Dear Friend,
 
You asked about the day Taisce arrived in Novus. Well, I cannot tell you of that day, for he has always been here.  What I will tell you though, is of the day he returned to Solterra and to do that, I must begin at the start.
 
Taisce, you see was born a boy, like any other. He was born in sand that did not know the touch of water. In the midst of the dust and heat of the desert he was pushed into the world and, no sooner there, he was plucked from his mother’s side.
 
The child, born in the colours of a sea he had never known, was stolen away to become a part of a new project the once-king of Solterra had planned. As part of that masterpiece, the boy was whipped and poisoned, taken near to death and brought back again. They beat him into submission, manipulated his thoughts, his mind, his love, until all he knew of love was the name a soldier told him was his, Taisce. He was called so because that is what his mother cried as he was taken away and she lay dying, a spear in her breast.
 
So Taisce spent years with the child soldiers, he fought and offered his life for Solterra over and over. He was a snake in the sands of Solterra’s desert and he fought like one. But his skin was the colour of the sea. So they called him the Seasnake. He would hiss and bite, snarl and savage his enemies – he was as wild a soldier as the other children that made up the rest of his faction.
 
But one day, the day he discovered the ocean, well, that was the day it claimed what was its own. With his skin the colour of water and sand combined, maybe it was fate that decreed he was made to paint beaches red, not deserts. So the sea sent a kelpie to claim this child soldier, and it did, in a battle that raged.
 
Taisce drowned a boy soldier and emerged from the deep as a kelpie; the body of his maker broken at his hooves. That was the first kill he made as a kelpie, but one of many he had made as a soldier.
 
So it brings me to this day, the day he reclaimed his name, Taisce. The day the wild sea rolled into Solterra and from its waves he leapt upon the rugged sand. Ah, there was nothing beautiful about Solterra’s beaches, nothing significant about the place he died. His pearlescent eyes swept over it, dismissive. The broken kelpie was gone, eaten by predators and time.
 
With the waters roaring and hissing at their creation, Taisce washed like the tide along the beach. He leaves no footprints in the sand, for the sea chases him, helps him, swallowing any evidence that he was there.
 
The kelpie stops at an alcove and there tat beautiful monster of the sea began to sing. It was a song he once sang before the beatings at the hand of his commander stole his love, his fear.
 
At sea his brethren watch, the hair of the Comhar herd glinting a myriad of unnatural hues upon the breakers. They listened as their brother sang for the child soldiers, to remind them of the nights they sat and sang together, until each lost their voice, their soul, their bodies to Solterra’s war effort.
 
That haunting song poured rich as wine, and achingly beautiful. It was specter soft and designed to pull, to lure. Taisce waits, adorned in the blue of the sea, the gold of the sand – he is their marbled testament. Was Solis watching his prodigal son that day? For bright sunlight flashed along the beaten, rusting collar of his servitude. Taisce heeded it not as he watched the beach with white sea-spray eyes and his lungs drank the hot Solterran air.
 
That, my dear friend, was the day Taisce returned to Solterra.

Dear Makeda,
 
Taisce watched you approach, with your sable skin painted like sweeping dunes. You were satin, gleaming gold and red and simple brown. Taisce thought you wore so many colours; the soul of the earth imprinted across your slender frame.
 
Taisce is so very far from your earthen hues. He succumbed to the ocean so long ago now.
 
Still he watched you, everywhere from the glittering gold of the delicate jewelry hanging from your nose and dancing across your cheek, to the khol lines that followed the sharp angle of your cheeks and gathered together into a ‘v’. You wore the earth (its paint, its metal, its gems), like he wore the sea. Each of you were wild that day, each of you were catastrophic in your boredom.
 
Together you were the wrath of the ocean and the desert set to consume it.
 
He sang to you, unwavering, haunting and beautiful, but you had already heard him hadn’t you? Already that song, rising and falling like the swell of the sea, had pulled you in as gently, as slyly as the tide pulling you out to sea. It was familiar, a warm memory slipping beneath your skin begging to be remembered.
 
So he waited for you, like a spider for its fly. His web is gossamer gold and it stretches, fine and gleaming, in marble art across his skin.
 
Though Taisce stood quite still, did you see how his skin rippled, Makeda? It was a testament to the waters that lapped at his cloven feet.
 
For every step you took to him, your dragon was awakening. Already it watched him with orange-blue eyes (so many eyes!), that were so alert. Your dragon knew, even then. But still you stepped closer still and still he remained silent.
 
That kelpie boy enjoyed the ease with which you came to him, with your scorpion neck so proudly arched. You were a prize of the desert and he knew the davke oh so well. His eyes curled and twisted up your spiral horns and his pearl eyes glimmered. We will never know if it was recognition that flared then.
 
His collar gleamed beneath Solis’ gaze, it was turning grubby black and red with rust, but it was silver enough to still look fierce and fettering. Its story was one of blood and it was as potent as the canid teeth that lay hidden beneath his golden lips.
 
Ears, long as champagne flutes, and just as elegant, tipped to catch your words. Shells fell from his body as he moved. They landed in the sand with a ripple of chimes like spilled gold.  Taisce’s steel-blue skin twitched and he smiled, a wine rich smile for you, the slender girl upon her beach, her watchful serpent curling about her limbs.
 
Taisce moved again and the desert wondered where his spear had gone. But waves crash into rocks as seafoam sprayed across his skin; it darkened him with sin. The kelpie looks to the painted girl and speaks, at last. “Waiting.” He muses slowly.
 
He ascends to you, over slippery rocks that cannot trip him. His skin dripped eternally and his sea-storm mane and tail hung as a waterfall may. When he moved close to you, and he moved very close indeed, you might have been able to scent the salt upon his skin, the breeze of the ocean roaring out at sea.
 
He looked to your lavender eyes and then away over your desert skin, over your limbs as fine and long and dangerous as the spears he once threw. Taisce tasted the air, they way you made it smell of smoke and spices. Your skin was dry, but it helped him remember, and that is why he lingered close, close, close. That is why he circled you and then came to rest before you.
 
He was the tide and he would pull you out to sea.
 
“Calling old friends.” Taisce said to you, in a voice that sings from the ocean deep.
----

Author: Unknown

@Makeda - gosh so long, so sorry, forgive me >.<