Lost in Blue

𝕱𝖚𝖊𝖓𝖋𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖟𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖎𝖌: Prisoners of the Rhine

Six years had passed. Six long years of her running amok. Six long years since the betrayal and now, the result of it laid before her.

In front of her, the child slumbered, lost in sweet dreams, wholly oblivious to her presence and the potential danger he was in. Carrying the knife in her hand in order to execute Father Rhine's order, she quietly sat down at his bedside, pondering.

A halfling such a this little boy, born out of love between a human and a nixie, was under normal circumstances not allowed to exist – according to her kin's laws. However, an exemption had been made in this case. Father Rhine demanded the child to return to it as soon as it came of age, but rumors had it its parents intended to move away from the waters. Isa would try to run away and elope with the things the Rhine nixie loved the most once again.

Loreley leaned in closer, determined and ready to strike the little one with her weapon, spite and anger towards her former fellow nixie – his mother - fueling her cause. She had secretly longed for it. This was the moment she could execute her own revenge, making her former friend suffer the same pain Loreley had gone through for having been robbed of Ruven's love, for having to endure the thought of him being tricked into loving another, to conceive a child with the nixie that should have been Ley.

The denial of a life with the man she had loved for so long had caused her to go down the spiral of madness and torment. Among German sailors, Loreley's name instilled fear. Near the slate, she lured them into the waters with her voice, only for their ships to be consumed by the Rhine's strong currents, human lives drowning at her claws below the wreckage.

Pain, wrath and envy mixed together had created a dangerous concoction known as revenge, feeding the nixie's vicious delusions. And so Loreley only thought it to be just to take her child's life in return to destroy the false happiness the other mistress had artificially built.

An inch before the knife could reach the little one's scalp, she paused. A single tear ran down her cheek, dropping onto the child's face, running down his chin. Despite it all, she simply did not have the heart to do it.

Every time she looked at that youngling, an imagine of Ruven, the man she still dearly loved, clouded her mind, paralyzed her trembling hands. His little boy was the spitting image of his. He truly had inherited all of his fathers prominent facial traits – the shape of his eyes, the way his thin lips remained a line, never curved into a smile. Only the infant's golden hair resembled his mother's, linking him to his submarine heritage of a species still hidden to mankind.

The young nixie dropped the knife, a faint clink echoed as it hit the ground. And just as the boy's lashes fluttered, woken up by the sudden noise, Loreley, the legend of the Rhine, had already forsaken her duty.

She had chosen to betray the Rhine.

𝕹 𝕴 𝖃𝕰 𝕿 𝕺 𝕽 𝕰 𝕿𝕰𝖄

Care to explain what this is, Loreley?

Father Rhine's voice painfully boomed in her head.

The last time she had seen her little sister was so many moons ago. Loreley had spared her family for Ruven's sake, so how could she have gotten herself captured? Isa knew not to come to close to the Rhine's waters or else they'd be dragged down and still, here she was, under water, in a sort of tribunal, surrounded by her former kin.

Now all of them knew Loreley had lied to them. She hadn't killed Isa's offspring like she'd been ordered to. All of them knew she was a traitor and her dumb former sister couldn't read the mood and chose to further get her caught up in the mess.

"Loreley! I know I have no right to request this of you after everything that happened, but please." Isa, on the brink of tears, inhaled deeply. Her voice quavered.