Mated Enemies

For someone like me, not knowing something, or getting a handle on it can be quite bothersome as it’s not a situation one with my power and capabilities face very often. In fact, I can’t remember ever feeling like this in my many years of life.

So I stayed awake long into the night; worrying and hoping that this elusive feeling wasn’t a harbinger of something more sinister, and that it didn’t have anything to do with the other three young women now asleep in the house.

I rolled over in bed and looked at the photograph in the antique gilded frame. It must be three hundred years old; the frame that is, the picture is more recent.

Every so often we have to change the image inside to keep up with the times. I felt warmth invade me as I always do when I look at our beautiful, smiling faces.

So young and carefree, so full of life and joy, my beautiful sisters, my friends. We are four. Brought together by something stronger than blood, a bond that can never be broken.

Together we are strong, stronger even than the ones who bore us. Generations of power flow through our blood! The ancient ones whisper in our ears. What we are have existed since before time and will be here long after.

My mother is of nymph and human blood; my father, a fairie and elf prince mix. I am indeed a rare breed among my people, and the strongest one born in the last two thousand years, as I bear the mark of the seal.

Though I’m considered a mere babe by my kind’s standards, fate has seen fit to make me the heir to my people’s rule; something that I hope will not come to pass for a very long time.

I’m having a hard enough time running herd on these three, I can’t imagine being responsible for the hundreds of thousands of our kind who roam the many kingdoms of the earth and skies.

At present my only duty is to guide and protect my sisters as we four watch over the people of our little town. Something our ancestors have been doing since this little Island was settled a little more than four hundred years ago.

It’s still rather untamed, barbaric even in some of its practices, like this business of unprovoked violence and a prolonged hate for some of its own citizens.

Something that has been going on for the past four centuries according to the many journals and diaries of our ancestors who once lived here, and in other places around the island known as America; and the stories they still tell when we all get together.

But as far back as this land has been inhabited, there have been us here, looking, watching, protecting. And though they can have no idea of what we truly are, and as heartbreaking as it is to see the birth and deaths of those we have drawn close to, it’s a responsibility we cannot shirk.

They do not see, they cannot know what danger moves among them, these humans with their short life spans. Had we, and others like us not been here throughout time, I’m afraid they would not have survived as a species, this thing they call humanity, as there are things, those things they cannot see or sense that would’ve done away with them long before now.

But my ancestors have taken up the gauntlet, placed themselves between men and their natural predators to see that their lives go on unhindered and with as little disturbance as possible.

There’s only one thing stronger than us, the only thing we fear and for centuries we’ve stayed out of their way. Hidden away in small towns and villages was our best cover, since our enemy prefers the bright lights and hustle and bustle of a thriving city.

As my eyes drifted closed, I saw a face, the same one I’ve been seeing for the better part of half a year now. Who are you? And why do you seem so familiar when I know without a doubt that we’ve never met?

The warmth that always follow the vision of his amazingly gorgeous face engulfed me as I fell into the darkness of slumber. A name echoed in the recesses of my mind just before I lost consciousness…Lucien…

Outside the wind blew in a strange way as if heralding something to come and in the distance one who as yet did not know of her felt her in the deepest part of himself. “What the fuck?”

Lucien

My eyes flew open in that final instant just before the sun lost its shadow in the western sky. What was that? I stayed still, straining to hear whatever it was that had interrupted my rest.

My eyes scanned the room as my body remained still. I sensed no imminent danger to myself, but something was a little bit off in the atmosphere. There was something there that hadn’t been the day before when I went to bed.