Pookas deep and pookas wide

Pookas come where you reside

Where you sleep and deep inside

Pookas live where you will die

One will come and one will try

Hope in one and help their fight

One was Gold and one was green

Light and Dark, opposites they seem

Out of Love and lies and pain

Comes one who shows them that they are all the same

Elfaeria came, Elfaeria went, Elfaeria will return again.

“The king is dead”

For the past two moons, Melina had made it a habit to remind herself of this when she woke up. It seemed prudent to get the gut punch out of the way first thing in the morning and take her daily dose of despair when she was in control instead of when she least expected it. She had realized that reminding herself of her father’s death in this manner prevented her from doubling over in tears in the middle of a conversation or at other inopportune times upon realizing that he was gone. Instead, she carried the burden of his loss wherever she went only to find relief at night when she saw him in her dreams. In her dreams, he was happy and dancing the fleura with her mother. In her dreams he was always there, ready to protect her, loving her and strengthening her, but when she awoke he was gone and Melina was alone, weak, and exposed.

“The King is Dead”, she said again as she stood by her balcony watching the sunrise. With this truth firmly established in her mind and heart, she could focus on the kingdom and being the leader that Aureus needed. Just then, she heard the creak of her door as it opened slowly. Her maid Gloriana was always loud and sunny when she entered Melina’s room in the mornings so this could not be her. Panicking, Melina extended her wings and then wrapped them around herself, cloaking herself so that the intruder could not see her. Where were her guards? Had the assassin come back to finish the job? Would he detect her presence even though she was invisible? She pictured herself lying next to her father in the graveyard, an arrow in her heart like the arrow that had struck his on that fateful day.   

The door opened a little wider and Gloriana tip-toed in. Relieved Melina uncloaked herself behind the drapery in her room so that Gloriana would not see. Only Melina’s Father and Mother had known about her gifts. So it would not be wise to let her maid see her materializing out of thin air. After she uncloaked herself and retracted her wings into her back she came around the door and tapped Gloriana’s shoulder. Gloriana who clearly did not expect to see Melina awake screamed in terror and blindly hurled balls of pixie dust into Melina’s face.  Melina, trying her best to fend off the pixie dust attacks finally braved the onslaught and instead grabbed Gloriana’s, shoulders.

“Glo! It’s me, it’s me. What are you trying to do? Blind Me?”

“Oh, your Royal Highness! You scared me half to death! Forgive me, Ma’am.  I thought you were asleep”, Gloriana exclaimed with a hurried curtsy.

“Well, you scared me! You are never that quiet in the morning. I thought you were the assassin! Since when do you care about me getting a good night’s sleep?”

“Well, I just thought you would need as much energy as possible for today...”

“Today?”

All at once, she remembered, and her heart sank. Today was Melina’s coronation. She was to be crowned Queen. This would forever be one of the darkest days of her life. Today was the day she would take her father’s place.

“Mother?” she asked.

Gloriana only looked at her, her blue eyes full of sympathy.

Melina looked away. She could not bear to see the pity, to see her childhood friend and confidante look at her that way.

Her mother was no doubt in a drunken stupor. It was not hard to imagine that she had been drunk since the king’s death two moons ago. Her mother would not leave her chamber. She had not left her chamber to grieve with Melina, she had not left her chamber for the funeral, she had not left her chamber to help Melina unite the kingdom and stabilize the nation after her father’s death. Melina felt like kicking herself for having tolerated the slightest bit of hope that her mother would leave her chamber for the coronation.

“It is no matter. I have you, my dear friend”.

“And you always will, my queen”, she said with a curtsy.

“That sounds so strange.”

“Well you are going to have to get used to it, your majesty”, she replied with a smile.

The Coronation was a long and tedious affair. The longest part was receiving blessings from the Queen’s Council members. First was Esmerelda. She was to be Melina’s advisor. She was blind and older than any fairy in the kingdom, but she had a mind as sharp as a sword. Next came Kelliara, the head guard and commander of the Aureus armed forces. After Kelliara, the Mystic and highest-ranking pixie in the kingdom, Rowena came and said some spells over Melina. Finally, Cloris came. Melina could not help but notice how handsome he looked. He was fully transfigured, his skin Golden and his wings spread in their full glory.

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“Melina,” he said as if her name was the answer to a question.

“I always knew you would make an extraordinary Queen. I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon”

Melina returned his smile as genuinely as she could.

“We all did”, she replied. After saying his blessing he went to sit down and so the festivities continued. Melina could not help but hope that her mother would come but she did not even send a note. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. Her mother would have to face her, one way or another.

Melina approached her parents’ chambers but the guards would not let her enter.  

“The Queen has asked not to be disturbed”, one of the guards said.

“I am your Queen”, Melina said narrowing her eyes. The guards, unsure about how to handle the situation let her in. His father’s chambers were dark. All the draperies were drawn so that entering the chambers felt as though Melina was descending into a place where all light and happiness had been extinguished, never to return.  

