Brine-rich and itchy she can feels the granules of sand and salt between her fur. The way it digs into her skin and how it crusts the joints and edges of her uninvited parasites. The inhale of air is sudden, strained and riddled with sharp choking sound of water lodged in the very lungs and throat: even the nose. Yidhra is not secretive about coughing, not subtle as she spits the water into leaves and earth: the familiar taste of iron lingering in her mouth. There is a moment where she speaks, where she answers and her accent is different… her voice is different. It sounds like the pitch is changing, more harmonious but still inevitably scratchy and rough. “There were shoals of triggerfish in the reefs, so pretty and gleaming. I saw ones with golden and brown scales, reds… even some simple as yellow and blue. Others too.” the addendum is something that makes her chuckle, but, she enjoys the mismatched color and the pattern of sand and sea that paints him.
Uneasy, her first step is shaking and wretched: the whole of her body lumbering and it takes a good few steps through the black shadows and mist before she smooths her gait and stops just a bit closer. “Always ramblings, I can never stop. Curse, or blessing- still, a pleasure to meet you Ivar.” she is charming in a way, her head bowed and the curved neck dipping as her forelegs also make a fluid and sweeping motion: the gesture of respect paid to his company. The sound of leaf crunches beneath her hooves and compact earth creates echoes amidst the sparse and yet impenetrable trees. “Are you sure? Closer? Interesting.” she chuckled, darkly; but lacking malice. Instead she moves into a sliver of moonlight that breaks through the blackened canopy- the whole of her body illuminated and exposed.
More noticeable now is the dark black of her body, the almost oily color of it and how she is peppered by strange gray patterns that seem to have no beginning nor end: only fading of what is and wasn’t. Those jagged bones beneath her skin are more prominent than before and there is an almost impossibly macabre quality to area where fur has been worn down and skin is exposed and riddled with jagged scarring. The same barnacles crusting parts of her body are wretched and she is bleeding over them and well around them: coagulated and thick- altered by the nature of the depths. Her chimerical face is still pretty but hollow and grim, and there is a split second where the blood that drips from her lips is not red… it is blue.
Matted and thick the kelp tangled and salted mane and tail seems to weight down her body and Yidhra remains in this light: studying Ivar through the shadow and bleak distance between them. Her spine cracks in a way that is audible, and when she settles- truly settles, she rests her weight against a tree and exposes the curves of her rib bones pressing against the skin. For a moment she recognizes the scent of his dinner from before, and part of her wonders at the nature: but she is not foolish, his beautiful features and coloration are to serve the same purpose as a Cheetah’s speed or a Shark’s senses… hunting. For a moment she considers him, and what he may be, recalling to herself the image of walking between bones and undersea vents.
Rotting whale corpses scattering the seabed and shells that had long gone uninhabited pooled before chasms and dark caves. She remembers the beak and tentacles, the great shimmer scales and teeth: the pressure that pained her and now? It would almost seem a comfort. Yet she cannot guess just yet what this boy is, only know that his skin is the same as her own… a cloak, a veil. So she smiles, softening but still detached and without suggestion of an emotion other than raw intrigue. “You must be native to these lands, far more adjusted than any I’ve met before and had the brief pleasure of a chat with. Such a pretty home, I must say I am envious.”
Yidhra