09-30-2018, 03:49 PM
The storm season is waning and the scaled creature finds himself in need of something, so as the sun begins to set on his dozing lavender family, the kelpie slips into the sea of Nerine.
He has not been here since Wishbone had left, but the grey sea still feels familiar, especially with the almost summer warmth. For a few hours he occupies himself with chasing seals, but as the hours creep toward midnight he ventures ever closer to the shore. He is waiting - for what he is not sure - but as the tide pushes him into ever-shallower water he does not resist.
Eventually he stands on the night-black sand, with the waves softly tugging at his fetlocks. The moon overhead blanches his piebald markings and turns the rest of his glittering coat grey, though when the kelpie turns toward a sound behind him the gold of his scales catches the light. It is only a night heron, returning to a nest high in the cliffs. Ivar watches as it disappears into the shadows only to soar out again a few seconds later, having left the silvery fish it carried with a mate and chicks in the nest. It returns to shore to stalk the edge of the tide, and Ivar continues to watch it until he grows bored.
Then there is movement farther down the beach, movement that draws the hunter closer in a way the scrawny fowl never could. The kelpie is selective in his prey, after all, and while his belly is still full of too-slow seal, there is no quieting the primal hunger. His long legs remain in the surf as he moves, his progress slow and unhurried. The full moon aids his progress as the sandy beach grows narrower and he must pick for footholds among the granite that had fallen en mass from the cliffside a hundred years earlier. The waves have begun to soften the rough edges of the boulders, but it will be many hundreds more years before this northern shore is as wide as the rest of the beach.
”Breckin,” he says when he is close enough, ”I see the sharks didn’t find you after all.” His words are flat and while his handsome brow is raised in what looks like surprise and a smile tugs at his pale mouth, there is no indication in his tone wether the kelpie is pleased or disappointed by her safe return to Nerine.
@[Breckin]
?
He has not been here since Wishbone had left, but the grey sea still feels familiar, especially with the almost summer warmth. For a few hours he occupies himself with chasing seals, but as the hours creep toward midnight he ventures ever closer to the shore. He is waiting - for what he is not sure - but as the tide pushes him into ever-shallower water he does not resist.
Eventually he stands on the night-black sand, with the waves softly tugging at his fetlocks. The moon overhead blanches his piebald markings and turns the rest of his glittering coat grey, though when the kelpie turns toward a sound behind him the gold of his scales catches the light. It is only a night heron, returning to a nest high in the cliffs. Ivar watches as it disappears into the shadows only to soar out again a few seconds later, having left the silvery fish it carried with a mate and chicks in the nest. It returns to shore to stalk the edge of the tide, and Ivar continues to watch it until he grows bored.
Then there is movement farther down the beach, movement that draws the hunter closer in a way the scrawny fowl never could. The kelpie is selective in his prey, after all, and while his belly is still full of too-slow seal, there is no quieting the primal hunger. His long legs remain in the surf as he moves, his progress slow and unhurried. The full moon aids his progress as the sandy beach grows narrower and he must pick for footholds among the granite that had fallen en mass from the cliffside a hundred years earlier. The waves have begun to soften the rough edges of the boulders, but it will be many hundreds more years before this northern shore is as wide as the rest of the beach.
”Breckin,” he says when he is close enough, ”I see the sharks didn’t find you after all.” His words are flat and while his handsome brow is raised in what looks like surprise and a smile tugs at his pale mouth, there is no indication in his tone wether the kelpie is pleased or disappointed by her safe return to Nerine.
@[Breckin]
?