Atena's day-to-day life was that of a typical young adult in Saturno. She starts her day off by waking up, eating breakfast, brushing her teeth, stretching and then going out to walk to her to job. As the sun shines on her beautiful, brown skin, she takes in the sunrays, exposing her face and long white hair towards the sun and smiling as it wakes her up completely from her morning stupor. Her short stature, which she self-proclaims as 157 cm, makes her the butt of jokes in her family as well as in her workplace. Elves, especially dark elves, are generally quite tall and it is extremely rare for one to be as short as she is. Her father boasts a height of 220cm and her mother 200cm respectively. When she was a teenager growing up, her father, Azul, willingly took a DNA test to see if he was, in fact, the father of Atena due to her size, finding out later that she was her legitimate daughter, which embarrassed her mother, Alice, to no end. Although her parents loved her very much, Atena always felt a bit guilty for being so small, as she is their only child. Her parents were immigrants from the 13 consolidated states of the former republic of Plutón, or the 13 states for short. Her father and mother both come from the state of Bosque, which is the elven territory of the nation. She has visited the elven state many times and has even thought about living there for a time, as she fell in love with the lifestyle of working a 35-hour week with 2 hour breaks each day and 3 months paid vacation each year. She also learned from her visit there that her parents were gigantic outliers in the dark elven race. Her parents' heights are extremely tall due to their heritage of high elves in their lineage. Most of the people were around the stature and height of Atena, to her surprise. Due to this, she felt she would fit in better in Bosque than in her hometown of Mimas. However, she ultimately chose to stay in Saturno, and live her life in her hometown and commute to work in Anillo, in order to stay close to her parents and because her job is well paid compared to the meager wages and high prices of rent and real estate in Bosque. The commute was nice: a 10-minute walk from her parents' house to work on foot and she makes a living wage enough for her to buy or rent her own place and live comfortably while also having some money left over to spend on whatever she desires. She works an office job 9-5, typical of the average citizen of Saturno with lunch breaks in between. Although the work is as dull as watching paint dry, she loves flexibility and benefits that the job entails. 3-day weekends, bonuses at the end of each month, with the bonuses increasing 10 percent the more time you stay in the company, and the best of all, you accumulate 2 weeks of paid vacation every month, not to exceed 1 year. The only drawback is that while on paid vacation, you don't get any bonuses at the end of the month if you were to take multiple months off, which gives employees a difficult choice to make. Atena has been in the company ever since she graduated from her institution of higher education and reached adulthood at the age of 100. She is now 110 and plans on working there until she finds a better job or new calling. The best word to describe her situation is content. Yes, she is content with her life up to now with the occasional trigger from her childhood about her small appearance. However, she can't help but feel that there's something missing in her life. It's as if she was meant to do something else, and yet, she couldn't tell you what exactly it was that she was missing from her life. She has a stable job, a loving family, time for herself and a work-life balance that would be envious to many. Her hobbies of exercising, reading and watching shows about magic users is a life that some would kill to have. There is a sense of bittersweet emotions that come over her as these conflicting feelings clash together. As Atena gets lost in thought on her way to work, a loud voice snaps her back to reality, "Hey Atenaaa!". Atena turns around and sees her good friend and fellow co-worker Minerva, a dragonkin who has beautiful and long jet-black hair that contrast with her pale skin and blue eyes. this is Minerva's "usual" work look as she doesn't show her true dragonkin form with anyone other than close friends and family. In the country of Saturno, most immigrants try to look as humanoid as possible as to not attract unwanted attention and to fit in with the rest of society. That and Saturno was originally a human settlement during its upbringing, and therefore, most of its architecture, infrastructure and other amenities were built to accommodate humans and those similar to them. Although there are forms of discrimination towards immigrants for one reason or another, most of them change their true forms in order to look more human and live peacefully with the humans of the country that took them in. By changing an entire country's infrastructure to accommodate every race and species of creatures that entered the country, the government would have to set up programs and heavily tax the citizens in order to pay for the changes, which has time and time again been voted against, as most creatures can take a humanoid appearance. Those who can't change their appearance are not welcome, which is due to a question of practicality and not theories of ignorance or racism. Minerva and other dragonkin fit quite well with the rest of society in Saturno, which makes immigration