• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    thorned with wild eyes; ivar
    #1

    If her time in the river had taught her anything, it was that saltwater was infinitely preferable. 

    Even now, out beneath the waves, she can still taste the dirt and the mud of it, the way that it had clogged her throat and coated her tongue. She had still been able to breathe, but it had been an inferior kind of breathing—hampered and hobbled. As soon as she had been able, she had turned her sights toward the ocean, slipping into the wild water and feeling a marrow-deep relief when it had been brine on her tongue. She feels cleansed by it, purified by it, and it washes her scales clean of the riverwater.

    She loses track of the hours that she spends like this. Loses track of how much time she spends churning the water, gulping in the ocean depths as she propels herself forward. She does not have the same gifts as some of the others—her body does not morph at the mere touch of the water—but she is graceful in its depths all the same. She is as home here, as strange and alien as she is, as she is on land.

    Still, even she craves the shore sometimes, and she soon finds herself moving toward it.

    This time though, it is not through the narrowed passage of the river. Instead, the ground gently slopes upward, her hooves finding purchase in the sand and then lifting her up. The water streams off her scaled sides and her silver eyes blink away the water, although it beads on her eyelashes still. She shakes lightly, sending droplets flying, and the flowers woven through her mane and tail bloom ever so slightly, the petals as bright and vibrant as if they had not just spent hours soaked beneath the surface of the water.

    Curious, Evia angles her head toward the beach. She isn’t sure who lives here, if anyone lives here at all, but there is something within her that keeps her anchored chest-deep in the water—

    unsure if she was welcome, unsure if she wouldn’t just slip back into the seafoam and the surf.

    Evia
    we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea


    @[Ivar]
    Reply
    #2
    From where he is settled beneath the shade of a palm, Ivar watches the stranger rise from the sea. It was the flowers that had caught his attention. They stood out against the soft foam and the clear water in a way the rest of the stranger did not, and at first he thinks they are simple drifting along the shoreline. But no, his gold eyes make out a head and neck rising from the water, and then scaled shoulders and a silver mane that drips water in rivulets between aquamarine scales. She is breathtakingly lovely, and Ivar is content to simply watch her as she glances up and down the beach.

    Moments like these are why the kelpie is so certain Fates favors him. He is free of the Plague, his island is undisturbed, his children are plentiful, and the ocean has just delivered something to his very door.

    Rather than leave her waiting – because surely that must be what she is doing, so still in the lapping water – the tricolored stallion rolls to his feet, shaking the sand from his sides as he does so. He wickers a greeting as he moves froward, leaving the shadows of his resting place for the sunlit shore. Light catches on his golden scales, and he smiles warmly at the unfamiliar mare as he comes to a standstill. His own hooves are barely in the water, a comfortable distance from the flower-haired mare. He glances over what parts of her can see above the water, making no effort to disguise his appreciation. Something about her reminds him of his kelpie women – impossibly lovely and at home in the water – but there is something different at well, something that makes the cautious creature keep his distance. He might not keep it for long, of course.

    ”What brings you to Ischia?” He asks with a curious tilt of his head. The stream of diplomats seems to have ended, and it is not often that one comes alone. Nor does she smell of any land he knows, though Ivar knows there are new ones, ones that he isn’t as familiar with. Better to play it safe, he knows, than to risk finding himself out of his depth.

    @[evia]
    Reply
    #3

    She has little experienced dealing with men like him; in truth, she has little experience with men in general, minus the few moments with her father which had mostly been spent with his strange magic pouring knowledge into her veins. She does not shy away from him but neither does she reach for him. Instead she lets her silvery eyes study him as he rolls to his knees, as he shakes the sand from him, as he moves to the water as if he was coming home. She watches silently, taking it all in to think on later.

    When he speaks, she angles a single ear to him, clearly paying attention, but she doesn’t reply.

    Instead, a storm of thinking passes across her features, the impossibly beautiful brows drawing together, her mouth pulled into a thin line of contemplation. The silence between the listening and answering is perhaps too long, too quiet, but when she answers its in a voice of sea foam and silverbells, lyrical and lilting—quiet but each syllable carefully enunciated as if being heard for the very first time.

    “The ocean,” a soft smile curls the edges of feminine lines. “The ocean brought me.”

