She wouldn’t understand his emotions, even if she could feel them, even if she could name them. Such predatory things are beyond her in so many ways, and even though she is wary, it is not necessarily because she fears him. She is wary in the way of so many fragile things—something wild within her telling her to return to the ocean, to the sea, to the tides and the pull of the ancient moon.
To return to the things that make the most sense to her.
But he says it before she can form the thought into words and she breathes a sigh of relief. “Yes,” she says in her silvery voice, the lyrical words soft on her tongue as she turns her head toward the horizon. She almost misses the way that his body shifts, adapting to the saltwater and the brine, and her face goes slightly soft with wonder. She feels a purr of satisfaction within her, something recognizing it. “Yes.”
Then she is slipping backward into the ocean, the waves rising over her slim back, her hair growing thick and heavy. Another moment and then her feet have left the sand and her mouth is full of saltwater again. She doesn’t know the power that makes the water as easy to breathe as the air, doesn’t question this magic that makes her more at ease beneath the weight of the ocean than above it; it is simply what she is.
Her body does not morph like his does, but she is graceful in the water all the same.
Her slim, scaled legs find their rhythm as she dives into it, as her hair floats like a halo around her, and when she glances back up at him, there is something new in her gaze. Above the water, there is an innocence to her, a naivety, a shyness, but here, she is in her element. She sheds some of the quiet, the wariness, and becomes something different entirely. She is more coy now as she pushes forward further into the water, tail streaming behind her, the magic of her being thrumming beneath her skin like a pulse.
@[Ivar]