Moon Flowers (Book 1 of the Flower Trilogy) #Wattys2016 #Featured

BOOK 2 - Snow Flowers - Chapter 1

HALIA'S POV

The world was different under water. It was peaceful. The sunlight, the diffused sunlight. 

The water was cold. I felt it running through my fingers, caressing my skin. It soothed me. 

I followed the strange power a tide had over me as it pulled me out towards the ocean. Further, always further. Further from my past, from my people. The people I had left behind.

I didn't want to think. I just wanted to swim, further, and further, hoping that the salted water would wash everything -- my pain -- away. 

I needed to forget that Phi is dead.

Phi.

Every time I remembered her. I felt like crying. My eyes burned, but no tears came out -- my eyes were already filled with water, salted water.

I stopped swimming, and let my body sink into the darkness under my feet. Soon, there was darkness everywhere. My lungs sent rafts of bubbles to the surface. My heartbeat slowed. The water was becoming as cold as ice.

I just need to rest, I thought. I just need to sleep. Freeze my heart. Freeze my pain.

In the distance, I heard the long and complex songs of humpback whales. It was so unearthly, a glimmer of beauty in this world of gloom.

The gigantic creatures swam closer to me, analyzed me. They divided the currents around me with their powerful tails; yet their movements were slow and graceful. 

They were inviting me to swim with them, towards the light, the surface. 

My heart was not into it. I let myself sink in, deeper.

They must have sensed my distress, as they continued singing. A different song. A call to the Oceanides, I suppose, because soon after,  half-women half-fish creatures came to meet them -- and me.

"Aren't you one of the fairies that crossed the sea on a human ship?" asked one of them, with luscious red hair.

It was dark all around me, but I could see them. Their skin radiated with a blue light, a blue fire they used on their skin to keep themselves warm.

I nodded, already too cold to speak.

A part of me wanted to touch their skin, to feel their warmth. Another part wanted to freeze even more.

Every time I thought of Phi.

"You're going to die if you stay here," said another one with hair that looked like sea weed. "Do you want us to take you back to land?" 

No! I didn't want that! Anywhere but there! I needed to be far. Far away from what had happened there. I wanted to shout this to them, but I couldn't. I just managed to shook my head a little.

"We'll take you to our home, then," Una, the red head said. "Set you up by a blue fire."

Reka, the other Oceanide, covered my shoulders with the cape she wore on around her. It was covered in blue fire and instantly warmed me up. She then held my hand and, together with Una, we swam through the ocean so fast and with such agility, I no longer knew where I was. 

Not that it really mattered where I was. I that I cared was that they were taking me deeper, and further from the place I didn't want to be.

 Soon, we arrived at a place where fish swam in a crystal blue background and where the sun's greenish hue was too far out to even appear. An underwater chain of mountains surrounded the local like a crown.

"Just like your mountains," Una explained. "Our moutains were created during the previous ice ages."

"This is where we live" Reka announced, pointing at what seemed like an entrance in one of the mountain. "In the depth of a silver cave."

The entrance was decorated by the most singular flowers and plants, all growing from the light of the blue fires that burned sparingly throughout their land.

I followed my two benefactors into their dwelling. Indeed, the walls were made out of silver and it reflected on their bluish skin, reinforcing its hue and giving it a healthy glow.

"Welcome to the world of sea creatures," Una said.

I wanted to say thank you. That was, after all, the polite thing to say, but I was still taking in all the things I had just seen. 

The underwater wolrd was a world so different from anything I had known, a world Grannie's stories never mentioned because she only knew the stories where land creatures ventured.

It was there I finally cared to look at the two creatures that brought me here. It was only now that I could look at them and see how well they fit into this place.

I was mesmerized by their beauty. I had forgotten how beautiful ocean nymphs could be, with their blue skin, and long hair entwined with beads.

They were not the only nymphs in this ocean heaven, the place they called home. Some carried tridents or coral sticks, others were playing with dolphins or riding sea horses, which surprised me because I never thought dolphins or sea horses would live this deep under water.

Seeing how peaceful and serene they looked served as a balm on my heart. 

If I stayed here until I healed, maybe I had a chance to survive my pain.