    It feels like a strange question to ask and she knows of no way to answer it without such honesty. Still, she doesn’t let her eyes stray from him, taking in the blue and the gold and the white of him—that alien beauty that she has no way of knowing is not commonplace among his gender. She doesn’t know if she should say more, and she takes a small step backward, feeling that tug of the tide around her ankles, that compulsion to slip back into the undercurrents. Something stills her though, and she pauses after that small step, watching him cautiously, curiously—hungry for some other piece of knowledge.

    Evia
    we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea


    @[Ivar]
    Reply
    #4
    The kelpie is overcome with the sudden yearning to seize the creature in front of him. Not carnally (though there is something of that as well), nor even by the throat, but rather as a possession: something to hold and keep and enjoy whenever he might have need of it. A recognizable sensation but not one he’d expected to feel toward a stranger, the scaled stallion frowns for just a moment, scrutinizing the silver and teal mare with a piercing gold gaze.

    She isn’t kelpie, but nor is she not kelpie. His instinct tells him only that she is something unknown, that she is something he wants.

    For a time the two of them watch each other, the nereid and the kelpie.

    It’s Ivar who breaks the silence first.

    “And will you stay here?” he asks, as the long strands of his tail are pulled about by the knee-deep water, “Or will you drift out again with the tide?” The kelpie is accustomed to holding the ultimate advantage against his prey, but the silver-eyed mare seems as comfortable with the sea as Ivar. She might breathe the briney water as easily as a kelpie does or leap beneath a wave and be gone as quickly as an eel. Ivar would like to see that, of course, but more than that he wants to be sure that she’ll return if she does.  

    “I’m Ivar,” the kelpie tells her. He must shift his weight in the sand, and he considers lunging forward and dragging her beneath the water with his jaws around her throat. Instead he adopts a more comfortable position, and the other possibility never shows in his charming smile. “What’s your name?”

    @[evia]
    Reply
    #5

    She is out of her element when talking to the stallion. She has no social skills to speak of, no defense against his charming smile, no way to discern what is truth and what is lie. She has nothing to judge him against, nothing to protect herself with. She only has the barest foundation of knowledge and the way that her ocean heart claims that he is one of her own—that they are, somehow, cut of the same cloth.

    It gives her a fake comfort in his presence, overriding her fight or flight instincts

    It makes her put her hoof back down against the soft sand, although she doesn’t walk toward him. It makes her hold his gaze, wondering at the depths of them. When he finally does break the silence, she frowns slightly, looking down at the water lapping down around her legs. “I don’t know,” she says, honest again. “Should I?” She glances up, searching his face for the answer before looking to the horizon.

    She’s never thought about what it would mean to stay somewhere.

    So far, in her short life, she has only known the ocean and the different lands it takes her. Some, like the river, are less than favorable (and she could never imagine staying landlocked in such a place), but others, like Ischia are not so terrible. Perhaps, like her parents, she could find a home. A place to stay.

    It is a strange thought, and her head nearly hurts with contemplating it.

    But breaks the silence again and she drags her eyes back to him. “Ivar,” his name is strange on her tongue, and she repeats it, letting her silvery voice wrap around the syllables, testing them. “Ivar.” She swallows and then nods, her teal lips splitting into a brilliant smile. “My name is Evia.”

    Evia
    we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea


    @[Ivar]
    Reply
    #6
    @[evia] is safe from the plague. For now. (rolled a 6)
    Reply
    #7
    The golden eyed stallion holds her gaze, and though he is silent he wills her closer, as though if he wishes hard enough he might make it come true.

    Stranger things have happened to the son of a genie, after all.

    Should she stay, the woman asks, and Ivar tells her "Yes," without a moment of hesitation. She should stay and tell him where she came from, what she is. The kelpie weighs his odds before taking a step forward, her bright smile and the heady taste of the tropical air all the encouragement that he needs.

    He is bolder in the fall, after all, when prey is most plentiful and willing. Evia does not feel like prey to the piebald hunter, but perhaps that is simply because his hunger has been sated for the day. He remains curious though, and takes a second step, settling just within reach. Evia's warm smile is returned as brightly, as Ivar adjusts his weight on the sand.

    The water is too shallow for a transformation, but the piebald feels the pull of it anyway. It is always there but louder when he is knee-deep in the water, and he turns toward it for just a moment before being distracted by the silver haired mare. This close, her scales are more visible, and Ivar wonders how they might feel. Rough, like his own? Or smooth and sleek like those of the test of his women? Perhaps something else entirely, but she remains just far enough away that he cannot touch.

