Visions and prophecy

Nherisa's heart was heavy, but tears, she dared not shed. She held Cordelia's shoulder, to comfort her. She had questions. Lots of questions. She wanted to ask but Cordelia looked like she wanted answers too.

Nherisa followed Cordelia's gaze back to the vertical cities of Encrea. They were about half a mile away from Encrea. Nherisa turned Cordelia around. "Come." She said. "Let's find somewhere to stay for the night."

"What happened?" Cordelia asked, eyes wide open, brain refusing to function.

"I don't know." Nherisa told her. "But we'll find out together."

Cordelia looked at Nherisa's face. She couldn't find the marvelled expression she was looking for.

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"Are we really going to ignore what just happened here?" Roland dusted the sand off his clothes. He stretches out his hand to Cornelia who was sitting on the sand beside him. Swashes reached her feet and a couple of feet away, their boat lay capsized.

"We are not going to ignore it." Cornelia said. She stretched her hand out to hold Roland's and clumsily pulled herself up. "We are going to keep it buried until we can prove that contact with these marvellous creatures is not dangerous. Then we can create peace between our worlds."

"Did it look like they wanted peace?" Roland asked.

"We didn't exactly hold up a white flag either." Cornelia said. "We tried to capture one of their kind. Roland, I told you, they aren't dumb animals. They are humans. Like us."

"I doubt that."

"You saw that today."

"No."

"No?" Cornelia saw a fire starting to build in Roland's eyes.

"All I saw today was a threat to our people."

"Roland, no!"

"We must rid our people of this threat."

"Roland!" Cornelia held his arm. He seemed to calm down. "We will leave them alone. They deserve their privacy. We do not attack until we are attacked and that is exactly what they did. They never attacked before. I have faith that we would be safe if we leave them alone."

"You are right." Roland agreed. "We will leave them alone."

Cornelia smiled. "Let's go home."

Arms locked, they walked towards the river where a boat awaited them.

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"I have questions." Nherisa finally announced when she and Cordelia decided to rest on a rock on the ocean floor. "What...?"

"I have questions too." Cordelia interrupted. "You do remember what happened that day, don't you?"

"What day?" Nherisa asked

"The day I was born." Cordelia spoke, quick as ever.

"What about it?" Nherisa said

"Oh, don't pretend with me. You remember don't you?"

"I don't understand."

"I saw it in a vision. You - five year old you. You were almost dead, Nherisa. What happened? And who killed mother?" Cordelia noticed that Nherisa was crying. She placed her hand on her shoulder. "Who were those men?"

"They were bad men." Nherisa said. "Very bad men."

"Tell me everything, I deserve to know."

"I'll show you."

"Pardon?"

"Open your palms." Nherisa said. Cordelia did as she was instructed. Nherisa placed her palm on Cordelia's. The world around them disappeared: the corals, the rocks, the fish, Encrea and every other thing they could see turned into sand and fell to the ground in front of their eyes which were now glowing blue. They floated freely in the ocean.

The sand on the ocean floor rose and formed images around them. Cordelia could see the same house that was in her vision.,carved entirely out of rock.

"Shall we go in?" Nherisa asked

"Okay." Cordelia answered. She was still astonished by what she was seeing - nay, what she was living.

Nherisa, still holding Cordelia's hand led her through the stone walls, like they were ghosts, into the house where five year old Nherisa sat on a rock, waiting anxiously for her mother to come home.

"It's you." Cordelia said.

"I'm not the star of the moment," Nherisa said. "It's them."

Cordelia looked right at where Nherisa was pointing. Two drealivs entered the room through an arched doorway. "Where is Pherisa?" One of them asked.

"She is not home." Little Nherisa answered.

"Does she think she can escape us?"

"No, it's not like that." Five year old Nherisa tried to explain to them that her mother had gone to give birth, but they were not ready to listen.

"Bring the house down." One of them said.

Once again, everything fell to the ground as sand.

"What happened?" Cordelia asked.

