the loving caring ruler of the place she doesn't even like. Isn't she practicing her water controlling skills in the courtyard right now.

So I walked out of the air room shut the door behind me tightly, then I opened the next door after I stripped off from my waist down and put everything including the towel into the stone chest. I greeted the water happily my skin feeling to dry and cracked as water rushed in through the opened door.
My blue tail came back after a big shudder wracked my body and the blue scales looked like they never left.

After putting everything in the closet and returning the book in its plastic case up in Ace's room where I found it, here I am looking at Ace in the courtyard.

She flings the water around her in patterns and shapes I can't even begin to describe, she makes the water move her about and sometimes she creates bubbles of every size. She'll make water dolphins chase each other about or have sharks bursting into millions of bubble sized fish. It's amazing really what she can do.
It's her birth right.
So why do I feel like it should be mine?

I clear my throat "ac-Alicia" I recover fast, I don't plan to call her Ace like the Humans do, not until she lets me. Ace stops what she's doing and turns to me a smile on her face "hey er, Hello Alice" she says fighting the urge to say "hey" to me. Well the word "hey" isn't very lady like. "Hi Alicia, I'm here to collect you for dinner" I tell her and she nods swimming over to me.
"Shoulders back, head high and change your Shells, everyone is wearing there finest Shells, even Ally went out of her way to get her tail polished, where something besides black just this once" I whisper to her.
She nods looking slightly panicked "I'm so glad your my sister" she mumbles and I smile "no problem".

She darts of into her room once we get to the palace she comes out minutes later with a a single white Shell that covered her chest in one wide strip. In the centre is a pink heart which comes out into a long pink string that loops around her neck. "I see someone's been shopping" I tease her and she laughs but I can feel the tension "are you kidding me I've been preparing for this all day" she tells me.
I smile at her.
Lovely.