(the first part of this features her mother Wrena and her brother Klaus. they fly above her while she's swimming in the sea.)
“This is ridiculous.” Mumbles Wrena's son, growling under his breath as he soars beside her on open wings over the toiling waves. Klaus was made to hold the large lantern swinging from a chain as the pair flew toward shore. He wasn’t pleased. With the darkness, lantern slave, or their current mission.
“Nonsense.” The bay mare grins, swooping playfully away and then lowering herself to draw a hoof across the sea’s foam webbed surface. Her and Klaus have large (mostly) matching wings woven with dragon heritage. Wrena’s always been proud of hers and she’s equally proud of her son’s, who stretch a whole foot or two wider than hers. The only discerning difference besides the gold that accents Klaus’ leather appendages. “Having her not know anyone and being an unsocialized dullard is ridiculous, eldest child of mine.” She teases him, laughing a little as she redirects her attention to the water below.
The dam smiles as a pearly blue shine starts in the deep sapphire of the darkened sea. The firelight from the lantern Klaus lets dangle from his right leg (the chain wrapped around his limb) shimmers off of what start to appear as scales gliding quickly beneath the sloshing seawater. As the moving creature gets closer to the surface it’s obvious what it is, a baby kelpie. It swims as fast as the horses above it fly, only surfacing for just a second and diving into the black once again. Her mother is pleased to see her swim so freely, hunting the kelp forest below and fine tuning her maneuvers.
They arrive on the shores of the Playground’s region with a muffled commotion. Wrena barks some orders at her son, lovingly, but with little tolerance for his displeasure. “Claudia.” The bay mare quirks her white ear upright as she watches her kelpie daughter emerge from the waves as her gangly legged self, losing her scales, and tail and teeth and melting into an adolescent child, innocent. The filly shakes the sea from her fur, looking curiously around her.
“Where are we?” the girl asks, stepping passed her brother and toward the assembly of rock formations and play space.
“We call it the Playground.” The mother goes on to explain that it somewhere for the girl to find children around her own age. Wrena fails to explain that it is also an experiment to see, plainly, if Claudia has an affinity for hunting others. Wrena bumps the girl forward to go talk to someone close by.
“Hel…” her smile is forced and awkward as she approaches, “..hhello.” She tries to find a comfortable way to hold her mouth with a curve to it, but it becomes a little creepy and she can feel it looking weird, so she holds her mouth in its normal linear way. “I’m Claudia.” She fights the urge to look over her shoulder to her to her brother and mother who watch her with a wide-eyed intent that she doesn’t fully understand.
(…they’re waiting to see if she eats the other child).
C L A U D I A
ivar x wrena
@[lycaenidae] don't worry claudia's a friendly kelpie, i think