06-18-2021, 12:24 AM
R I P T I D E
The moment he registers the confusion on her face—likely wondering why this stranger was snapping at her for no reason—he feels shame crawl up the back of his throat, and he tries to swallow the bitter taste of it away.
He is not always so sharp and irritable, but days like today, with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company, he always finds himself especially defensive. It is too easy for every thought to warp itself into something negative—to briefly lock eyes with a stranger and wonder about all the terrible things they must think when they see his oddly shaped face, and the rattles at the end of his tail. He was not always so self-conscious, but days like today were able to get the better of him.
“I should have been paying closer attention,” he says, his voice far more affable than it had been before. She was small, and obviously young. He thought of if someone had snapped at Katarine like he just did to this girl and he feels the guilt knot in his chest again. He notes the way the water drips from her, how she seems to be made of it, rather than simply covered in it, and he feels his own curiosity rise.
It is almost extinguished when she tells him that he is different.
The frost of his scales almost seem to harden in response, his jaw tensing as he bites back the urge to tell her, I know.
His tail flicks, the rattles vibrating against one another, but he pushes the urge to be defensive aside by forcing out a short laugh. “Yeah, I get that a lot. It’s the tail,” he says with a crooked smile and a tilt of his snake-like head, his reptilian eyes lighting a spark of brief humor.
“My name is Riptide,” he tells her after she says her own name, and, suddenly aware of how odd his watery name must sound to someone like her—someone with threads of water that hung where a mane should be—he explains, “My dad is a kelpie. My mom let him name me. I don’t think he noticed I took after her and not him.”
He is not always so sharp and irritable, but days like today, with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company, he always finds himself especially defensive. It is too easy for every thought to warp itself into something negative—to briefly lock eyes with a stranger and wonder about all the terrible things they must think when they see his oddly shaped face, and the rattles at the end of his tail. He was not always so self-conscious, but days like today were able to get the better of him.
“I should have been paying closer attention,” he says, his voice far more affable than it had been before. She was small, and obviously young. He thought of if someone had snapped at Katarine like he just did to this girl and he feels the guilt knot in his chest again. He notes the way the water drips from her, how she seems to be made of it, rather than simply covered in it, and he feels his own curiosity rise.
It is almost extinguished when she tells him that he is different.
The frost of his scales almost seem to harden in response, his jaw tensing as he bites back the urge to tell her, I know.
His tail flicks, the rattles vibrating against one another, but he pushes the urge to be defensive aside by forcing out a short laugh. “Yeah, I get that a lot. It’s the tail,” he says with a crooked smile and a tilt of his snake-like head, his reptilian eyes lighting a spark of brief humor.
“My name is Riptide,” he tells her after she says her own name, and, suddenly aware of how odd his watery name must sound to someone like her—someone with threads of water that hung where a mane should be—he explains, “My dad is a kelpie. My mom let him name me. I don’t think he noticed I took after her and not him.”
— i slithered here from eden just to sit outside your door —
@[hyperia]