[P] Sink - Printable Version +- [ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg (https://novus-rpg.net) +-- Forum: Realms (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Ruris (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=6) +---- Forum: Archives (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=96) +---- Thread: [P] Sink (/showthread.php?tid=3882) |
||||||||
Sink - Anandi - 07-26-2019 In the shallows, a jade-eyed kelpie plays among the forest. She darts to and fro between the curtains of green, chasing after harbor seals and rockfish for no reason other than the sheer fun of it. There was nothing like this where she was from. There was almost nothing at all but open space in every direction. It was the opposite of claustrophobia, but no less maddening for the uninitiated– and then you had the immense, bone-crunching pressure on the body and a blue so dark it almost seemed red. (or was that just the hunger coloring one’s vision? It was hard to tell, down there where Hunger was a religion.) This was an entirely different world. One could get a true sense of their speed, when there were landmarks by which to measure distance traveled. So Anandi speeds along with powerful undulations of her long tail, front hooves tucked delicately to her chest (they were always in her way, but not as practical to remove as her mane) and among the kelp forest she learns how fast she can be, how agile. With only herself to race, she is always the winner. She laughs, so many bubbles, and fish dart away in fear at the sound. It makes her laugh even more. It was usually easy to forget that beneath all that responsibility and maturity and hunger was just a girl. But not today. Today she is a child. Today she is– Anandi sees the man with eyes like ice just in time to avoid colliding with him. She pulls up and rolls to the side, and though she should run run run while she has surprise on her side, she stops and turns to look at him. The child in her is gone the instant she sees the magnificent horn that spirals from his forehead (overcompensating much?) ending in a sharpened point. In the course of a split second, everything about her is different. Her face grows guarded and her lips tighten. Tension fills her body as she debates whether it is better to stand her ground or run, to charm or antagonize, seduce or repulse. Her white forelock floats weightlessly around her like a halo. (The rest of her mane is cropped or tied particularly for this reason; she could never stand hair in her face, despite how wonderfully dramatic it could look. It was one of the few cases in which she chose practicality over vanity.) She must duck down to clear the hair from her vision, and once more their eyes lock. He looks positively villainous. She thinks she might be scared. But she's never seen anything like him and she isn't ready to look away. The girl stares at the menacing stranger with huge expressive eyes, ears and frond tilted back uncertainly. You wouldn’t eat me– would you? And then there is another change in her. Perhaps she is remembering that she is a princess, and she has sharp things too. She smiles, or more accurately she bares her teeth. You wouldn't dare try. (right?) Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill. @Amaroq <3 RE: Sink - Amaroq - 08-06-2019
RE: Sink - Anandi - 08-15-2019 She learned that on the surface they called the sea Terminus. Like it was the end of things and not the beginning. Of course, she understood why they might call it that. To them the sea meant only death. Sharks and jellyfish, angry tides and sharp rocks... and perhaps most dangerous of all, the call of the ocean. There were tales of men and women so enamored with the sea that at night, with only the moon as their witness, they walked into the water and were never seen again. Poor landlings... they could never know how life thrived beneath the surface. What bounty lay just out of sight! Pods of dolphins that stretched to the horizon, shoals of fish that moved as though seized by a single mind. In the deep, massive creatures were born, lived, and died without ever feeling the light of the sun on their skin. (They could never see it, of course, because they lost sight eons ago). The depths of the ocean were beyond even Anandi's knowledge-- it would not be madness to imagine it was as deep as the sky, for both were without end to the known world. (Sometimes she would peer into the night and wonder at how the stars glimmered like lanternfish did, back in the deep sea, in the depths beneath her. If she could swim deep enough, would she circle back to the stars? It did not seem impossible, sometimes, that there would be light on the other side of every darkness.) Anandi feels the warm current that suspends her body. She feels her strength and agility triple, now that she is back in her element. Perhaps the horses were right, and as long as those like Amaroq and Anandi lived, the sea was only a terminus for them. The kelpies lock eyes and flash teeth, the oldest of dances. Anandi knows she should be afraid. She is afraid. But the fear is like blood in the water, each second diluting into the rest of what runs through her mind- intrigue, mostly, but also bare-toothed pride. (Pride was a quality her people tried for generations to breed out of themselves-- but their efforts had the opposite effect, and her family's pride only grew consolidated and impenetrable, like a small stone that sat just before the heart of every Minn kelpie.) She also knew how fear might be the death of her here, where to flee would be Wide-eyed and breathless with uncertain curiosity, she moves around the horned stranger like it's a game. Sometimes trees of kelp rise between them, carving him into bite-sized chunks of silver and blue and black, colors deep and rich like the fur of a seal. He was easier to look at then, for he was more familiar to her in bits and pieces instead of a whole, wild-eyed kelpie. (Was he one of the many clans that hunted her kind to near extinction, driving them to the twilight of the sea? He must be. He must be, and still she is not afraid.) The graceful, circular movement draws Anandi slowly closer to the man that looks like death. Her eyes drink him in, every sharp angle and smooth line, every color of his skin a different shade of blue-green in the filtered sunlight. He is a creature of beautiful efficiency, not very much unlike herself. Although, over the years her kind's form had modified to emphasize the beautiful. Her curious eyes and lovely lips, lined in inky black to draw the gaze in, and the sheer expressiveness of her face, which could paradoxically convey childlike innocence and sinful knowing at the same time. It was not by chance that she was born with such features. Such talents. It was evolution, and she was the newest, shiniest model in a line of killers to whom, in the end, one would willingly bare their neck for the feast. Finally her eyes return to his. