The pale blue genasi female bent over in pain, her breaths short and panicked as she tried to push through the labor pains and keep moving.  The father of her child, a particularly malevolent djinni, had hired countless bounty hunters to track her and one, a very wily and sadistic drow known only as Velkyn the Violent, had very nearly cornered her tonight.  Explosive light from a deafening lightning strike that randomly hit the corner of the inn she had been hiding in gave her enough of a distraction to leap out of the 3^rd story window into the ocean below.   She had remained underwater, propelling along the coastline for hours before finally emerging onto a rocky beach, far from civilization. 

Resting in the sand, propped against a large rock, her mind raced through her options.  Giving birth on land would be safer for both herself and her child, in case the child wasn’t a full water genasi and was unable to breathe underwater.  However, it would also be more dangerous as her pursuers would have easier access to her on land.  Deciding a sea birth was the better option she slowly and painfully pushed herself to a standing position.  As she stumbled back towards the water line, a black horse burst through the brush a few hundred yards away, Velkyn furiously lashing the poor, lathered animal towards her, screaming her name, “Azure!?!”. 

Staggering through the knee-deep water she took one last look behind and laughed at the furious drow, his shouted obscenities fading beneath the roar of the surface water as she dove deep and swam out to sea to find a suitable birthing place.

***

3 Years Later

***

Azure leaned over, tickling her daughter, Tempest’s, feet with a feather.  The toddler laughed, a giggly sound much like a bubbling brook, and grabbed at the feather with her pudgy hands.  These moments with Tempest were what she lived for, playing with her daughter, brushing her cotton-candy pink hair into sweet ringlets that framed her sea-blue face.  Tempest had her father’s eyes though – light purple with an almost black outer ring.  But Tempest’s eyes were full of humor and joy and curiosity rather than the disdain and arrogancy of her sire.  Just thinking of him made her shudder.  For three long years they’d lived a nomadic life – always on the move, never staying in one place for too long or drawing too much attention to themselves.  But her dreams had been troubled of late, and she sensed the djinni edging ever closer to discovering them. 

Why he would bother at all still mystified her.  From all the stories she’d heard, djinni could care less about their consorts and definitely had no use for the children they’d contributed to, normally pretending they didn’t exist.  Emperius had been different.  He had wooed and cajoled and courted her for months, wearing down her resistance.  They had become a couple, something unheard of as far as she could tell.  She wasn’t sure when she had first noticed that what she considered fawning attention turned out to actually be jealous, obsessive, controlling behavior.  A random male that had held the door open for her at a shop disappeared, never to be heard from again.  Anyone who paid her too much attention seemed to be prone to accidents.  Azure began to fear leaving the mansion because she did not want to be the cause of other’s misfortune.  Then the servants, her only friends, began disappearing or getting hurt and she became afraid to leave her room. 

She was a possession, not a partner, and the realization hit her full force when she discovered she was pregnant and Emperius demanded she “take care of it.”  The chill that had run down her spine when he’d said, “I don’t want some screaming, smelly child taking any of your attention away from what’s most important … me.” Instead of cowering and doing what he’d asked, she’d felt a fire well within her at the thought of harming her child.  Within a week she’d secured everything she needed to escape, careful not to involve any of the remaining staff as she didn’t want them punished or put in danger. 

She’d thought once she was gone, he’d forget about her and move on to his next conquest.  It was obvious he didn’t love her; she wasn’t anything special – just a normal water genasi who’d been lonely and shunned for so long that anyone showing her positive attention would have won her over. 

But he hadn’t forgotten about her, and he hadn’t moved on.  He and his hunters had chased her and Tempest across the land, from one end to the other, and she was running out of places to hide. The feeling of dread grew stronger each day, he was close.  It was time to book passage on a ship to another continent – perhaps there she and Tempest could find peace.