Djinni’s other nature had never truly called her before the Reckoning. She had stayed safely in the sky or tethered firmly in the ground; the water had never sung to her the way it should have.
Something had changed in Nerine – or perhaps even before that, when Beqanna itself had rearranged the world around her. Djinni had only ever done what she wanted, and then she had suddenly been forced to endure everything, regardless of how she felt. She had eaten, she had drank, and she had swum in the ocean. The beady eyes of the Nerinian dolphins had beckoned to her from beneath the waves, but she had done little more than whicker a greeting, nudge them gently with a friendly hoof if they swam too close to her in the shallows.
Yet they had continued to call to her, chattering as they crested the foamy waves, flashing sleek grey fins as they danced above the water. It was almost as if they had known.
Djinni had dived into the water the instant she left Lagertha, and the dolphins had been there to greet her. They taught her the waves and the shore and the dark press of tons of water overhead. She had learned the water and yet had remained utterly oblivious to its presence in Stillwater.
When she had left Nerine, she had left behind the sea. She had brought Stillwater with her, but it had never occurred to her that he might be anything more than what he appeared to be on the surface. She still swam, from time to time, but there was no pod here in the freshwater of Sylva. There was no companionable comfort as she bumped against the others. She has missed their touch, and as she blinks – almost blindly – at Stillwater, she thinks she might have found it again.
He crushes that rising hope in a single sentence.
Djinni is proud, and in this moment she is terribly vulnerable. He tells her to get out and she does, vanishing in an instant rather than let him see her crumble in front of him.
He is alone in the darkness.
* * *
And then he is not, because she has wished him into the water in front of her.
Djinni stands at the edge of the pond beside Stillwater’s cave (she had not gotten very far at all). The mare looks into the still water where she has just placed Stillwater without a single ripple. It seems fitting, but there is no pleasure at the accidental wordplay on her face. Instead she is scowling, her eyes darker than brown, darker than black.
“I didn’t do anything.” She says, and her voice would be a hiss if it weren’t already a whisper, as though the woods and water could hear them.
A djinn does not have control of the world.
Djinni does not shape the world to her whims; the world shapes itself to please her. She wants him to sink and he does, the water and the earth pulling away to make space for him as she wades in beside him until only their heads and necks are above the water and the shore is yards away. She considers drowning him, decides against it. It might not work. She’d rather not find out what happens when the world does not submit to her whims. (If there are other reasons to not drown him, she’d rather not consider them.)
Instead she tries what had not failed her before, and reaches toward him. Her muzzle is smooth again, sleek in the way that had elicited a growl from him that she knows had not meant Get out Djinni but rather ‘Come closer Djinni’. Her sides are still grey, but they are as sleek as they are when she swam with the dolphins. Her eyes are still dark, but their lack of color belongs with her smooth sides. Pupiless and dark, her predatory cetacean eyes lack any emotion.
Her shoulder slides against his beneath the water, startlingly warm in the cool water. She turns her head to keep her muzzle along his neck, dripping water down his still-sweaty hide as she does, following the line of muscle until she reaches the water and pulls away.
slim build
smokey grullo tobiano
brown eyes