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be underwater with another. How intimate it could be, to share a space without a single word. She found her nose was so much sharper here, in her element. She could smell a drop of blood a mile away. She could certainly smell the oily meat of the kelpie before her, the danger of him like nothing she's ever tasted on the water. (They didn't get many visitors, down below.) Her own scent? Nuanced as all hell-- it could most succinctly be described as a flower with razor-edged petals. Soon she drifts close enough to place her cheek alongside his horn and wonder how many things bled to death here, looking him in the eye. Surely, none of them ever looked at him like she does now. Anandi does not know for sure he won't end her right there and then, pierce her throat with a flick of the sword. (Can he hear her heart flutter with uncertainty? With terrible excitement?) She smiles, lazy and catlike. Like she knows something he does not-- maybe many things. Not even Anandi knows if she is bluffing anymore. And then she leans in to place a kiss on his cheek, just to see how he might react. Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill. @Amaroq <3 RE: Sink - Amaroq - 09-04-2019
RE: Sink - Anandi - 10-03-2019 Anandi was not well acquainted with loneliness. Even here, leagues away from family and friends and home, even here in a world so different that distance took on a whole new meaning, she did not feel lonely in the way she expected to. Life in Novus was colorful and beautiful and easy, and she was too busy exploring it to feel homesick. But how many times, with her many new land friends, did she wish they could join her beneath the waves? Sometimes the only thing in the world she wanted was to dance once again with someone to the gentle pulse of the sea. The light is blue-green and piercing. It glimmers, illusive, and dances across the skins of the two water horses. One delicate, long, lovely-- her very bones suggestive of the snap they would make as they broke. The other sharp, sleek, also, in his way, lovely-- in the way a wolf is lovely, even with its muzzle red with blood. Anandi never learned how to run. She learned how to hunt, how to stalk and chase, even how to be submissive-- but only when to do so was opportune. So when he lunges for her, she does not even have the instinct to flee. He's upon her too easily and a keening wail, indignant, rises from Anandi with a flurry of bubbles. She bares her teeth, angry, and her eyes scream the world you know is changing fast, even as her heart trembles with fear. This would be such a stupid way to die, she was so stupid for playing this game with him, and yet-- She knows he won't bite. She knows. Because she was made for bigger and better things than dying on the whim of some shallow-water dog. Because her future is still ahead of her, clear and starlit and big, bigger than this stupid, primitive beast could even imagine. Because she really does believe that the world he knows is changing fast, she's here now, and she's going to change everything. But not if he bites down. And he doesn't bite. She stares daggers into him, but remains docile in his grip until he lets go. It would be a damn lie to say he wasn't beautiful. She takes a long moment just to watch him rise into the sun, the current playing with his silver mane and the light wrapping eagerly around his body. A mystery of scars carved into his thick flesh. Every inch of him sings of danger, of death. Every inch of her responds. She should leave. This asshole doesn't deserve her company. But despite her better judgement she follows, forward and up, up and into the too-bright sunlight. Caught, like a pathetic fish on a line, and pretending she chose to bite into the hook that hid beneath the lure. She breaks the surface with a very quiet splash. Gives him a long look with kohl-rimmed eyes. Anandi, for perhaps the first time in her life, doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know how to act, who to be, before this man. She still feels his teeth on her neck, and his horn pressed so softly to her cheek. "Hi," she says finally, voice licorice and salt and honey. She licks the sea water from her lips. "Who are you?" Like they don't already know each other in a manner more intimate than words could ever be. Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill. @Amaroq <3 RE: Sink - Amaroq - 10-13-2019
RE: Sink - Anandi - 10-27-2019 A-ma-roq His name is a brutal kind of delicacy. Each syllable snaps like a broken bone, between them marrow rising dense and delicious. It suits him, although she wonders if this was not a quality of the name but the man. He has a certain gravity to him that makes the world lean in and listen. Any name would curl up happily in his lap, submit itself to be his and his completely. She’s jealous. “I’m Anandi.” Her name is a promise, or a herald. The rustle of tall grass as the snake winds through, its forked tongue tasting the air- a-nan-di- something from the deep. Something from the dark. She is just the first. Soon there will be many, and this Amaroq will curse the day he set his teeth on her pale, lovely neck. “You’re beautiful,” she says, because it was true, even if she might hate him. Maybe she liked the way he made her blood race in a way that was different from that of a huntress. Maybe she even loved, just a little bit, the way he made her feel taught as a bow, yearning for release. It was a beautiful thing, when the arrow so loved its target. “Are you the one who turned the commander?” Anandi tilts her head, docile. The sunlight reflects off the water, glittering on her features like a strange and dangerous starscape. She licks her teeth to keep from asking what did it feel like, what did it taste like. what kind of sound did she make? Did she … like it? But the questions run through her eyes, hungry and wanting. Curious, so very curious. And so very unafraid. She considers his proposal, uncertain. It would be quite unbecoming to follow this stranger anywhere. Not that anyone of interest was watching. It was also a matter of posterity, self preservation. She did not trust him. But she also did not fear him. It was part arrogance, part stupidity, part nature. Part loneliness. Finally she nods, the gesture tiny and unpleased, although she cannot hide the excited curl at the edge of her lips. The girl so loved surprises. She dips below the surface, and peers at him expectantly through the halo of his long mane. Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill. @Amaroq <3 RE: Sink - Amaroq - 10-30-2019
|