-Adria-
Something about coming home makes Adria feel… unfettered. Like she was able to take off the diplomatic mask she’d worn to the Resort and let her best features be shown. It helped that Ruinam was the sort who was extremely easy on the eyes, in her opinion. They’re laughing and she’s looking at him through the part of her long forelock, eyes glimmering with a hint of bewitching light. To her elated surprise he agrees to both notions - the waterfall and the night beach - which leaves her breathless in a totally different way.
It meant that his afternoon and evening were hers and hers alone to entertain however she liked, and when the tall stallion leaned closer Adria could think of about a million different ways that entertainment could go. The second their shoulders collide she curls into the touch, Ischia forgotten in the moment as the Nereid mare bends her neck and presses her lips into his mane. He tastes of the sea, smells like warm sand and a hint of fox.
Tell me more about Ischia, he asks her. That’s enough to break the spell, not enough to move her away from him immediately though. Ruinam’s companion shimmies down the opposite side of the white male and plops onto the shore before Adria replies, “You make me sound so much more intriguing than I am.” With a charming, high laugh. She eases away from him, flicking her tail across his legs when she goes. She hopes that he’ll follow wherever she leads.
“There’s the jungle, as you can see.” Adria explains with a smile, heading up the dunes and through the high sea grass before they breach the outer edge of the tropical forest. Her steps are delicate and precise, taking them down a path that feels well-worn. Here the air seems impossibly thick with humidity, almost like water itself as it clings to her skin and pools underneath her long mane. “Tropical parrots live here,” And for a moment her thoughts drift to Brennen and his companion animal, “along with monkey-like creatures called lemur. Strange predators can be found sometimes, very rare. In my tongue we call them Chat Satan. You would say ‘devil cats’.”
For some reason, this makes her laugh. The little bold animals looked like mongoose and were slippery if you ever saw them. Adria kept her pace brisk but felt just fine drifting beside Ruinam, glancing often to the stately rise of his cheekbones and the pleasant curve of his mouth. In what seemed like an hour or two the Forest thinned out, showing them both the backside of a moss-covered mountain.
“I live here with my three children.” She admits, turning her eyes away briefly as she took the front and made her way around the base of the rock formation. She couldn’t say why the admission made her a bit more serious (call it motherly instinct) but she hoped it wouldn’t throw Ruinam off too much. For having whelped twins one could hardly tell a difference in her. Adria seemed perfect, like she always had.
They rounded the lower side of the craggy hill and like a vision, the many-tiered waterfall came into sight. It had a wide basin that was impossibly clear and inviting, with low, wide steps of pools that rose to meet the great centerpiece: a crashing curtain of freshwater that tumbled out from the top of the mountain. “This time I think you can fend for yourself.” Ruinam’s guide joked, slipping past the lip of the bottom-most pool and sinking into its depths.
Throwing her head over her shoulder, Adria turned back to look at the stallion that had left his home to accompany her all the way here. Her face seemed veiled, beautifully coy. “Care to join me?” She smiled, and the faint glimmer of scales rose across her luminously pink skin.
Oh my love, don't forsake me; Take what the water gave me
@[Ruinam]