Riverlilly by J. Evans - HTML preview

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The Year Nine Hundred & Ninety-Nine,

 

The King dove among the charred shipwrecks in search of a fish. Anyone with a gnawing hunger for an apple would suffice and there were always plenty of mermen around the coast with such an appetite. He quickly found someone who would suit his needs. The King did not bother asking the name of the fish he found—names were irrelevant this close to a new beginning. Using the fine point of his horn to underscore the magnitude of his orders, the King commanded the cowering creature to collect the smallest, most rot-infested boat at the bottom of the sea and tow it to the surface; there, he was to wait for two children on the shore.

Countless tails from the coast the Queen waited for the sound of a small splash. Hers was a rescue mission. The one she was charged to save would be as difficult to spot as a shadow in the night, she knew, but the Queen had faith that there would be lights to show her the way when the time came. It had been a long time since she had seen the one she must save. Her heart raced. She longed to see him again, but she knew it would be bittersweet and all too short.

In the deep of the sea a wyrm began to stir. Its thousand-year stasis in endless night had come to an end.

In the hollow mountain the man of black bones told two children—the last descendents of the slaves who dug his tunnels and built his tower—that they had three more days to live before they found their end in flames. The children listened in mortal fear and vowed to escape that very night.

To the stars above the coast a comet without her colors rose and began her three day flight around the Land of Lin, carried as ever by the wings of the West Wind. The cub at her side felt her go missing before he awoke. Shedding a single teardrop as he slept, the little lion fell off his bed of moss on the turtle’s back and crashed into a hard world of dark water, headfirst.