Song of the Ocean: Daughter of the Crestian Sea - Book One

Chapter Three: Dreaming of Dragonfae

Warmth coated my skin and scales; fresh, new and completely foreign to any I had felt before. The air around me was different, too. It wasn't anything like the sea air; scented with some kind of sweetly bitter fragrance that felt sharp, but smooth all at once.

A content sigh slipped from my faintly smiling lips as I lay there, cool water lapping shallowly around my body. There was a peacefulness to this place that wrapped me up and took away all thoughts of anything else. But something still nagged at me; a single thought that was slowly growing louder. It was barely a murmur in my mind to start with, uttering whatever words it was trying to put across to me. Soon, though, it was more audible, like it was no longer being spoken to me through the veil of the sea's ceiling.

This isn't my home...

Finally, as those words broke through to me, my eyes flew open and alarm flooded my chest like a tidal surge rushing through the crags of a sea cave. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around at my surroundings with a frantic stare of panic. A frown folded my smooth, fair skinned brow beneath my brown-red locks, and I righted myself almost to sitting.

This definitely isn't my home... And it's not the Sanctuary... Where am I? panic grew in my chest like a rising swell, gradually deepening. How in all the seas did I get here?

My palms pressed to the stones beneath me, water coating my wrists in the pool I was resting in. My tail bent its middle closer as my tailfins flattened to the water logged rocks, their glittering purple shapes floating at the tips. My chest was heaving beneath my white shells, my head darting around as I tried to figure this out. Then, all I could do was wrap my right arm around my bare midriff as tight as I could while my left hand clawed into my brown-red locks. I stared with worry at my ventral scales, my breaths rushing wildly.

I don't remember swimming to this place... I don't remember anything...

A cold breeze touched my flesh. My dark red locks caught in the wind's grasp and drifted across my face. One slender hand swiped them away and my blue eyes widened as I finally took in the place I was in. A gasp of awe escaped my lips and all panic left me.

This place was somewhere on the mainland. That much I was certain, but I wasn't sure of where. Those tall things called trees were everywhere, their limbs exuding that sweetly sharp scent from their pointed arrow-like shapes. The land around me was beautiful; reaching up in mountains like those under the sea, but covered with trees and a darker kind of earth to the sands I was used to. Their pinnacles were white and pure, a freshness mixing with the cold coming down from them that spoke of water. I could both smell and hear it as the winds whistled against the crystals the water had become so high up.

Fascination filled me and I wanted to go explore those heights. But I couldn't. My tail slapped the water as I moved and reminded me that I was disabled to such adventures out of the water.

Studying my tail for a moment led me then to gaze out at the greater depths before me. The water flowing around me was trickling down from the shallow pool I was sitting in and running towards a great torrent that sang below me. That was pouring off the edge of an even greater cliff and plummeting down below to where another river of such immensity flowed and weaved amidst more trees. Their green was an enormous mass that stretched on with a vastness that equalled the ocean's from that view. But it was the light in the sky that left me all the more awed.

The great sun was lowering as it was so well known to, its illumination changing from gold, to dusky orange. Behind it, the skies changed and shifted from light blue like the aquamarine around my neck to such deep blues and purples. The tiny white gleams of stars were beginning to appear and shimmer amongst the greatness of it all.