Cassandra of the River

A Story by Vectra Mendonie

A pocket of air hidden in the earth, accessible only through a water entrance, connected to a river that no sane spelunker would explore, guarded a small green aquatic being. She was four foot tall, scaled from head to toe, born two thousand years ago, and named Cassandra. She ruled over the once sparkling river that linked the kingdoms of her oceanic cousins. When she was young, her river was so clear you would swear you could dip your head under one end and see all the way to the opposite ocean. And creatures of all sorts would come and drink from its waters; the rich, brown earth holding them steady so they wouldn’t fall in.

The crystal waters and deep earth, and forests of animals were all just memories now. She remembered when it started to change. There was a species of animal that stood out when they came to drink and fish. They didn’t drink by putting their mouth to water; instead, they scooped water with their appendages and drank from that or, sometimes, they would bring hardened pockets of mud and clay and fill that with water. They also fished strangely. They had sharpened tree branches and used those to stab the fish and collect them in tangled strips of grass.

These creatures were strange to Cassandra, but it made sense that they would need sharp things and pockets, for they were too tall to stoop to her waters and they had no sharp nails or teeth to hunt on their own. Despite their curiosities, they seemed to respect their hairier neighbors and only killed enough to feed their pack, so Cassandra was never bothered by them. They even paid respects, in their own strange way, on the rare occasion that they saw her. They thanked her for allowing them to gather food and drink, which wasn’t necessary but definitely appreciated. Yes, they were odd but they were good, as all things in nature were.

The trouble came when a new species of these beings migrated near her waters. These new creatures were similar to her regular visitors, but they hailed from the North, as she could see from their paler pelts. They covered themselves in furs like their darker counterparts did, but these skins were not from any animal Cassandra had ever seen. They were curious about their new surroundings and quickly explored the land that benefited from her river. They were also very curious about the similar beings that were here before. The darker ones were as respectful towards these new beings as they were to any of their other neighbors. They couldn’t communicate with them very well, but they offered pieces of their worn fur and showed examples of how they hunted. The pale species seemed receptive at first and offered their strange rock inventions and foreign plants in return. The tanned creatures showed them the dens they had made from wood and stones and furs.

The new creatures seemed to like this idea and started building their own dens. They leveled trees faster than anything Cassandra had ever seen. Unlike their darker cousins, they didn’t seem to avoid the older trees who gave more air to them. They had brought new ways to cut and treat the wood and their dens were much larger than was necessary. The fire they gathered by, burned regardless of weather. They started to hunt, and hunt they did. They had new methods of tracking and killing and they did it so often that new animals couldn’t be born fast enough to keep up. Cassandra was appalled at the territorialism of these beings; they wanted the whole earth alone!

When they started attacking even their own kind, killing the darker species of them with little to no aggravation, Cassandra could no longer sit idly by. She waited until a loud group of them came to fish. They brought nets to catch a pond full, after they had already visited a week before. She flitted quickly through the water when they approached the edge and pulled herself onto a rock to better face the beings. She couldn’t speak their language, but if they could communicate with their darker brethren, then they might be patient enough to talk to her.

When they spotted her, they were frightened, but instead of running away or falling to the ground like their dark counterparts, they tried to attack her with their fishing tools. Cassandra quickly slipped back into the water in fear. One of the beings brought out a long, shiny rock tool. It pointed to the odd-looking stick in her direction and it exploded! A piece of ore came whizzing towards her, barely missing her green scaled head. She ducked deeper into the water and swam hurriedly back to her protective cave. When she had calmed down enough to compose herself, she peeked out into the water. The beings were stomping around and going deeper into the river to find her. The one whose rock stick had exploded was unharmed from it and had gotten another stick, or maybe it was the same one.

Cassandra didn’t try and approach the beings again, even the dark ones, out of fear of what they would do. She watched over her liquid kingdom from the deep, and warned her saltwater cousins of the threat. It was unneeded though, for they too had seen the violence of the creatures. They told her of territory claims on the open water, fought on built dens of wood that stayed afloat. They told her of the fires they started on the wooden vessels in order to bring the other vessels down. They told her of the corpses and discarded tools that littered their domains. They wanted to take action against the beings, but Cassandra convinced them to wait. Dangerous new creatures had moved through land and water before, and eventually they adapted to the ways of the environment. Surely, these beings would be the same.

She couldn’t have been more wrong about that. The tall, pale creatures eventually fought off most of their tan cousins and took more and more territory. They spread out and multiplied, but they rarely started new packs, the pack just grew. Their self made dens became so plentiful that you couldn’t look out without one obstructing your view. The trees fell and fell and fell until there were only the weak ones that the creatures planted. They taught their cubs to kill before they could properly learn their own language. The materials they made and discarded clogged the land and waters. The fish and frogs and birds of her kingdom started to thin until there was barely anyone left. Nothing could eat what the tall creatures crafted, so it never went away. At one point, they built rock-like sides for her river, which prevented most animals from drinking, not that there were animals who wanted to drink the polluted waters.

Cassandra could only watch in horror as the beings took everything they could from the land, and replaced it with their treated stone and what she had heard was called “plastik.” The tall beings were ferocious indeed and fought among themselves. They didn’t seem to follow any regular pattern except destruction. They bred and multiplied and continued to multiply until there wasn’t land enough for them. They killed the plants. They killed the animals. They killed each other. They killed themselves.Nothing could satisfy them and Cassandra's kingdom fell under ruin. She choked on the thick, muddied water and could hardly see her nose, much less the obstacles to avoid.

Her cousins could do nothing to stop the beings either. They told her stories of the beings killing even the largest of sea monsters. They built pockets of air to go deeper and deeper into kingdoms that didn’t belong to them. They threw their own kind into the ocean, bound in such a way that they were corpses before the sharks could reach them. The waste they produced made even the great expanses of sea, hazardous to life and damaged beyond repair. They even claimed to have seen proof that the beings had taken to the sky like birds in their magic contraptions. One of her cousins supposedly witnessed them trying to touch the sky lights with a giant self made den whose floor exploded and threw it sky high until it disappeared.

Cassandra wept for the animals who survived the tall beings' wrath, for they had to live with the damage. She had never wanted to hurt anyone, but now she wanted revenge towards the creatures that claimed territory to the entire land, sea, and air. She wanted to make them see what they were doing to her subjects. So she fought back in what little way she could. When the beings went to try and kill the few fish who remained, she took them underneath. The beings who visited her kingdom would get to stay in her kingdom for the last minutes of their lives. She couldn’t get them all, but she could send a message. She wanted to force them away from waters entirely and let them live with the consequences.

Her cousins did the same, pulling wooden and rock vessels beneath the waves as to never reach dry land. None of them could bear asking the animals to participate, but they fought with such a vengeance that no other help was needed after all. Water is an expansive entity to patrol, but anger is an even larger thing. When the aquatic rulers met again, they told of the unrelenting pride of the tall beings. The creatures were still trying to go into the water, and they reproduced too quickly to be stopped. Clarissa rallied her cousins and gave them inspiration to continue the fight. She gave name to the horrid beasts who infected the ground and air and water. She rallied the warriors to continue the fight against the new-called humanity.