Drina - The origin

Long before Dracana sacrificed herself to preserve the history of the fire mermaids, Drina felt that something was coming. She didn't know exactly what, only that she needed to leave. So while her family stayed, Drina ran.

She swam farther and deeper than she had ever gone, until no one could find her anymore. For years, she searched for something she couldn't quite name, but the farther she went, the more alone she became. Eventually, the fierce mermaid grew tired of running.

She reached one of the deepest places in the ocean. There was no sunlight, no color, no warmth — only cold, darkness and nothingness. For a mermaid born from a volcano, it was the furthest she could possibly be from home. And there, at rock bottom, Drina finally thought about everything she had left behind: her family, her home, and the guilt of having run when Dracana had stayed.

So Drina cried. She cried until she sobbed, letting everything inside her spill out — and with it, her heat. Her volcanic fire poured into the freezing darkness around her, illuminating a place that had known nothing but blackness.

Her fire met the cold ocean and became rock. Layer after layer formed on the seafloor, slowly growing upward until volcanic mountains rose thousands of meters from the depths and finally reached the surface. And then life found her.

Bare volcanic rock became an ecosystem. The emptiness filled with movement and color, and warm tropical waters surrounded what had once been Drina's coldest, loneliest place.

She created Fernando de Noronha.

For years, Drina had yearned for something she couldn't find: a home, a family, a place where she could finally stop running. Somehow, at the lowest point of her life, she had created it herself.

And as life transformed the volcanic rock into a tropical paradise, the island began transforming Drina too. Its colors, creatures, warmth and wildness became part of the fierce mermaid who had given it life.

The fire was still there. The lava in her eyes. Her volcano soul.

But she transformed.

The island had been born from Drina. And Drina was reborn by the island.

And that is how the story of Atalaia begins.