we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
She has wondered, so often, about him. She has thought about how he must have been something that she dreamt up—some curious imagining in the long hours on beaches and in the saltwater. He was so very different from anything that she had ever known and perhaps only because of that, she knew that he was not wholly the making of her own mind. She could never have dreamt the rasp of his voice or the curious roundness of his yellow eyes. She simply did not have the imaginative willpower to bring him forth.
But still, there was some curiously delightful in thinking that he was hers.
That she had made something that belonged to her.
The idea strikes her again, standing here before him, and there is a part of her that feels childish before him. A strange feeling for a woman who was never given the chance to be a girl. No years to learn and grow. No mother to nurture her or father to call after her. She been born and then made and then sent into the world and the story was so blurred after that that she struggles to call it a story at all.
A strange, lonely existence—but she did not know enough to even know that.
Still, she smiles, brilliantly, when he comes from the darkness (can he come from something that he is also made, of she wonders, briefly) and she realizes this is the first time they have met that has been his own territory. Before it was always in or near the water. Now she is the one who is off-kilter.
Her head dips, just a little, at the compliment, although she is not truly bashful. Evia has always known she is beautiful in the same way she learned her lungs operated so strangely underwater. It just was.
“The darkness reminded me of you from the first moment it arrived.”
Her silvery voice is a little thoughtful, nearly nostalgic, as she muses.
Her bright gaze slides back to him, finding the darkness where he stands.
“Not that I needed reminding.”
@[jamie]