The Girl With Silvered Water

Chapter 2

Thanks for coming back to read chapter two! Get ready to meet another character and learn more about the black-haired elf. Enjoy!

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Kalara smiled at the folded elven robe resting in her basket under a bag of freshly baked spiced cookies. It was both a disguise and a thank you to the black-haired elf for saving her. But Kalara's smile faded. If anyone found her with the elven robe she was as good as dead. Her old classmates happily gossiped that someone who wasn't human was likely to be a traitor. If caught, the robe would permanently mark her as a turncoat. She'd barely slept in the past five days for fear of being discovered. The sooner she returned the robe to the black-haired elf the better.

Biting her lip, she glanced up and stared at her reflection caught in the entrance mirror. What she saw made her bite her lip harder. Nymphs have vivid colored hair in shades of blue, green, and red while humans have black, blonde, and all shades of brown. Kalara's own hair color, copper, was a muddy mix of her father's brown and her mother's red; neither nymph nor human.

Her complexion was the same way. Normally human skin was a beautiful bronze like the sun had personally stooped down and kissed them. But nymphs had pale skin, almost silvery in color making them better able to absorb the weakened sunlight in the water and shady islands they called home. Kalara's own skin was pale. She wasn't white like elves who resembled graceful swans. No, she was a pale tan as if even the sun had deemed her too inhuman to kiss.

No one in Ransford knew her mother had been a nymph but they still had the uncanny knack of knowing she wasn't completely human. Maybe that's why they'd singled her out the moment they laid eyes on her. Staring at her reflection, Kalara sighed; being called inhuman was inevitable when everything about her from her powers to her looks were blended.

Ripping her eyes away from her pathetic muddled reflection, Kalara reached into the basket. When she could no longer see the creamy green fabric under the cookies, Kalara nodded in satisfaction and slapped the basket flap shut with a satisfying click. She slung the strap over her shoulder. It bumped against her hip as she bent down to put on her shoes before she slipped out the front door and noiselessly melted into the small crowd of bustling villagers.

Keeping her chin down and sticking close to the shadows, Kalara softly tread down the streets unnoticed by the other villagers. Many years of trying to avoid malignant eyes had taught Kalara how to maneuver through town without notice. The key to blending into the background was wearing dull clothing, avoiding eye contact, and moving noiselessly and quickly. This was how Kalara learned to survive in a small village where everyone regarded her as a monster and wouldn't let her forget it for a moment.

When she was younger, the sweet yeasty smells from the bakery and the tempting array of toys, candy, and dresses in the display windows would cause her to dawdle. She didn't have to stand still for long to be targeted by the village women's harsh gossip or the men's spiteful looks and shoves. But the other children were the worst. Hiding behind the innocence of youth, the children would taunt her, pull her hair and clothes, and the more bold would even throw pebbles. Now grown up, these temptations no longer held any sway over Kalara and she quickly passed the many bright eye-catching displays without a second glance and the restaurants' enticing scents just seemed to quicken her footsteps.

Within minutes, Kalara safely passed through Ransford Village's East Gate and hurried towards the forest, glancing over her shoulder every few minutes; she didn't want to risk having any uninvited guests like last time. Elswich Forest loomed like a mountain in the distance. Kalara felt herself relaxing as she hurried towards it. Despite the black-haired elf's threats, Kalara didn't feel much bothered by them. Part of it was because he, an elf, her supposed enemy, had helped when her own kind, humans, had done nothing but torment her for her entire life. Plus, she rationalized, if he was going to kill her, he'd have done it last time when he could have blamed it on the humans and avoided starting a war.