The deity of fate, the goddess who was tasked to weave destinies for the myriad of mortal worlds the heaven was in charge of, finally had to undergo her own tribulation.
She had a new deputy, hence she could go and play - I mean, undergo her tribula...
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Land and Sea.
Gold and Blue.
On the blessed, golden, dry land, two-legged folks roamed their 'turf'. Beautiful trees and flowers of any imaginable color were abound, as though all wealth and fortune had been reserved for these people. The men were tall and proud, the women were beautiful and charming, the children were lively. They were the masters of this world; there were hardly any places their two legs could not take them to.
There were always some exceptions; the realm of Blue was one of them. Arguably, humans had even set their two feet into the sea. After all, they could build ships and swim. Yet, there would always be a limitation to their reach. At the end of the day, they had to breath the air above the blue line, not the water underneath it.
The realm of Blue did not lack lives and color either. Corals and water plants were abound, as plentiful and colorful as the trees and flowers on land. Creatures of all sizes and shapes also made this world their home; big and small fish, to the crawling critters living at the lowest sand banks.
Where the sun touched the realm of Blue, the water was warm and pleasant. Daylight made the world under the blue line look vibrant, moonlight made it look magical.
However, these areas were the ones most frequented by humans due to their abundance of edible fish.
Thus for the Nereids, those beautiful places abundant with light and color were forbidden.
Miles away from the nearest land, depths away from the sun-kissed body of water, the Nereids lived. These were charming creatures: they were more beautiful than the legendary elves, they could be more seductive than any succubus, their singing voices would put the heavenly angels to shame.
Vhiar flicked her purple-tinted tail, "And our scales are more luminous than any pearl, harder than diamonds." She puffed her chest out in pride while gliding around another Nereid, "We are more beautiful than any human. My dear sister, why-oh-why would you be jealous of the land monkeys?"
In contrast to Vhiar's pearl-colored hair, the other Nereid had beautiful golden hair and a similarly paler-shade-of-gold-scaled fish tail. There was no other creature under the sea possessing such a color like the sun. This Nereid was Vhiar's younger sister in this world, the merfolks' treasured child, Viren.
Viren was beautiful in an innocent kind of way; one look at her, the other Nereids could not help but want to spoil her and give her everything she wanted.
Apart from Viren, Vhiar also had four sisters that hatched from the same mother. Their names were Vaneer, Vitril, Vorest, and Vineth. Recalling the Nereid siblings, Vhiar wondered what was in their mother's fish brain when she named them.
Their mother was a run-of-the-mill mermaid, a Nereid who was neither famous nor influential. But at an occasion, she had unwittingly charmed a human of a king bloodline to fertilize her eggs. The mermaids' reproduction in this world was almost like a normal fish; they were born of fertilized eggs, but normally, only one egg got the chance to hatch. The rest would disintegrate and become fish food, literally.
