Sea of Secrets

Prologue - Young Mira

Feet aligned to the target.

Wrist behind your ear.

And...release.

"I can't, Sora!" Mira yelled, her arms thrown up in protest.

The girl beside her only let out a sigh, "Not if you keep whining. I missed the first time I learned how to throw daggers. You have to practice if you plan on getting better."

"I don't plan on it," Mira clasped her hand around the dagger's handle as she pulled it from the grass below the target. "It isn't worth my time."

Sora's laughter filled the evening air, the sound echoing off the rocks down below as she sat in the grass near the edge of the daunting cliff. "What else do you have to do? Go watch over Yara and the boys at the Inn?"

Just the thought of returning to the Inn sank her heart. Mira longed for these days with Sora, because they seemed to dwindle as they'd grown older. Sora had more responsibilities now that she was fifteen, with the Inn, with helping Andira feed the children at dinner. Sometimes she would go out and hunt farther up the mountain. She was an explorer, an adventurer, but she always kept the children and Andira in her heart, despite her fascination with any other place but home at the Inn.

Mira wished she could be just like her ever since she was young, and not just with throwing daggers, though she wished to best Sora in that, too. Mira had always studied Sora's courage, her strength, her kindness, but especially her bravery.

"I don't care to go back to the Inn," Mira said as she joined Sora on the ground. Her scuffed boots dangled over the cliff, her lengthy hair tickling my cheek as it flowed in the wind. She watched in awe as the sun made its descent, transforming every color in the sky, and finally nestling under the clouds and below the horizon, then to the endless treetops that stretched across the land. The mountaintop seemed so high, so far away from the rest of the world.

Mira was quietly lost in thought until Sora asked, "What's your biggest fear?"

She repeated the question in her head, then thought hard for a moment. Such a simple question, yet so difficult to answer. Snakes? She shivered, Those are scary, the fangs, the scales. She peered down, her whole body nearly over the edge, Certainly not heights. She turned back to the house behind them, then laughed, "Being near Andira when she's angry."

Sora laughed with her, "That's not even a real answer!"

Mira had always known only her. Never her mother, or her father. She was too young to remember, only a small baby wailing for help in the forest, only trees and mountain views to keep her company. But then Andira came, or so she'd told her, and took Mira in as her own.

As she took a glance over at Sora and thought of Andira, the real answer appeared. "I'm afraid of being alone."

It seemed the air had become a bit bleak after she spoke. She turned to Sora with a half-hearted smile. A failed attempt to lighten the mood, but she asked, "What's yours?"

Sora tilted her head as she pondered. After a bit of time, she finally muttered, "Deimos Rebels." Mira felt her skin crawl just hearing the name, and the air grew even bleaker.

They'd taken almost everyone, burned the houses, and killed anyone who tried to stop them. Mira knew them only from Andira's storytimes, as she had been too young to remember them hiding away underneath the floorboards of the Inn. Even though she'd never seen them, Mira knew one chilling fact.

There were only two places you went when you were caught: Shipped off to the different islands of the Arnav Sea, or in the ground. Unless you could manage to pay for your own freedom, but prices were much too high.