She was the third daughter of the king of the winged race Amihan. They grew white wings that spread as tall as they were and flew higher and faster under the sun. They lived on the clouds as they were lighter than them, weightless in the world called Erien.

Their race carried a holy task. They were the guardians of the Path of Life. They protected what could now roughly be called as souls as these lives entered or left their mortal shells. It was a thankless task, for the lives they accompanied often never knew anything outside its desperate attempt to reach its mortal casing... or it never knew beyond the desperation of staying within their broken ones.

It was also a task rife with danger, because although they cannot be seen or noticed by the soul they deliver, a perceptive soul of another can. And often these living souls are not willing to free their broken kin and in their blind and painful grief they attack. Many of the winged race have fallen in this manner. Amihans are not invulnerable to blade or fist but the task needs to be done. It was a task that the Holiest of Beings have bestowed upon them and it was an honor to serve.

Amihans, however, in defense, have learned of ways to conceal themselves. They lived with the light and so had learned to use it. They could blend into it, use its brightness to blind, bend it so they were invisible, anything to hide them from the eyes of the race they guarded. They could still, of course, be felt and held, but of course, who would think to touch something they could not see? And so it had gone on through centuries, the Amihan visiting the race of Alupaan only in birth and death with the aid of the sun. The latter unknowing of the trade.

For all the art of light bending that the Amihan had mastered however, there was a race that they could not trick. The Allons of the sea. They were blue tinged fish people who lived beneath the waves and played under the silver light of the moon.

It is said that they were the race who were once tasked as guardians but they pitied the living souls and so had, for a while, stopped delivering. They left the mortals to suffer in their broken shells.

The Alupaan grew miserable, there were too many of them with too little to keep them all alive. Soon the number of the broken and frail people grew and they began to turn against each other. It was this that had awakened to Allon. They immediately sent a great wave to claim, free and deliver the souls as they should have. They saved the Alupaans from the death of their race but the holy being thought the people of the waves now unfit for the holy task. They were then given a new task, one that suited their nature more. If the Amihan only bothered themselves with the beginning and ending of the mortal life, they busied themselves with what lay in between. They provided life in the bounty that their waters carried, they punished the unjust by withholding it. It was their task to Maintain life.

The Allon and the Amihan however are not allies. Water melted the feathers of the Amihans, salt water caused them a great burning pain and only the sunlight can restore them. Sunlight on the other hand, hurt the Allons, dried their skin too much and turned them, if they were not careful into sand. It was these differences that fed the distance and therefore the distrust between the winged and the finned race. They were each other’s weaknesses, lived in what would be the death of the other. It came as no surprise that the king, father to this third daughter of the Amihan, forbid all winged creatures from meeting the finned ones.

And so it went, the path of life, carried by the races as they lived in a teetering peace. Not one of them knew of course that that peace would be shattered soon. And that it would be shattered by love.

In the world of Erien, it was not the Earth and Sky who loved first, it was the Sky and the Sea. This is their story.

The third princess had flown through the skies, after delivering life to a faithful and loving couple. The child had taken so long and she wanted to see the life through safely that the sun had long since set before she had deemed it safe to leave, before she had taken to the skies again.

She had spread her wings, and for a moment, was frozen in wonder as the moon blessed her. It was not as brilliant as the light of the sun, but somehow, it was equally as beautiful. She rose up to kiss it, and to thank it for lighting her way home. It was indeed a blessing, for the moon meant that the clouds brought no rain to delay her more.

She would have to take shelter if it rained. The water would wash out her wings, and there was nothing more shameful than a wingless Amihan. Without wings, one cannot deliver souls. And there was nothing else an Amihan was for but to deliver them

She, however, did not master the light of the moon, she did not know how to bend it properly, or if she was bending it at all. She flew at a low height to avoid detection and it was on this flight that she had met the man who would change her life forever.

He lay on the forest floor, unconscious and unmoving. He was silent but something about him cried so much of pain that she had dipped into the ground, and had, for the first time of her life, felt the ground beneath her feet.

She wore no shoes. What would they be for? She never walked anywhere. She looked at her feet against the damp and thick green grass. She smiled at the peculiar and ticklish feeling of them. Her wings behind her, she knelt before him and gasped as she discovered what he was. An Allon. So far from the shore. What was he doing here? Curiosity overrode caution and she lay her hand on his forehead.

He was as beautiful as the moon. His skin was the color of the silver moon teased a little by the midnight sky. His eyes opened and focused on her. They were the most brilliant of greens. “Amihan?” he said weakly.

“Yes.” She whispered.

He looked at her then and asked her if she had come to deliver him to the holy being, she answered a prompt no even as he tried to sit up and failed. She had noticed his legs, how could an Allon have them?

It was then that she had learned of the secrets of the Allon. They had the power to trade in their fins, for a short while, for the legs of the Alupaan. Only they needed to be back in the water before dawn if they left at sunset or before dusk if they left at sunrise. They would be trapped as an Alupaan if they failed to make it and they would wither, slowly, as the rocks on the shore did, as time passes them.

The woman, sensing the light of dawn, bent before him and embraced him. She then spread her wings and flapped them as hard as she could and raced for the water. She had reached it for him just before sunrise.

The warmth that she had felt as he had answered her embrace stayed with her even after she had left him to the depths of the sea.

It was then that she had broken her father’s rule. She had not only met an Allon, she had helped it, touched it... and before she knew it, she had loved him.

They met every night since then. They talked and shared life and love under the secret blessing of the moon. She stayed a feet from the water, looking down on him and he stayed beneath the surface, looking up at her, her eyes carrying the hue of the water he was in. They had dreamed for a place where they can somehow meet and always, they had searched the horizon for when the sky had met the sea.

A third princess’ habitual disappearance was not something that can be easily ignored, however, and soon, the first princess had found out the third’s secret. The laws of the air were strict. And the princess had to be punished.

The father, in his misguided rules, hated his daughter then, how dare she break her own father’s rules? He then proceeded and gave her the harshest punishment of all, he ripped off her wings. The crimson feathers flew with the wind as the cries of the wingless filled the land. She was then flown into the heart of the land of the Alupaans, trapped and invisible to everybody, trapped in a place where no one can see her, trapped in a place where no Allon can reach her... or so they thought.

The Allon who had loved her, saw it all happen and with broken wings in his hands, proceeded and stepped out of the water that dusk and walked towards the land. Every step hurt him for he also, did not often use these legs. He followed the trail of broken wings, praying that he would find her before grief ate at her. She could not hide from his eyes, he thought, for no matter what light the bent, he would surely find her. He did not think that now, as the sun colored the skies her hair, he no longer looked with the eyes of an Allon but an Alupaan. He had exceeded the limit.

He walked after her still, searching for her in the dense forests of the land.

She however, had learned to live without wings, her feet were bruised and bleeding, unused to walking. She was however, shamed and do had bent the light away from her. No one should see her in her shame. She, however frequented the grass, for they somehow reminded her of him and of the time they had first met.

It was in one of these walks that she saw a pile of sand, mixing with the green of the grass and the crimson of her wings. She knew who this was and she lay weeping beside it.

“Amihan?” it whispered in a secret and last whisper of a breath.

“No.” she sobbed as she cradled the sand in her bosom, bathing it with her salted tears. “Not Amihan my love...” She cried and flew through the night, with invisible wings that he had gifted her with his last breath. She then plunged into the water with her last breath, searching for the horizon where they oh could meet. “Atalantea. I am Atalantea.”

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...some people are only alive because it is illegal to kill them...