11-08-2018, 01:02 PM
Agapi
It takes only a moment for her cunning plan to see fruition.
First she notices his body beginning to quiet. He takes a deep inhale, then exhale, and Agapi finds herself mimicking the breath even if she isn’t certain why. “Agapi,” he says then, and she can hear him drawing out the syllables like he is tasting it. It was a good trick for learning names, she knew, but could barely remember to do it herself this time excluded. And then it happens:
“Nerine… I have not heard of it. Is it nice in Nerine?”
Likely he won’t see it, but her chest puffs out ever-so-slightly with the pride of her success. She smiles politely while nodding her little head, doing her best to contain her own delight with her newly learned trick. “Nerine is beautiful,” she says, and the wonder of it as she imagines it again is there, evident between the words. Nevermind that Agapi has never been outside of Nerine to the other kingdoms to learn whether or not her home was in fact deserving of the word, comparatively speaking.
“It’s huge, and lush, and bright, and it goes for miles and miles and miles until suddenly it just drops off over these great granite cliffs into the sea.”
She knows that some of the Nerine citizens had been left weak in the knees to stand so close to the edge of the world like that, but Agapi had not been one of them. She had always stood as close to the edge as she could manage, with the ocean breeze tangling and untangling the length of her hair and stinging her eyes. Sometimes it felt as though she were flying.
And sometimes she did fly, though it was a trick that had always left her family with their mouths gaping and hearts slamming up against their ribs every time she plunged from the cliff face and became a sparrow there over the sea, twisting and winding with the wind.
“Do you have a home?” She asks him then, her hunger for Nerine satiated with the brief exploration.
First she notices his body beginning to quiet. He takes a deep inhale, then exhale, and Agapi finds herself mimicking the breath even if she isn’t certain why. “Agapi,” he says then, and she can hear him drawing out the syllables like he is tasting it. It was a good trick for learning names, she knew, but could barely remember to do it herself this time excluded. And then it happens:
“Nerine… I have not heard of it. Is it nice in Nerine?”
Likely he won’t see it, but her chest puffs out ever-so-slightly with the pride of her success. She smiles politely while nodding her little head, doing her best to contain her own delight with her newly learned trick. “Nerine is beautiful,” she says, and the wonder of it as she imagines it again is there, evident between the words. Nevermind that Agapi has never been outside of Nerine to the other kingdoms to learn whether or not her home was in fact deserving of the word, comparatively speaking.
“It’s huge, and lush, and bright, and it goes for miles and miles and miles until suddenly it just drops off over these great granite cliffs into the sea.”
She knows that some of the Nerine citizens had been left weak in the knees to stand so close to the edge of the world like that, but Agapi had not been one of them. She had always stood as close to the edge as she could manage, with the ocean breeze tangling and untangling the length of her hair and stinging her eyes. Sometimes it felt as though she were flying.
And sometimes she did fly, though it was a trick that had always left her family with their mouths gaping and hearts slamming up against their ribs every time she plunged from the cliff face and became a sparrow there over the sea, twisting and winding with the wind.
“Do you have a home?” She asks him then, her hunger for Nerine satiated with the brief exploration.
Seize The Moment
@[Knaught]