for her species a lot more convenient than others. Minerva ran up to catch up to Atena and greeted her with a smile and a wave. "Sup Minerva, how'd you sleep last night?", Atena replied looking up to Minerva. "Pretty good since I actually got to sleep for 10 hours! It was a miracle!" Minerva said with pride. "Minerva, you know that the only reason you're tired is because you stay up watching those shitty movies about knights and adventure." "Yeah, but this time I fell asleep while watching a movie about knights fighting a deadly rabbit and woke up to the sound of police sirens in the same movie! I was shocked that that was the end! It was so bad that I fell asleep again as soon as I turned off the TV. But anyways, what about you, Atena? How was your morning?" "Oh, you know, the usual. I thought I was about to have an existential crisis until you showed up" "Really? What were you thinking about? It surprises me that an elf of all people would complain about something like that when they live to be around 400." "It's not about living...okay, maybe it is. But I don't know. I just feel like something is missing from my life and I can't explain why. And why are you talking about age? Dragonkin can live to a bit longer than humans!" "Yeah yeah, you know what'll help take your mine out of that state of weirdness?" "What?" "Work." Minerva says with a shit-eating grin. "Oh, fuck off." Atena says as both of the young ladies start laughing on their way to another day of work.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When the day of work finally comes to a close, Minerva and Atena let out a sigh of relief and clock out. The sun is about to set, and the sky is turning amber. A mild breeze brushes the skirts of both of the young ladies and a sudden cool breeze is felt between their legs. "I guess fall is a comin', right?" Minerva comments. She's not a big fan of the cold and would rather it be 40 degrees Celsius than any kind of cool weather. "I guess so." Atena says half-assed. Throughout the day at work, Atena couldn't stop thinking about the empty missing void in her life. She was constantly up in the clouds at work and Minerva and the others were a bit worried about her. "Marte to Athena, are you there?" Minerva waves her hands down around Atena's face to see if she was paying attention. Atena looks at her with a bank expression, which worries Minerva. "Hey, how about we go out for some beer with some of the colleagues? I know how much you like alcohol." It was true. Atena was a huge drinker, whether it be socially or not. She loved drinking alcohol and especially well-made beer. No matter how much she drank, she never gained any weight, which is something a lot of human co-workers tell her, as they themselves always have to cut back due to health issues. Atena kept her blank expression and Minerva gave up. They both went their separate ways and Atena arrived home. It was almost 7pm. "Hey honey, how was work?" Atena's mom asked her on the couch watching a show about spell casting and magic. "It was okay. The same old same old." "That's nice honey, your father and I already ate dinner and there's some leftovers on the table if you want to eat it. We made salad with tomatoes and chickpeas." "Thanks mom." After eating the leftovers, Atena heads out for a walk to cool her head. She always goes out to walk around this time of the evening. She lives in a relatively safe neighborhood and even if someone were to threaten her, she would use her magic cellphone to alert the authorities of her position and live stream the incident, showing the perpetrator's face in real time. In other words, it was never worth robbing or threatening someone in her town. As Atena walks around her neighborhood, the sun sets, and the sky grows darker and darker as the hour goes by. She notices that her head has not been cleared and worries a bit about why she keeps thinking about this thing she doesn't even know exists. Then, all of a sudden, she notices that her surroundings are getting brighter. She looks up to see a blindingly bright white light. Although it the light emitted was strong, Atena couldn't help but stare deep into it, mesmerizing her and terrifying her at the same time. When she came to it, she noticed that nothing has changed. What felt like an hour of light was actually just less than a minute as she checks the time on her phone. She wonders what that light was all the way home and got ready for bed. Although her day was filled with worry and uncertainty, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Atena woke up to the sudden chill that overwhelmed her body. As she woke up, she notices that some of her furniture were floating in the air randomly as she was shivering. There was no sign of ice or frost around her surroundings, so she assumed that the cold chill she was feeling was only affecting herself. The furniture drops suddenly and the cold chill that violated her body, went away. Other than the chill and the furniture, Atena felt the same as usual. She jumped out of bed and looked in the mirror to just make sure nothing really was wrong with her. Her olive-brown skin, pointy ears and short stature all seem to be in check. Nothing out of the ordinary when it came to her appearance. As she goes into her bathroom to take a shower, she notices that the water isn't coming out when she twists the knob. Then, all of sudden, a blast of warm water hits her face as she is taken by surprise. Oh god, what's happening? she thinks to herself.