Marisol may have released her, but she is still a caged storm. She never should have been unleashed upon the shores of Terrastella, climbing back into the shadows of the cliff like some crypt keeper. Regardless of her own health, her skinny sides still showing the prison and stone's neglect to her health, a paleness and sickness from years underground without tasting light plain on her brow, on her delicate-boned neck that does not shine as it should. A paler version of the magpie-woman she once was, the girl that helped rule over the Halcyon and enforce peace throughout Dusk despite its reputation left in shambles, she still rises like the tides that she so despises.

When she was young, it was said that her father was taken by the sea, shreds of his skin found washed up on the beaches, strewn along the innards of the swamps.

Kelpies.

Dalmatia knew their hunger made them into raging beasts, tending to their more basic natures than those within the city did. Her father had left one morning on a mission with his unit... None returned.

That day, she'd learned two things. One, her father would never return. Two, kelpies were unredeemable monsters.

Her father had not taught her to despise other creatures, not those stuck on land nor in the water, not strange sand vipers and other mixes. He'd raised her well, he treated others well... And she'd been left to wonder, as a young thing, why those creatures had taken one of the most honorable men she'd ever known?

Disgust is an ember in her chest, easily ignited with gasoline and scales into a fire that burns hotter and hotter. Today, she goes to the shore where what was found of her father, what was burned of him later, had been scattered off the edges so that he might find peace in the calm of the waves and the storms of the skies.

Today, she sees something wash ashore and quickly begin to walk. Its ribs heave, its eyes are bright, its nerves are easy to see like a rabbit before it dies at the hands of some bird of prey. There is a frown, a knotted brow, a knotted chest, and pure hostility as she darts from behind her own shadowed alcove. This thing does not smell of dusk, not that Terrastella is hers to protect anymore.

"Halt, who goes there?" She growls out, marching forward as a conqueror, a warrior of justice, a woman with a chip on her shoulder and nothing nice to say.


Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.

@Sereia | ahhh so excited for this ! thank you so much for your patience and love ;u;

Salt stings her nose, but she has long since become accustomed to its acrid scent washing away the world from her time in the prison, so close to the sky and even closer to the sea. It is the same scent that now clings to the girl of gold and blue before her, skittering away as some crab upon the beach, fear touching large eyes. Dalmatia knows that she should be afraid. Even as a walking skeleton, she is a fearsome, awful thing to behold. Every curve of her, dilapidated as an old house forgotten for years, still screams of raw power, of years spent hunting and diving from the sky until she is a grey mess upon the clouds and nothing more than a wraith in the sky.

Before, Dalmatia was one of the Halcyon's most promising and skilled cadets. She was called a wraith many a time in their unit, quiet as a ghost and twice as deadly. She was a colorless death from the heavens themselves, or perhaps she'd been an angel, a honed blade of the goddess herself to slice through those who would turn their faces away from Vespera. Even Vespera abandoned her in that damned cell.

Perhaps it is Dalmatia who has now forsaken the gods.

That sin is not upon her brow, it does not roll droplets of sweat over her sea-slicked skin. Only the sun does that as he shines upon her mercilessly, quickly drying the kelpie. Wind stirs the shells in Sereia's hair and Dalmatia's sage green gaze shoots to them, assessing and dismissing them as a threat. Strange, though. They are strange decorations to be worn in the hair. Vespera wears know shells upon her. The people of Terrastella do not always decorate themselves in such a way either.

Nostrils flare as eyes narrow. "Visiting from the sea?" she huffs out, looking to the waves for an army more of shark-toothed women ready to devour her city....

But Terrastella is not her city. It is the home that forgot her. It is the place that threw her away. She is nothing more than trash to them and it is revolting all the same.


Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.

@Sereia | exactly one decade later...