Chapter Text
They say I was born from water.
That one day, I washed upon the shore, wave after wave creating this body of mine. That the early dew gave me eyes and a nose, and the morning shower granted me long hair and sleek lips. My arms were a gift from the animals upon the Land, and my fingers and thumbs a secret granted by Humankind. My wings were a gift from animals in the Sky, and my powerful feathers carved especially for me by Phoenix kind.
Every creature came to witness my creation. All of them working together to make me into a perfect being.
All that remained were those from deep down under the Sea; for them to offer the last piece so that I could be complete. In bated breath everyone and everything waited, time stilled, the wind held their breath, and the Sea stilled its fury.
When they came, they were with many. The horizon filled with my brothers and sisters, all those who had been born from the Sea, yet when they looked at me – it was not their own kin they recognized. I was something new. Something weird.
Something that was created as a last resort for the world to maintain its equilibrium. However, that was not what my siblings saw in me. What they witnessed was imbalance, despair, anger, jealousy, and fear above all.
That was how my birth came to be, and how I became something unfinished. Meant to be perfect, but cursed to live without the most vital part of mine. They say water is the gentlest of all elements, but they forget how ruthless it can be.
Water can douse a fire. Water can flood a plain. Water will ride the winds to reach its destination, regardless of its course. Even rock, water can destroy, with enough time and dedication.
Incomplete as I was, I longed for that one part of mine. I forced myself down into the deep to confront the species that had forsaken me. I demanded an explanation as to why I was so revered. It was not a conversation as much as it was a fight; I was powerful, filled with all the gifts granted to me – but I was weak, down this body of water, without a tail and the ancient magic only their kind retained.
Time can wither memories, that is something that haunts us above all. It has changed many parts of my story. Even I, immortal as I have been cursed to be, don’t recall every word or blow exchanged. But I do recall the following:
“For you are our beginning and our end. For you will be complete and lacking at the same time. For you will always be powerful but powerless.
“On your own, you are nothing. But even nothing becomes something when it is seen by the right eyes. It will take much time and suffering, but once you’ve caught the sight of those who can recognize your worth, you will be everything.”
That was how my endless quest started. Battered and with a bruised ego I ended up on the shore, just like my birth. However, as I lay there under the cold rain and with the hard waves pushing me deeper into the sand, there was no one to witness or marvel at my beauty.
For a long period, I laid there. I had never learned to measure time, in fact, I had never learned anything since my creation, but looking back at the sun and the moon cycles, it must’ve been weeks, perhaps months.
Finally, at that moment I had almost accepted my cursed fate, I was found. Two big feet and hairy legs appeared in my sight. Hands grabbed the sand around me and pushed it away until I was uncovered enough to be pulled deeper onto the Land. The Human was young and healthy, but the task still took his breath away.
I, too, had nothing to say. For a creature that was created by the hands of man, I had no knowledge on how to talk or be with them. I had wanted to be perfect, yet I knew nothing of the thing I was made from. The boy offered me food, offered me water, clothes and so many things that I had never seen or known about before.
I grabbed them all and never stopped collecting them, not throughout all the years I spent down on the Land.
It was a different world back then, as different as I and Humankind and Phoenix kind used to be. Even the birds in the Sky and the animals on the Land were different, though perhaps that’s just my personal feeling. The Earth was green and blue, not yellow and brown as it is now. As far as my eyes could see, there were forests and pastures and rivers and lakes. There were birds flying in the breeze in the air and horses grazing leisurely from the high grasses.
There were human children playing inside a stream, throwing hands filled with water at each other as they laughed and played without a care. From a distance their parents watched them, content seeing their children happy and absentmindedly enjoying a drink and snack on their own. Further away, tents and houses were made up, a small but lucky settlement that had survived the winter without much trouble.
The boy led me to their settlement, and they welcomed me like I was one of their own. They gave me a house and a name and a place to belong. They taught me so many things and more.
One day while I was out with the boy, we walked for a very long time. My legs had still been fragile and weak but neither had I any experience using my wings. Even though my complaints increased by the step, the boy didn’t falter, until eventually we reached our destination.
The large trees had made way for a valley, one even more beautiful than where the village had been located. It was strikingly empty and untouched, but before I could ask why – I saw them for the first time; Phoenix kind, living upon the slopes of a mountain growing up from the valley. Their wings fluttering in the air as they moved through different levels of height like it was in their nature; their feet hanging unused in the air because they never stood down.
Their houses and tents much like the villages, their clothes spun from the same fabric and their smiles an exact mirror.
That’s when I was taught the secret as to why my village was so fortune. Because close to them, a clan of Phoenix lived, and through their gifts with magic and Humankinds daft cleverness, a system of trade and reliance had sprung forth between them.
It was nothing truly unusual, the boy told me, many places were just like theirs and had been so, for as far as they remembered. Phoenix- and Humankind lived side by side in content.
It was beautiful.
An old female Phoenix was the first to notice the boy and me. She swept down the mountain without any sweat and addressed us with warmth. The boy, who finally revealed why he’d brought me there, handed me over to the lady.
