[P] Here in the forest, dark and deep

[Sereia]

Sereia


Do you know Sereia’s dreams are full of places like this? She dreams of woods lovely and deep, where boughs of trees press up against each other and every stirring of the wind is a sigh and a rustle so utterly removed from the hiss of the ocean surf. There is no salt in the air here, though it clings to Sereia’s lips and body and hair and lashes. She brings the sea into the heart of this wild wood.


For a moment she stops and her golden eyes close. She listens, to the merry chirp of birds she has no names for, for the creaking of a branch, the tap of a woodpecker busy in the idle afternoon. She thinks how far her dreams are from this. Where sunlight falls unbroken and brilliantly warm. Sereia steps through the rays, her bpdy the hues of a sunset ocean. Yes, she does not fit here, and animals fall still as she passes. Deer flee before her. Though this girl is soft, though her smile is a thing of loveliness, her eyes soft as dawn, this woodland knows what walks beneath its canopy.


“I will not hurt.” The kelpie breathes. It is a promise and yet, it is a lie. She cannot stop hurting, though she continues to endeavour not to. Her tongue is wet with want, her sides slim without enough food. But she vows to not eat the meat her body needs, she vows for peace and she will find another way. 


A twig snaps, a bird takes flight, its frightened call an echo in the silent woodland. Sereia does not startle, for she is the loveliest predator here. She turns her wide, curious eyes toward the noise and says, with hope blooming in her gaze, with a smile daring to creep across her caramel lips, “Who goes there?”



@Andras


 

Here in the forest
dark and deep
I offer you
eternal sleep.

~

[Andras]

rage is not beautiful.
it is the ugly head of a rabid animal
foaming at the mouth,
worms in its heart.

Andras wants, more than he wants anything, to love this forest the way it is meant to be loved: kindly, protectively, openly--but he's beginning to think it is an exercise in futility.

He is these things. Kind--barely, but he has kindness in him, and if not kindness then at least obedience, which is a sort of kindness in its own right; protective, probably to a fault, the way that bears are protective, or sharks, or feral dogs, protective without reason, protection for the sake of protection.

But... open? No. This is not Andras. If he is an open book--and he is, unfortunately--it is in spite of his endless wresting, the iron grip that yanks the chain, the foot that keeps grinding at the coals of his heart when it roars to life in some form other than lightning and fire.

Andras wants to love the forest this way, though. He wants to feel agape with appreciation, breathless with awe. It is just that he doesn't. Time after time he comes out to the woods and sees only death and blood, red poppies like a river of it beneath his feet. It is easier to turn his face, to go up to the canopy and sit in the boughs of an old sturdy tree and read. It is easier to grind at the coals of his heart. It is easier than trying to warm himself on its fire.

It is one of these days that he comes to Sereia, bright even against the verdant light of the woods. It is one of these days that the twig snaps underfoot, that Andras looks down at his feet with cold, hard disdain, and then back up when he hears movement, more snapping, and the crunching of dry dirt underfoot.

She calls, who goes there, to nothing in particular. A bolt of electricity runs from his poll to the base of his tail. When he sees her, when he stops, when he inclines his head in greeting--more than most people get--he thinks to himself that the forest is large, and empty--except for the monsters.

"The Warden." he answers. "Are you from here? Are you new?"

@Sereia

[Sereia]

Sereia


He comes through the verdant light. The dark of his body drinks in the forest’s glow. Sereia’s smile stays, though it falters. She dips her crown and the curtain of her forelock falls forward, across her face. It casts a shadow across her lips, hiding that too-wide smile. When might she ever stop her bid to hide herself? When might she ever stop craving meat?


The woodland is full of lovely things this day. She picked at the grasses, their sweet taste nice, but, oh, it is nothing to the taste of meat. Yet she schools herself to enjoy it. She makes herself enjoy the taste of grass as much as the flowers she plucks from the forest floor. As she wanders she weaves the flowers into her mane. Already her hair is adorned with trinkets of the sea, small secrets she has found deep within its crushing blue. The flowers add colour, vibrant hues of earth and sea. 


She pauses from her weaving, her smile growing small, flower petals tumbling to the floor. He calls himself the Warden and how ill-schooled is she in courtly business! “What does that mean?” Sereia asks, her voice the sigh of the sea, the song of the lapping river at its banks. “Forgive me. I am from here, I have just not engaged with the court yet much…” 


Her golden eyes peer up, up, up to the canopy above. It is emerald and splintered with light. “I am too much of an adventurer.” She says with a smile and a shrug of a too slim shoulder. Slowly the girl steps back as he steps closer. Turning her face she meets the breeze as it breathes in through the trees. She keeps herself away from where the wind might carry his scent to her. Anything to keep her kelpie resting, anything to not awaken it with the smell of meat. “My name is Sereia.”


Slowly her eyes tumble down from the canopy of trees and settle upon him. He is as dark as midnight, the flashes of white across his skin as bright as snow. The glint of his glasses catch her eyes and remind her of a pair she found amidst a wreck at the bottom of the sea. Her eyes trail over the downward curve of his lips. Disdain darkens the lines of his face. “You seem unhappy.” The girl muses and carefully steps into the light, the smallest of distance closed between them. Beneath the wash of her forelock she studies him as if he were a sculpture. Her eyes trail along his feathers as if she wonders what it might be to carry wings the likes of his.



@Andras


 

She wore her hope like a crown,
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams

~ Ariana