Everything I Am - Orm Marius/Ocean Master

Prologue - It's Not Easy Being Queen

Previously...

Mera addressed the amassed crowd. "People of Atlantis! Today began in bloodshed, now let it end in joy! I give you your new ruler, Queen Aurelia of Atlantis!"

"Make that Queen Aurelia of Atlantis and the Surface!" Hey, that actually had a pretty nice ring to it, if she did say so herself.

"Hail to the Queen!" Orm raised his trident into the air.

"Hail to the Queen!" everyone chorused. "Hail to the Queen! Hail to the Queen!"

Aurelia just stood there, kind of awkwardly, the centre of attention, grinning. 

"So now what?" she asked as everyone was still chanting, "Hail to the Queen!"

"Now, you be their Queen." Orm told her, giving her a smile that she would describe as warm and proud.

"Huh... This is gonna be fun!" She raised her own trident and cheered. The Karathen even emerged from the depths and gave a great bellow.

Time to be their queen.  

"Huh, this is gonna be fun!"

Record scratch-

To be clear, it was fun for all of like five minutes. That's it.

It was seriously no wonder why they start preparing future rulers as little kids, for she was majorly behind. And everyone (besides Orm and Atlanna) constantly reminded her of this. Mutters of 'traitor' and 'half-breed' and 'surface dweller' still rumbled throughout the kingdom. She had a long way to go, still.

Four years ago, I was basically unemployed. A wanderer with no set path...

She had come so far, but now, she had no idea what she was doing. 

"Your Highness?"

"Hmm?" She half hummed, half snorted, snapping out of her daydreaming. She had been doing a lot of that lately. 

The Council Member fixed her with a stony glare. Oh yeah, no one had mentioned the tight-ass Atlantean Council that was meant to help rule but was really just a royal pain more than anything.

Aurelia sat up further in her seat from where she had just moments before been lounging. "Uh, yeah, for sure, works for me."

There were gasps and muttering amongst the other council members. Beside her, Orm stared back at her, blinking those bright blues in concern, and it was clear she'd mucked something up. "Wait, weren't we talking about trading across the kingdoms?"

"We're past that," the Council Member stated stiffly. "We've moved on to the concern of Surface pollution of our waters, something you insisted we review." 

"Oh..." Yeah, she had clearly missed some of that conversation. Like the whole thing. 

She was told that it was 'proper' to read, write, and speak Ancient Atlantean - she thought they used Ancient Greek, but was, once again, wrong. Usually she was really good with languages, but her Ancient Atlantean sucked. She had attempted writing a nice message to the Council but had only ended up succeeding in offending them with her mix up of some letters and words. 

It was an exhausting position for anyone to be in, let alone someone as behind and unprepared as her. Another such time,  she had fallen asleep in the throne, crown floating off her head, while King Nereus and the Brine King were exchanging opinions about something, she'd long lost track of what. Honestly, half the time she didn't even know which end of the Brine King she was supposed to be looking at.