At once she had felt different. 


She sank a girl and rose a god - or so it seemed. She thinks how Asterion had once watched her, as if she were a deity. How would he look at her now? 


She rises from the sea and it tumbles from her ebony skin. Salt froths across her shoulders and spine. It knows who she once was and has baptised her into something new. Her lashes gleam as if with tears but Leto cannot remember the last time she wept. It is unlikely she will again.


Even with the sky aching above her in violent hues of reds and purples, Leto has only eyes for the girl who changed her. There is a silent, feline regard and slowly she begins the stalk up, up the beach. Bones click in her hair and ribbons of seaweed hang between bells. 


Her tail drags through the sand, gathering dirt and golden grains. She moves like a broken bride of the washed up waves. Leto holds Anandi in her gaze and remembers what it was to be cradled between her jaws as they sank through the blood stained sea.


They move toward one another, two magnets drawn by violence and belonging. Her eyes blaze with the myriad lights of a spinning galaxy. The stars they bear are numerous as dust and they burn, wicked white. Slowly her eyelids close as Anandi presses near and kissing below the angle of Leto’s jaw Their bodies are yin and yang as Leto twists as if they embrace.


I have missed you. Anandi’s words breath, casual and soft, in the space between them. The kelpie she created says nothing, but tilts her head with its crown of bells and shells. Ribbons of seaweed sway like serpents charmed by the ocean. 


Leto inhales of the scent of her creator and the salty air. The wind howls as it cuts itself upon the bare crags of the cliffs. It is so barren here, so feral and strange. The beach welcomes the kelpies as if it remembers the day of Leto’s rebirth. 


Anandi’s heart beats in her breast, Leto feels the thrum of her veins and reaches to slowly, keenly ghost her lips along the hidden map of arteries and veins that run beneath her creator’s pallid skin. They throb with life and, feline, Leto’s maw parts. Her teeth gleam, hungry to taste, hungry to-


Anandi’s nip is sharp, possessive. Her kelpie progeny reels away with a squeal that pierces the tranquility of the beach. Her nape twists, arched and regal, yet her gaze is savage with hunger. Slowly she sighs, breathing, swallowing down hunger, desire and the restlessness of the sea.



“Watching you.” Leto says with no ounce of gloating, no malicious delight. She had lingered in the waves (where evening stained the sea as inky black as her skin) and watched Anandi wait. “How long were you going to wait?” The kelpie murmurs in a seaspray hiss. “Did I make you wait too long or not long enough?” She asks, revealing nothing of the desire that finally brought her up the beach as Anandi lay in wait, again. Hunger prowls in her stomach, ravenous. It roars in her veins and Leto trembles as if the gathering wind was able to chill her to the bone.


“Don’t bite me.” She complains in a purr. “I came, did I not?”

@Anandi <3| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make