Chapter 1: Phantasia Celeste
Phantasia fiddled with her white hair. Her eyes darting around the classroom for any sign of confusion on the faces of her far-more-colourful peers. But none of them questioned it. They never did. They all sat obediently on their clamshell stools, silently watching as their teacher lectured them on the fall of the human empire. He stood at the front of the classroom, ankle-high in the water that flowed endlessly through the sea-shell corridors and coral rooms of the Water Palace. A tall figure with midnight waterfall hair, he was one of the chief scholars of the Water Queendom, his knowledge rivalled by few.
“The humans of the Outerworld did not help matters,” he said, “Their weak hearts were easily swayed by darkness. As they succumbed to their most destructive emotions, they turned on each other, and on the world itself.”
She wiggled her toes in the shallow water, rested her hand on her chin, and sighed. Why was everyone so prejudiced? All they ever told her about humans was how bad they were. They ruined the world and caused chaos and destruction with their ‘evil’ emotions. But like the rest of the faeries around her, Phantasia had never met a human. How could she be sure they were so bad if she didn’t have any experience of them? If Queen Thetis and Prince Dionysus spoke fondly of them, then surely…
Her teacher was watching her again. His will was reaching out towards her, probing her surface thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” she said, rolling her eyes. His will lingered a moment more, then retreated. Even after fourteen years of living with water faeries, Phantasia still hadn’t learned to shield her thoughts from them. It was just one of the things that set her apart from other faeries. White hair and eyes were unheard of – their colour should reflect the faerie’s elemental composition – and she had always been a tall, slender girl, while others her age had started out as nymphs no taller than her knees. And while they grew through a process of metamorphosis, she had always been the same.
Her teacher continued to drone on about the malicious mistakes of humankind, and Phantasia’s mind began to wander again. What would it be like to live on a world where the infinite abyss was above you, rather than below? Where every time you looked up, you saw that depressing infinity, rather than the rest of the world? Was it a dark place, so far away from the Goddess’s light? Maybe that was all the humans needed…
“Princess Phantasia, please…” His will was stretching out again. “The humans are the lowest form of life. They live one step above nothingness. The light of the Goddess would blind them,”
Really? Had he tried?
“Princess.”
She pouted her lips and began drumming her fingers on her knee.
“It is our nature as water elementals to know the truth.”
Truth? How could they be so sure? Didn’t they ever imagine that…
“We do not ‘imagine’, Princess.”
An answer for everything…
“That is our nature.”