Their village had taught me all I could learn from them, so now it was the Phoenixes’ turn to teach me the rest.
The lady pointed to my wings and demanded me to fly. When I said I could not, she laughed and picked me up like I was nothing. In true Phoenix style, I was dropped meters above the Land, yet when I was afraid that I would plummet, I soared instead.
She led me up the mountain, and they welcomed me like I was one of their own. They gave me a tent and a purpose and a place to belong. They taught me so many things and more.
I was neither Phoenix nor Human, but that didn’t matter, because I was welcome at both sides. And because I was welcome at both sides; I brought Humans with me to Ascend, and Phoenixes along to Descend. Peace and trade were beautiful feats to have, but to walk among each other and be allowed to love one another, it was fantastic.
After a few years, the lady passed away. After many more, the boy did too. The mountain had gained stairs and the village had grown in height and built many balconies to land. We heard word of similar places living in peace. We also heard of conflict, though it felt very far away. I lived on like that for a very long time; a bridge between the two species, until there was a wedge no more.
I was loved and honoured. They built statues of me and wrote tales of my powers. Still, I walked among them, living their lives just like them. I felt their joys and their sorrows, their highs and their lows. As much as I was a legend, I finally started to act like one. While once they’d been teaching me, I ended up teaching their children everything I knew.
While once they’d built me a house, I created a new place to belong for them too, entirely.
I had always been skilled in the handicraft of men, but fire of Phoenix kind kept evading me. Runework was like second nature to me, but I had no patience or passion for the hunt. Above all, there was a power that had been given to me by the Sea, and even unskilled as I was, I stubbornly practiced for many decades to control it.
With all that I had learned, it really didn’t feel much of a feat; to create a pattern of Clouds made from water, frozen into thick layers induced with protection Runes, planned out throughout many suns and moons by the greatest practitioners of their respective kinds.
And so, Phoenixes ascended up to the Sky, taking their precious Humans gifted with Runes with them to create a new, unified society.
I had once been told; “You will be everything,” and that surely is how I felt.
My immortal life continued on, as I played the game of life, not a worry on my mind. One day, as the first child between Human and Phoenix had been born, I had walked along the Sea. Something inside of me still longed for it, recognized it as the home I was thrown out of, but I held no hate for it. Finally, I thought I had understood why they had sent me away.
Finally, I felt right to return.
There was no fight, verbal or physical, when I swam down the Sea. There were grand castles of ice in the depths, decorated by the same Runework I had seen above the Clouds. As I pushed open the doors and walked into the halls, the Mermaids didn’t halt me. As if they’d been watching me all along, their eyes followed my every move, until I halted in front of an empty throne in between six others.
My throne.
The moment I sat down, I felt it – my Tail which I had always been refused, appearing for the first time.
Finally, I was complete.
As much as I had liked living on the Land and in the Sky, I loved living under the Sea. There was so much to see, so many to meet, so much to learn down there. Time didn’t matter, because they had no sun to guide them, and so it flowed on like ebb and tide by the power of the moon.
It is said that when you soar too high, you’re bound to fall sooner or later. Maybe it doesn’t apply when you live closer to the Earth than most, but it sure still applied to me. I hadn’t noticed anything amiss, not with the company I kept or the places I visited. Stuck up in my head, still thinking I was a Goddess, I had no clue of the perils happening above the water.
Until, of course, the day that even I, blind as I was, could not ignore it anymore. It was on a shore much like the one I’d been created that I saw it; Human and Phoenix kind fighting each other. Not fighting, murdering each other. Blood flew down the sand, the waves picking it up and filling the Sea with the tangy taste of iron.
My cries were to no avail, the bloodshed continuing until neither of them stood anymore. The bodies, too, were stolen away by the waves of the Sea that I had found before so calm and harmless. Without bidding any goodbye, I exchanged my Tail for legs again, and walked onto the Land.
When every place I visited, every memory that’d been once so precious, was much the same as that first glimpse of the war raging, I felt desperate. This time, I called upon the Wings I’d long forgotten to use, and returned to the place I was convinced to be unaffected; to the Sky which I’d created, for the ones I loved most.
Only to find the Land has been a mere mirror of what was churning above the Clouds. I tried to come in between, stand before the same Elders I’d once appointed to watch over the peace and ordered them to halt this immediately.
But the truth was hard and inescapable. The Truth was that even in my delusions, I had never been the Goddess, I’d believed myself to be. They did not care for my words, my actions or the past that bound us all together. They only saw the differences in each other, the differences I was made out of, and it wanted to split me apart.
Had I caused this, I wondered endlessly, through my innocence, where I’d believed for all to be equal – when from the beginning, we’d all been made different, to be apart?
For when I’d known, I’d be there at the beginning and at the end, powerful but powerless, unseen by the ones I held so dear, and unable to do what must be done?
I was no Goddess, I was just a girl – and for the first time in my existence, I realized how alone I truly was.