    "What are you, Evia?" He asks. There is nothing in his curious tone or smile to suggest this might be an odd question. Women do not rise from the sea every day, after all, and the kelpie assumes that Evia must know this. The answers that she has given him thus far have only spurred more questions. The scaled stallion is eager to know more about this newest addition to his collection. "You are not a quite like a kelpie, but you are not just a mare either, are you?"

    @[evia]
    Reply
    #8

    There is something about the weight of his smile that asks her to stay a while.

    Something that tempts her into it.

    But it is an anchor and even as she wants to lean into it, she feels the other, more wild part of her already reaching for the unending ocean. She feels the equal hunger to continue swimming, to slip back into the waves, to feel the natural pull of water into her mouth. It creates a split within her that she is unsure of how to bridge; something that nearly splits her down the seams. A discomfort she is not used to.

    Her lovely features crease with a frown, with an uncertainty, and she feels a leg lift again, as if outside of her own control. It is the barest of motions, this rocking backward, as if she can feel the water rising up her hip and digging hungry fingers into her. Her ears flick back in response, angling toward the source of that siren call, but she remains rooted, for now. Continues to straddle the line before her.

    At his question, she angles her head slightly, sliding her silver gaze back up to his golden eyes.

    “He didn’t give me a name for what I am.” She can barely remember the mulberry face of her father now, standing over her as a child, when she was all limbs and fuzz. She can barely remember the beauty of her wintery mother. She just remembers the flood of knowledge and experiences, something that had lived outside of her—something that she can access but can’t quite feel. An untethered tie to this world.

    “I am of the ocean,” she frowns as she tries to find a way to explain it to him. The frustration pushes her toward him as tries to demonstrate. She dips her head down into the tide that washes around them, letting it dampen the delicate curve of her muzzle. When she lifts, the silver of her nose glints just slightly. “You are the ocean,” she says as her mouth finds the muscular slope of his neck, letting the water fall down the rough scales of him. “You are water and foam and sand.” Her lips and teeth move closer to his jaw.

    “You taste of salt of the water, not salt of the earth.”

    She pulls back slightly to find his gaze.

    “I am the same.” Another quick smile. “I am of the ocean.”

    Evia
    we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea


    @[Ivar]
    Reply
    #9
    Her answer is nothing more than the source of further questions, a nameless he that had created the silver creature. Ivar’s frown matches the one that Evia wears, parsing through what little he knows of magic and the sea in a futile attempt to answer what she had not. Of the ocean, she says, and Ivar finds himself smiling. Not an answer, still, but she is trying.

    He touch upon her neck is gentle, as though she might break as easily as the hollowed shell of a sea urchin. She tastes of the ocean, just as she had said, and his lips find the edges of her sleek scales and they way the flex across the muscle of her shoulder, the way they blend seamlessly with the silvery hair of her mane. The kelpie is curious and uncharacteristically gentle; some wordless part of him insists she might dissolve between his hungry teeth as easily as seafoam if he dared taste her.

    “You’re something else, too.” He tells her in a tone of voice most often reserved for his children: patient and without hunger. “I just don’t know what.”

    He might tear the answer out of her, he supposes, break her into small enough pieces that he might puzzle over each one. He ponders this as he follows the scales along her spine with a gentle white muzzle. Perhaps there is a swim bladder like a fish’s beneath the curve of her teal belly, or a complex set of gills hiding in her neck. But what if there is not, and he cannot piece her back together again? Ivar does not like these what if thoughts, they are a reminder that he has spent too much time breathing in the tropical air, too much time on land.

    “Swim with me,” he tells her, and despite the brush of his muzzle along her jaw as he turns back toward the sea, he does not lace it with a command. His golden eyes find hers, creased once more in a puzzled frown, but the water that reaches up his chest is soothing. Deeper now, the pull is stronger, and the rise of his hindquarters soon sinks into the sea as his hind legs become clawed and his tail grows more muscular.

    He lowers his nose to the water and then holds it high, feeling the water run down the scales of his pale face. He forgets Evia for just a moment - reveling in the sea – but the moment is not overlong. “Come.”

    @[evia]
    Reply
    #10

    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.

    Evia
    we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea


    @[Ivar]
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)