"You already know what happened next." Nherisa explained. The memories still haunted her. The way those men had so easily turned her home into rubble and left her wounded. She wouldn't want to relive that(or let Cordelia live it either). She thought she could, but she couldn't.

"Who were those men?" Cordelia asked.

"You know," Nherisa said. "I didn't find out myself until after a lot of meditation a few years ago. No one else couldanswermy question.

"I had seen it in a vision. Our father had borrowed some gold from them. Mother was sick. He needed to save her. He had already spent all the gold he had on building the house.

"Mom was pregnant with you at the time. Father was unable to pay back....They killed him." She paused.

Cordelia learnt never to think about her father. She thought he had left her mother and run away. She used to hate him, but now she just felt terrible.

"Mother didn't know." Nherisa continued "Dad never told her. They still asked her for the gold. She couldn't pay. They...they killed her too.

"After killing our father?" Cordelia was broken and furious at the same time. Nherisa didn't want to go back to that memory.

"Our uncle refused to take us in. But he had helped us."

The sand rose to form an unfamiliar setting. Six year old Nherisa sat down on a short rock bench holding baby Cordelia in her arms. Beside her sat her uncle and in front of them sat an old drealiv whose bones shook from weakness. He looked like he was dying.

"Are you sure they can handle such power." The old drealiv said. His shrine was decorated with fish skeletons and skulls. The walls surrounding it had drawings of an eye in a square in a circle in a triangle. He looked at Cordelia who was playing with a fish skeleton that hung from the roof. "And one of them is just a baby."

"There is no one more willing or in more need of this than them." Said Cordelia's uncle. "You are dying and you can't let such great power die with you."

"Alright then," the old drealiv stood on his weak legs. He forced himself to be propelled towards Nherisa and Cordelia. He placed his hands on their heads. Power flowed out of him, from his eyes, the power of supernatural sight flowed around. Everything was shared between Nherisa and Cordelia.

The water parted, leaving a tunnel of air from where they stood to the surface. Overwhelmed, Cordelia's uncle made sure to stay out of it. Rip currents spiralled around the tunnel of air. The old seer opened his eyes. He felt something else flowing through them. Two forces mixing, mingling.

The next clock tick, all the power had flown through to Nherisa and Cordelia. The old seer wished he could tell what he had seen. He looked down at Cordelia. Her hands stretched towards the sky, her fingers fiddling.

The old seer let gravity take effect on him. He fell to the ground, dead.

Cordelia turned to look. The tunnel closed up and the currents disappeared.

"It's time for us to leave." Her uncle said.

"But what about him?" Little Nherisa did not like the scary sight of a dead person.

"He doesn't need us anymore. He has found rest."

All fell to the ground as sand.

Cordelia's eyes returned to their usual colour as did Nherisa's. They found themselves sitting on the rock again - outside Encrea.

"Why did it stop?" Cordelia asked.

"You saw it too, didn't you?" Nherisa asked

"I did see it." Cordelia said. "This curse has been in me since I was a baby."

"Not just you." Nherisa said. "It had also flown through to me."

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With a gentle push, Cornelia pushed open the large wood wood doors to the royal library. She looked inside at the towering rows of ladder-lacking shelves filled with books, organised by order of genre and then in alphabetical order.

By the fairytale section, floating in mid air, a little girl in a wine coloured gown picked out a book to read. She looked down to find Cornelia standing by the door.

"Mother!" She exclaimed. She slowly floated downwards. Cornelia placed one leg through the doorway. She looked down at it, bracing herself. Her second leg bent at the knee so that she was stepping foot only in the library. She was pulled up by a force she hadn't quite gotten used to yet.

"Zephyra!" She replied as she hugged her ten year old daughter in mid air.

"You're back so soon." Zephyra said.

"We had a little problem, but we're fine." Cornelia said. "Now go see your father."

"Alright." Said Zephyra. She floated back out through the door and turned left for king Roland's office.

