"Katherine" was not something Katt had not been called in
many, many years.
Katt was not born with the element of water. To be honest
she felt rather detached to it. Katt was
born as an aether elementalist, something that ran in her extended family-
though she doubted any of them realized it. Aether is a generic element. Her
great great grandfather could move things with his mind, and many of her
relatives would have mild telepathic experiences every once in a while.
Aetherians sometimes had a tendency to lean towards a certain element, and ever
since Kat was a baby she loved air. One time she jumped off the porch and hung
there, in the wind. It made her heart dance and her stomach flip, and up to
that point it was the single most amazing experience of her life. Nobody except
her best friend Leraco had seen. Afterwards they both took turns jumping off the
porch and ended up extremely bruised, sore, and disappointed. But that’s a
different story.
Katt was born with the name of “Katherine.” But nobody knew
that. Not even her parents. Not anymore.
One day her grandparents came to visit. They visited once
every couple of years from the desert town where they lived, hundreds of miles
away. Her grandma always brought her granddaughter gifts
when she came. Katt was ten years old at the time. Her grandma cherished
genealogy, and at this age, she decided, Katt could be trusted with a family
heirloom. Her grandma sat her down and
told her a story about her father, and how he could always find water, even in
the driest of places. It seemed to her, her grandmother had said, that he could
call it out of the ground. Her father had a necklace, she told Katt, with a cold
jewel, as sparkling blue as the deepest, oldest depths of the sea. And when she
would look into it she could see things in the prisms, and hear things, almost
like when you put your ear to sea shell, only more real. Her father passed it onto her, and in turn
she was passing it onto Katt.
Katt was thrilled to find out that when she wore the
necklace she could move water. She could twist it and bend it, and make it /do/
things.
Except it wasn’t her controlling the water.
Sometimes she could hear the crystal too.
It called her Katarael. It called itself Katarael.
It was around this time that she met Dengo. He showed her
the DHQ and taught her about the elements.
Katt learned that all the water elementalists were gone. She was the
only one.
She decided to make water her primary element. And the more
she practiced it the less she found that she could use her old abilities.
Katherine was gone.
Gone with the aether and the air. But still, she would always be
Katherine.
But she would always be Katarael too. Katarael was a shield.
A shield that protected her family, her childhood, and her heart. And her
parents forgot.
Nobody called her Katherine. Not even her parents.
Sometimes she regretted ever putting on that necklace. Just
as one regrets growing old or moving on.
