This is War; Chapter one

Have you ever gotten the feeling that a cat has a crush on you?  I mean really, he just looks at me all funny and purrs every time I go near him.  True, he looks nice in his tuxedo and all, but I'm not really the type that should be seen in public with a cat.  His name is socks, but he has absolutely nothing to do with this story.

Almost...

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"Hurry up Cecilia!"  Yelled my sister Carnia from the next room over.

"I know I know, we don't want to miss the coronation of the prince of your dreams"

She stared at me like my face had turned turquoise.

"What would ever make you think that?"  She said about a second after she had started blushing.

Why was it that my sister was better acquainted with the air folk than I?  It had to have been that her father was a faerie.  I've already forgotten how many kids he kidnapped for the faerie queen, not as many as most, about a hundred.

I looked down at the seas that I called home, but these waters weren't safe for us right now, though roaming the skies made me motion sick. The trees swayed below us, if only I could embrace their branches so close, yet so far away. The trees weren't safe either, they were being harvested for homes for the normal folk. The sea was peppered in war ships, bombs destroying the merfolk, the sulkies hiding their skins and fleeing. Good thing I was a hybrid, I was part dryad therefore I could leave the sea in order to escape.

 The normal folk were so weak, and so vulnerable. One tsunami, one hurricane could kill thousands, millions, billions of them. But when they fought each other, they hurt everyone else anywhere near them. My tree was still there, but not for much longer. I might have to call my necklace home from now on, the aquarium that changed size. 

 I opened it up and dived in to spend some time with my dolphin pod, and Sissy, best whale ever.  She was a hybrid, like me.  A humpback somehow came to love an orca, and she was the result.  A mighty predator with huge teeth, and a mild temper.  I briefly met with my white dolphin Diamond.  We don't know exactly what she is, she is white, blue eyed, and has a diamond in the middle of her forehead, hence her name.  But nobody has ever seen anyone like her, even my sister's relations couldn't put a name to her species.  But she was a reliable, small way of transportation when all the ocean was at peace.

I tied my flowing green hair back, and joined the others.  I didn't glow, not even a little.  But that made me stand out in the crowd, I was unusual, different.  Even at the slightest breeze my hair evaded the braid, but here, at their festivals each one sent up the greatest wind they could muster.  My hair flew free of my seaweed hair tie as soon as the prince walked out onto the balcony.  Carnia looked up at him and blushed, she never was one to hide it when she was in love.  I had yet to meet the one, she met "him" almost every week.  I tried to contribute to the clamor by doing the same thing with water from my aquarium.  A herring landed splat in my face and started to flop around right when everyone stopped the air currents.  I put it back, but not before I had become the "center of attention".  Why did I, the shy one, always end up in the place where everyone's gazes intercepted.

It was then, thankfully that prince Hown decided to give his speech:

"Fellow faeries!  We are gathered here today to celebrate the day on which I become your king.   It is also the day that a question is to be asked"

He flew down from the balcony on which he had been perched, and alighted on the ground in front of my sister's feet.

"Carnia"   He almost whispered as he slid onto one knee.

"Will you be the queen of the realm of the air?"

I disappeared into the tank before I could hear any more, I knew what she was going to say, and it would mean that I would have to go on alone.  She was not going with me to avenge our mother's death.   To avenge all of our races.  Loggers...  Can't trust them to stay away from inhabited trees.  You'd think the wolves would have been enough to tell them that this was a bad idea!  And now...  My life has fallen apart, we've all been uprooted (literally)  and moved to a "safer" place.  But the humans will not stop, too greedy, selfish, and heartless.  They even kill their own race just because one side wants more rocks.  And believe me, you want to ovoid angry rocks, that's another story altogether.

Sissy swam up to me, her eyes telling me she understood.  I wept, for mother, for myself, for the past.  But water did not come out of my eye sockets, air did instead, and rose to the surface.  I dried my eyes and brought myself to the surface to hear the last of they're speeches.  I carried the bag back to our room, not that my sister would be there, too busy making wedding arrangements.  

***

The sun had set and the moon risen not an hour before Carnia's return.  The girl who never tired of talking, kept on doing so until she bored me to tears.  I awoke before dawn to the sound of trumpets in the courtyard.  A messanger phoenix landed by my door, I untied the note from it's claw, this couldn't be good.  The note read:

Dear Cecilia and Carnia, 

           I have sent this phoenix to inform you that you are no longer safe, the humans were set on wiping out the sky in giant metal birds; there is only one safe place for you, and Carnia's not going to like it.  The bottom of the sea is the only place they haven't gone, and they are getting close.  Remember what they did to the rest of my race?  They are going to do this to your races.

Your humble apprentice-

Zhoom.

This wasn't good, if Zhoom thought that even me and my dragon couldn't survive this, there was no way anyone was.