//------------------------------// // Before the New World Was New // Story: Yesterdays // by Ditherer the Fussbudget //------------------------------// ”Ooh, look how green everything is!“ ”Looks just as bad as the palace grounds to me. Can we go back in the ocean?” You’re Adagio, and you’ve… encountered some obstacles in taking over the human world. Again. You were honestly very close this time, if only they hadn’t abolished the divine right of kings at the last minute… But hey, that’s what puppet rulers are for! You’re not bitter or anything. It’s just that everyone needs a break sometimes, especially from politics. So you’ve taken the girls on vacation, starting with a soothing two-month swim. Now, the three of you are finally back at your personal haven. A very long time ago, this is where you were banished. Well, much closer to the western shore, but still here. Everything here was immaculately secret, as far away as possible from the rest of society. There were humans in some of it, though; sometimes they had darlingly intricate names and deliciously cursed artifacts for you, although you could avoid them if you wanted. In fact, you all thought the world was deserted for the first decade. Ah, youth. "You can go swimming again if you like, Aria. Sonata and I are going to go find dinner." She strolls wordlessly back toward the tide, and you head for the forest, thick green trees without measure. As you walk Sonata’s staring at you, and she’s trying to look cute. ”If I catch something, I don’t have to cook it, do I?” You laugh gently and muss her hair. "Of course not. We’re here to be ourselves, aren’t we?" Her expression stops being cute. The grin’s toothy and unpracticed, nothing like the polite, wan, elegant thing she would share in banquet halls with your former courts, and you can’t help but return it. The things you eat will be remembered someday as hidebehinds, splintercats, teakettlers. Today they don’t have names, and that’s the beauty of them. A little later, you’re all sitting on the beach, looking where you came. Aria points straight to the horizon. ”Don’t you have a husband back there?” You startle. You hadn’t remembered that, and you’d arranged the marriage yourself. You were getting old. "I guess so," you say, reclining on the sand. ”What was his name again…?” Sonata cocks her head, trying to think of it. Aria settles in, watching the waves, trying to decide whether or not to go to sleep. She’s calmer out here. For the longest time you thought her hostility was just a defense against a nasty world, but it isn’t. She acts that way because there’s no one here to reason with. For the three of you, not taking control is the same thing as accepting failure. Every time you’ve gotten bored and tried to take over the world fairly, it’s ended horribly. Without someone to argue with and seethe about, she looks more… neutral.  Placid, maybe. You know because you feel it too; you want to come at your problems from another angle, so you’re walking across the continent and swimming to the other end of civilization. This is nice, but... Well, you need to pick up your feet sooner or later.  You should tell them to head out tomorrow. "...Should we head out tomorrow?" It becomes a lazy, floating question. ”Not unless you really want to.” Sonata says, forgetting your husband entirely. ”Nah.” Aria says, and decides to go back into the ocean for a while. You watch her dive in, then let your eyes close. In the years to come, you would avoid this place, wondering if you led the humans to it somehow, or if one of the others made one too many hints. You didn’t. No, they found it all on their own, just like the warrior-tribes who picked you up and took you to the rest of civilization centuries ago. There was a war over who got to build their awful infrastructure on it, and you had to stop politicking for a while. Sonata was curious about what was going on there, and sometimes she’d ask to swim over. Aria, on the other hand, was like you: she didn’t want to see what people had done with her beaches. You got over it eventually, and contented yourselves with the islands they still hadn’t discovered. But many years before then, you’re dreaming on a continent that belongs just to you. The ocean air billows over you as the stars of home wheel across the night sky. And, for a little while, that’s adoration enough.