Novo gazed around the shimmering moonlit cave of her kingdom's only remaining freshwater garden. Her finned hooves clutched at the largest of the numerous white peace lillies as the still fresh memories of the lost press in on her, but this time she wasn't alone. "Now Skystar," she addressed her daughter, "I asked you to come to this place so I could tell you about our family, our real nature and why we live in the depths." Her daughter bobbed a sable coloured head, the large, intelligent blue eyes looking out at her, reminding her of another. "You father, King Maelstrom-"
"The lost chief." Skystar cut in. Novo winced and pressed the lilly she was holding to her heart - it hurt still to think of her lost lover here. "Yes, I come here to remember him and the others. Each lilly you see here represents someone whose story has ended." A look of shock and incomprehension from Skystar - the time of storms was little more than a rumour to her. "His story began at the height of mount Aris. You see little one, before the storms came our pride was such that we swam not in the safety of the still depths, but in the tumult of the air." Novo paused with emotion at the memory of the feeling of the heavy air against her powerful wings as she and Maelstrom flew together.
"H-how?" Skystar asked after a pause. Novo collected herself, "It is in our nature. He, I and you have the stormy sky in our veins. That is why you and I are drawn to forbidden surface places like this." she said simply. "It was only when your father and so many others became lost to the storm that I and a few others decided to foresake our pride and give up the skies." Novo did not tell her daughter that it was the young babe that was all that had stopped her joining Maelstrom. Nor did she tell her daughter that the name 'Skystar' bestowed when she was freshly grieving her loss, represented her hope to soar once again. Instead she contined, "The storm within us, which would drag us to our doom and end our story once and for all, can only be cooled by the magic in these waters." Even as she said the words, she knew her heart would always belong in part to the sky and longed for the day on which the clouds between herself and her love would be pierced and they would be reunited.