Futures Unseen (Chasing Titania #2)

Godly Views

"Oh Leviathan," I stared up into the sky above me. "Please ensure to me that my Ana is doing okay on another planet. If she is to bring me child, allow her to be safe until she can be returned to me."

I continued to walk along the shore. "If she is not, allow her to be fertile enough that when she returns, we will have a chance. Allow me to buy a house large enough...no...no...give me the strength to build a house large enough for us and our children. Let them be beautiful and prosperous and safe at the foot of your shrine."

I paused, looking down into the black surface of the water. "I don't ask for much, Leviathan. Merely your powers from time to time. But now, I'm begging you for my dreams to come true. To have my own family and my own home."

I was getting too sentimental. I hated myself for it. But this is what I desired, what Analeise and I desired. 

"Please continue to protect Eleise in your domain, where I pray she is well off and honored. We were like blundering thieves, the two of us. But we saved so many of your children. I pray that she is getting all the glory she deserves."

I couldn't think of anything else to say. If I was to be frank, I was quite selfish with my prayer.

"In the name of the Immortal Storm, may he bring down his divine waters." I bowed my head.

"Build yourself a home, hm?" Seran, a Neiriad much older than I, walked out of the trees. "I remember when this lake had a town sitting on it."

"Wouldn't it be amazing to bring it back?" I smiled at her. "My parents ran a little bar, a small club, on the shores. We had everything in here from other planets to other fae. It was glorious."

"Even though we all hid while doing it?" She questioned.

"Even then," I crossed my arms. "It's like we were real pixies. Like we mattered in the Citadel community, that we were like any other next-door neighbor. They treated us like monsters sure but we were just like them alongside the shore."

"I think that would be fascinating," Alcibiades said from beside me. "Did my mother do something like that?"

"Your parents were some of the first trapped," I shied from the topic. "I didn't know them before then."

"Your grandparents did at the very least," Seran grinned. "Your grandparents owned a small market on the shore. They sold gemstones and precious materials alongside basic foods of the Grund. It was an...oh what did they call it."

"Eclectic," I finished for her.

"Yes, yes," Seran nodded. "An eclectic little place. I was a teenager back then, I would go in there quite often for gems that my father sent me for. I know you take me for old now, I'm only two hundred seasons kid. My father was such a craftsman."

Al was smiling though his heart wasn't in it. I could hear the sad pulse of his heart but I'm certain Seran was ignoring it. Seran always reminisced like this. It's what all the old ones did. Talked about the old days, remembered them like yesterday. Alcibiades didn't have a chance like that. He was Eleise's son, one of the six kids buried beneath the Grund as a ransom to get Eleise and her husband, Lir, to do unspeakably cruel acts. Simply to protect their children. And I knew there were others, many other babies they had born under force for their...experiments. Al should consider himself lucky to be here, even if he was deformed. 

Nymphs normally had long tendrils that float off their bodies. Blackwater Nymphs had some that look like moss growing in the water. Now tendrils are a funny word to use. Their tendrils were more like long fins that you see on fish, colorful to attract mates. Alcibiades didn't have these. His were short, a mix of muted blues and greens. He didn't get the sunlight or the space growing up to have beautiful tendrils like the other Nymphs do. Not like his father did.