When she saw her mother she lay snoring in her father’s bed, the strong smell of wine emanating from her sheets.

She shook her mother awake and the queen mother promptly cursed her for rousing her from her slumber.

“Mother, I am Queen now”, Melina said.

Her mother looked beautiful, even now at her worst, un-transfigured and unkempt. When her eyes were closed one could barely distinguish between her dark lashes and her smooth skin. When she opened her eyes, the contrast between her dark honey brown pupils and her skin was striking.

“Is this why you shook me awake? You say you are Queen? Queen of what child?”

“Queen of Aureus. Mother, I need you. Aureus needs you. I can’t do this on my own.”

“You are right about one thing. You can’t do it on your own. Why was I cursed with a child as weak as you? Tell me. Have you found the assassin who murdered your father?”

“Not yet, but we are making great progress-

The queen mother stood abruptly ejecting her damaged wings which hung pitifully behind her.

“You are no one. Queen of nothing. There is no Aureus without Nikoliad, There is no me without him. There is nothing without him!” 

Having spent all her energy, she fell back and closed her eyes as tears flowed down her cheeks.

“Why didn’t I go instead of him?” the Queen Mother whispered to no one in particular. She opened her eyes once again and looked at Melina accusingly, 

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

The words were like a sword through Melina’s heart. Her mother had protected her from the arrows of the assassin by shielding her with her own wings. Her wings had been all but destroyed in the process. Melina since then had determined that this was evidence of her mother’s love. She told herself that it was evidence of her mother’s desire to help her, and evidence that they could be united and rule Aureus side by side. She chuckled bitterly. She had been naïve. Her mother’s sacrifice had been a momentary fluke, but here was the real queen mother, here was the Elisandre she had known for her eighteen years of life.

 Melina wished that she believed it. She wanted to truly believe that her mother didn’t love her and never would. It would have saved her so much heartache, but she could not control her feelings and she could not tame her heart. She knew she would always have an ember of hope glowing in the darkness of her heart, waiting for the wind of her mother’s attention to ignite into a forest fire. Without another word, Melina opened one of the windows and flew out into the night.

 As she soared through the air she realized that three guards were tailing her. She stopped and turned around to face them.

“What are you doing?”

“Well… your majesty, we are coming with you.”

“Why?”

“Because we are your royal guard, your majesty, sworn to protect the ruler of Aureus”

“Well, thank you for your protection. I will not be needing your services tonight”

“But your majesty, we are responsible for-“

“I am queen, I am quite tired of reminding people of that, but here I am, doing it again. I am the queen and I command you to leave me alone.”

The guards were taken aback and appeared uncertain.

“I’m sorry. I do not mean to be difficult. I simply need time to myself and I am telling you to please, leave me be.”

She did not wait for their reply and instead flew to the edge of her kingdom as quickly as she could. She paused only for a moment at the border to make sure that no one was following her then headed into the forest.  She had never left the kingdom alone, and never at night but her grief gave her a reckless courage. It seemed as though her mother didn’t quite care what happened to her.

“I don’t quite care what happens to me too,” Melina whispered.

In the unclaimed woodlands that lay between Aureus and Elveria was a region where the trees in the forest were tightly packed making it impossible for anyone on foot or anyone who didn’t know exactly where they are going to access the clearing in the middle of the thicket.  Beneath the canopy of trees was a waterfall that had eaten into the rock beneath it to create a deep pool over the centuries.  This was where Melina landed on the night of her coronation.

The pool was different at night. It had an ethereal quality to it and the moonlight gave the surrounding forest a mysterious glow.   She pictured the pool in the daylight. The dappled light streaming through the canopy dotting the dark waters. The rocks surrounding the pool were the perfect place to dry off after a good swim on a warm summer day.  As she looked into the moonlit waters, she saw her father teaching her to swim. She saw him comforting her after another fight with her mother. She saw his golden skin glowing where the sunlight touched his skin. She remembered his laugh, his embrace, and his scent.

Alone, in this place, which held so many of her cherished memories, Melina felt safe, safe enough to be weak. Finally, the floodgates opened and unleashed gut-wrenching sobs from the deepest parts of her soul. Before long she was wailing into the night. Who would have known that grief had the power to reveal a person’s most primal, truest self? Who knew that it could turn you into an animal, howling in the night? Her mother had implied that she wished that Melina had died instead of her father. Well…that made two of them.

At that moment she heard a twig snap behind her. She was not alone.

Instinctively she extended her wings and cloaked herself. She had been stupid. The assassin had found her. She would have to fight. She would have to -

“I’m not going to hurt you,” a soft voice said from the trees. “I just want to know if you are alright.”

Slowly she moved backward, hoping to escape before she was caught by an arrow or worse.

“I already know you are there,” the voice said. “Here, I will come out into the open so that you can see that I mean no harm.”

An elf stepped into the clearing, his pale luminous skin shimmering in the moonlight.