Royals and Deviants

Chapter 1

As early as the morning had begun, I already wished the day had ended. 

My eyes, even though tightly shut, could sense the hazy, sweeping daylight trying to pry them open.  I groaned inwardly and rolled over, pulling my blanket tightly over my head. I silently sent up a prayer to the Gods, wishing for the sunrise to transform instead into a miraculous sunset. No such luck.

  It's my eighteenth birthday.

Birthdays are probably a respite from ordinary days for everyone else. Celebratory. Warm, fun even. I woke up with the exact opposite feelings one should be experiencing on such an occasion.

 I opened my eyes and stared at the stone ceiling above. My head was already pounding, my thoughts bouncing off one another. I was eighteen. Such a cut and dry number. But because of it, my childhood – my adolescence – was dead in the water. I had woken up as a woman.

I looked down at my girlish nightgown, its thin fabric giving a glimpse of the exceptionally unremarkable body underneath it. I sighed. Woken up as a woman, indeed.

Regardless, a woman in the eyes of my mother and everyone in Port Landis.

My mother, the Queen Sestia. No doubt already awake somewhere inside the castle, spitting orders and marking the day even somehow as her own.

And placed within my mother's supreme hold - Port Landis. 

A kingdom that far surpasses all others in every way. Exalted with rich fields and calm seaside weather, its charm is seductive to anyone who enters its bounds. The castle, which had long ago earned the name "Hellwater" by all, is nestled closely against the Catcana Sea, with the surrounding village and countryside within our territory spread out before it. Stormbell is always seemingly blessed with fair weather. We are never ravaged by vicious storms or the droughts that plague other territories. Outside the castle walls, there is always constant motion. The harbor boasts a generous size, with an endless motion of fisherman and trappers coming back and unloading their catches from their days on the water.

The village itself looks worn, as do most that are battered by salty winds. Patched seagrass rooftops and faded walls house my mother's subjects. The people live humbly, despite their constant work. Sometimes I watch the crowded docks and village from my window. The bartering of merchants, women scurrying every which way, mending nets and cleaning the fresh catches. There were always children darting in between legs, helping their parents or playing near the water's edge. I try to imagine myself there, drawn into the unending chaos, always busy, always having something crucial to do. Having to rely on the sea to survive.

I had only known the Catcana from a distance. The swells were so close to me that I often woke up to the salty smell of it as I slept. So many hours I have spent and just sat in silent thought, comforted by the ebb and flow of the waves. Sleepless nights within the castle were often overcome by the sound of the rhythmic rise and fall of the water's surface.

It had become my lullaby. As a child, I would be plagued by terrors in the night often. Nightmares that would make my tiny body convulse and sweat, so much so that I would call out for my mother. Anyone that could save me from the monsters. It was never my mother that would come to my rescue. There was no one, save perhaps for a servant nearby. Even as a child I was taught that even nightmares themselves were childish.

Once, over breakfast, I softly told my mother about a dream that I had that had kept me awake for the rest of the night. I had been so afraid to fall back asleep and close my eyes again. I didn't want to return to the Hell that I was subjected to in my bedchamber. The memories themselves of the terrors were always fuzzy, but I knew there was pain and fear that paralyzed me. "My dreams...they scare me, mother. I don't know how to make them go away." I cast my pooled eyes down to the dinner table. They shone with tears, but I tried my hardest not to let them fall as I said the words. The queen peered at me over her ladle that touched her lips with morning stew and said nothing. There was a pause so brief I might have imagined it, before she answered, "Nothing should make you afraid do you understand? You are royalty and a future queen. You fear nothing. You should be the fear in others' nightmares. If you ever feel afraid Reslyn, then you are weak." She spat the words at me like acid, and they burned my skin with the shame that she hurled along with them. I shrunk into my seat and tried to fade away at that moment.