Cordelia looked up at the magical creatures section. She wondered whether there was a psychotic maniac crazy enough to have seen a sea dweller and written about it. Floating upward, she browsed through the shelves of alphabetically arranged books. Balvadoors, kernalis, monlates, she made her way down the alphat until she got to the s section. Salms, sarcas, scronches, sonjanas, sperios. No sea dwellers. No one had written a book on them. Not that Cornelia actually believed that a person could have enough information on them to write a book about them.

Sea dwellers had always been normal creatures (humans) to Cornelia. Then what had just happened? She searched for the creature encyclopedia, the biggest book she had ever seen. Thank God for the index. She searched through it. No sign of the words sea dweller.

That did it. They couldn't he the third wealthiest island all planet Elyndra and had the second largest collection of books. There had to be at least one book that mentioned sea dwellers at least once.

She floated to a crystal ball at the exact centre of the room. Placing her hands on it, she thought only of the words 'sea dweller'. On the crystal appeared the image of a brown leather book with multicoloured gem stones decorating the cover and spine. The book lslowly floated into place in the prophecy section.

Cornelia left the ball and floated over to the prophecy section. The book was there as was shown in the crystal ball. She picked it up and held it in her hands. All by itself, the book opened to a page where the sea dweller was highlighted. Cornelia read through the page. She couldn't believe her eyes. After reading the whole thing, she closed the book and floated back out the door.

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"What happened after that day?" Cordelia asked.

"We became the powerful seers of Encrea." Nherisa said. "Everyone same to us to know their future. We were a big hit."

"So what happened?" Cordelia asked. "Why aren't we seers anymore."

"You might not remember." Nherisa answered. "You were six years old then you had just started seeing visions that you could interpret. But somehow you only saw bad things. Terrible, terrible things. It was about the time of the terrible plague of bad luck. You saw terrible things and they came to pass.

"The Encriens blamed it on our psychic abilities. In order to save us, I pretended to give our powers away to a pearl and close the chapter for good. Till date, that pearl is still in the museum.

"I could never have imagined that this day would come. I had in fact succeeded in making everyone forget we ever had any special abilities."

"You must teach me to use my ability again." Cordelia said, her head filled with anger and zeal for vengeance.

"No, Cordelia." Said Nherisa "it's too dangerous."

"I need it."

"Why?"

Cordelia didn't respond.

"I will not let you do that." Nherisa said. "You have to let go."

"Will you teach me or not?"

"Cordelia ..."

"Fine." Cordelia said. "I will do it alone." She swam away quickly.

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Cornelia opened the door to king Roland's office. She half expected to find him pacing around the room restlessly (which was what she would do if she didn't find him). She looked around at the shelves that covered every part of the walls that didn't have a window, at the big office chair and the huge desk in front of it where Roland would normally stamp papers. No sign of her husband.

She walked to one of the shelves and pulled a blue book. The shelf opened up like a door.

"Roland." She said after going through the doorway into Roland's secret study. She found him writing away in his journal at a small desk. "You need to see this."

"I am not interested." He shot back.

"But it's...."

"I said I am not interested." He looked at her with annoyance, but after seeing her face, calmed down and said:" later, please."

"I'm afraid it can not wait,sire." Cornelia said with a tone of urgency.

"Alright," Roland said "what is it?"

"I found this book in the library." Said Cornelia. "Look what it has to say about sea dwellers."

"Sea dwellers?" Roland said, collecting the book and placing it on the table in front of him. "But we don't have any books on them."

"Be don't,but we do have a prophecy." Cornelia said.

Roland read through the page:

The date remains unknown, but judgement day cometh.

It has been confirmed that power shall come from the sea to overtake our monarch and take the crown.

I saw a creature of the sea, not very different from us humans. It revealed itself slowly from the water. The creature had the looks of a human and the looks of a fish, mingled together in such a way that it resembled no mermaid but was unmistakably human. And she was beautiful.

It went on, carried by a wave that seemed to be under its control - or should I say her. She went into the village, destroying everything in her path to the castle.

I saw her reach the castle, bring down its defence and make her way to the throne. She sat on the throne, the ruler the new world she had created.

Roland looked at Cordelia. She was speechless too.