Just a few lucky humans were chosen to migrate to Selino, land of six moons, when Earth was falling apart. Now Earth is long gone, and the only thing stopping the humans from taking full advantage of their new planet are Selino's five native species...
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Cybele was trapped.
At first glance, it probably didn't seem that way. She was a Valloma — daughter of the infamous Valin Valloma, the man all the humans loved and all the species hated. She had it all: money, fame, everything and anything a person could want.
Or at least, that's what everyone thought — what her parents expected her to believe.
Cybele knew she was likely supposed to be proud of her father; Valin Valloma was one of the most prominent, outspoken anti-hibri and patrias activists in the world of Selino — she should have been proud of him, proud of the fact that she was even related to him at all.
But that — that was the problem.
Ever since she was a child, she'd been taught to hate all the species. To be disgusted by them. They were repulsive, disgraceful, primal. She was supposed to despise them.
Except she didn't.
She never had. And she wasn't sure what that meant. Something was clearly wrong with her, wrong with her mind.
Of course, she couldn't tell anyone her thoughts. She couldn't afford to. A human who didn't mind the species — the whole world would believe her insane, her parents would disown her. She'd be a humiliation, an abomination.
So ever since she was old enough to fully understand the ever-growing rift between the humans and the species, she'd kept quiet. Everyone thought she was only shy, but Cybele knew she wasn't born that way — she'd been forced into silence. She couldn't risk dropping any hints about her true feelings, which was why she'd always preferred to stay out of the spotlight.
And that meant nothing particularly exciting ever happened to her. She'd never really minded it that way, though it did make exciting things, when they did happen, that much more intriguing.
And the news the apparently drunk girl who'd fallen down the stairs had given her was, by definition, very intriguing.
Cybele knew it would be a bad idea — a terrible idea — to go to the fountain the drunk girl had told her about, especially with the knowledge that Cynth Leeyung would be there as well. If it were possible, Cynth was almost worse than Cybele's father; with her all-too-recognizable hair and perpetual sneer, Cybele had always had a wary aversion to the Leeyung daughter. Especially because if Cynth somehow found out that Cybele didn't mind the hibri and patrias as much as she should have, well — Cybele would be dead, and not only metaphorically.
So yes, it was a terrible, terrible idea. The girl had been drunk, anyway; she was probably just spewing out random nonsense words in her delirium. There was no reason — no reason — that Cybele should listen to her.
But then again.
It was so goddamned intriguing.
And anyway, if this really was about the patrias sources... then her father would certainly be interested. So maybe she'd go to the fountain, only for a few minutes, just to see what they were talking about.
