Outcasts

[The Writing Owl]

It was a beautiful day in Atlantis. The sea was bright, the people were bright eyed, and everything was great. Well, everything except for the Holtz family. The Holtz was a family that owned a very wealthy family, noting themselves as lesser nobles. They weren't too influential, but they had a great reputation. Reputation was everything in Atlantis. If you had a bad reputation, you were worse than coral.

This was strengthened with strict rules for who you had to marry and what you could be. There were two who didn't want to follow these rules, however. The twins of the Holtz family were an odd two. The boy was an albino while the girl was close, but had green eyes and yellow to her tail. These two tended not to follow the average expectations set for them.

An example could be this very day, when Katja Holtz decided to tell her parents what she wanted to do...

"Don't worry, Katja... You'll be fine! It's just a tattoo... showing your rank in the military that you lied to get into. Sigh..." Katja swam around in her room, trying to give herself a pep talk. She had only told her brother about her secret life in the military, which had been three months since she joined. Her parents thought she was being courted by a rich man and wanted to meet him. This led to the current predicament. Such was a normal day in Atlantis. Scandals were everywhere, waiting to be found.

 

[Matthias]

Fabian reclined on the large coral that served as a sitting area in his room, brushing through his long white hair. He loved his hair, but his parent hated it, hating how obsessed he was with brushing it and keeping it in perfect condition. It was unsightly for a merman to be so feminine, and if anyone was obsessive about what was socially acceptable and what wasn't, it was his parents. His father had been trying to get him to cut it short for years now, but there was no way in hell Fabian would be doing that.

He set his brush down, and quickly braided his hair into an elaborate trait, taught to him by his sister, who had learned it in her beauty class. It wasn't like she would ever do her hair like that - in fact, Fabian was quite sure she hated her beauty class - but he was glad she took it purely so that he could steal all of her notes. Sadly, mermen weren't allowed to take beauty.

Hair nicely braided, he swam to his sister's room through the large halls of their home. He was bored out of his mind, and she was sure to have something to entertain him. But once he arrived he found her a nervous mess. "Hey Kat, what's wrong?" he asked, closing the door behind him as he swam into her room and laying nack on a shelf of coral near the window. Katja had originally intended to use it for storage, but he had quickly claimed it as his own when he realised it was the perfect length for him to stretch out on. He tilted his head back, looking at his sister. "You look very silly upside-down," he light-heartedly teased. "Why do you look like you're going to dissolve into a nervous wreck any minute now?"

 

[The Writing Owl]

Katja sighed and took off the blanket she usually wrapped round herself when nervous. The tattoos were shown clearly, showing that she had managed to gain the rank of major, a rank that was adorned with many upon many tattoos. It showed she was actually part of the military now. There in lied the problem. "I got promoted..." She said, a sad smile on her face. She knew this would happen sooner or later, but she had hoped it was later. "And Mom wants to meet my 'fiance'." She curled up on her bed, wanting to cry.

 

[Matthias]

"Oh darling," Fabian crooned, a sorrowful expression on his face as he swam over to his sister. He sat down on the bed, wrapping his arms around her, hand tangled in the hair on the back of her head, holding her against his shoulder. "I have some makeup, we could try and hide the tattoos?" Already he knew that wouldn't work, seeing as it was greatly frowned upon to hise any marking portraying rank or status, especially of the military nature. "I could try and distract Mother, tell her I found some dashing young merman and fell in love? It would certainly take the attention off of your 'fiance'." And get him thrown out of the house and probably arrested, but that wasn't too important. Not when it came to his sister, at least.

 

[The Writing Owl]

Katja shook her head. "You and I both know the makeup won't work..." She said, her voice growing thick as tears started to make their way down her face. "I can't let you do that, Fab. Besides, if you really did fall in love with a merman, I would be the first to know." She tried to laugh, only for it to turn into sobs. "This is the one thing that makes me feel useful. People, the other soldiers, they respect me! I don't want to give that up just yet, but I know I can't hide it." She curled into her brother, like they were kids again. Whenever girls made fun of her, she would always go running back to her brother. Her hair was tied up, but she always longed to cut it off. Mother would have a fit if she saw her daughter with short hair. "It's not fair! It's just not fair!" She hoped to the heavens above their parents wouldn't hear her crying.

However, that was not the case. Their father had just gotten home. He was notorious for having sharp hearing. When he heard his baby girl cry, he knew that something was wrong. Their mother was out shopping so it was up to him to check on his poor little baby.