To know the sea was to know her heart, and to watch it lap at her fetlocks was to watch blood unfurl from a wound.
Aehra smiled at her reflection as the tide cast upward, a cascading sheet of white froth and blue wave that longed to consume her. And so, too, did she ache to be consumed; if only her little lungs would open up wide to inhale that ethereal bloom. Then, maybe, might she be pulled down among the coral and the grit, to dance with the electrified tendrils of her off-white hair as the sea unspooled her simple threads. She had next to nothing to ask of the world, to tip her young face heavenward and plea to her mothers’ gods, but oh, did she have so much to ask of the sea.
A quiet nicker left the plush grey of her lips as the water slapped harshly at her knees, colliding with the knobby legs of a still ungainly filly, and she splashed the surface with a caerulean hoof in playful answer.
This land was so new—so terrifying! Her childhood had been thick with opportunity for adventure, but never without the guiding hand of a beloved adult. Otherwise, she undoubtedly would have gone careening wildly into trouble well before now. But she had never been so perfectly alone before, with only a brushing promise echoing through her ears, and the tender kiss of her family’s love below the newly budded horn at her brow.
She had parted with Aelin’s blessing, needing nothing more from the Fair than her undying approval, and a profound affection that the silver mare had begged of her daughter to pass on to her other mother. And oh, Aehra would without question. She was bursting with the anticipation to be reunited with Jahra, and to share in this journey as she ought to have agreed to from the start. What a silly fool she was, to not have gathered her few things and gone bounding after her dam’s footsteps—just as she had since she was but a teetering, cumbersome girl.
Still, she had begun this adventure with certainty in the extravagant flourish of her footsteps, but as she inevitably came to collide with the beloved ocean once more, she was bemused to find answers did not lay in its violent surface. Only ripples, as mysterious and lovely as she longed to be, gazed upon her glittering brow.
The sunlight reflected her face, and the mirrored image of her youthful features were lovelier than she could ever hope to be.
Yes, she thought—the sea was her most complimentary advocate, always seeing her better than she might ever see herself. A roll of foam wiped her image away, and she barely caught the reflective flash of her glistening smile as she withdrew from the lapping tide.
She paused as she turned away, and whether it was habit or loneliness, she threw a few choice words over her shoulder.
"Vidisti eam?" There was a hearty pause through which the sea rolled and the wind howled. Aehra only sighed.
"Bene," she groaned. "Quid ego hic si facitis ea... placere."
Please. Oh, please.
She understood, for once, why her mother had always gone stumbling after her when she wandered too far. It was an ironic sort of karma.
It is her beacon and her guidepost, calling out with its crashing waves and sea salt breeze. She lives to stand before its prowess, to remind herself that she is but a small, fickle thing beside the mysterious, briny deep. There is never a time that she does not crave it ─ never, except in the presence of her daughter. Perhaps it is because her daughter is the Sea, borne of the deep and all the magic within it.
It's this insatiable yearning that keeps her near the Terminus Sea even after parting ways with the kelpie woman and her star-crossed companion. Adventure in this new world awaits (it is what she has come for, after all) but the daughter of Cosmos cannot help the urge to linger here, just a bit longer beside the relentless tide and bustling squall, to feel closer to Aehra despite the incredible expanse that has bloomed between them.
When finally the finned woman finds it in herself to turn away from the sea, it's with a promise to herself that she will return soon, to this very spot, where she will again imagine Aehra on the distant shore with her budding horn and her kind smile and that glistening, mischievous air about her.
And then she will feel whole again.
Into the cool, moist sand her lavender hooves sink until the shore gives way to rocky outcroppings. She bounds across the grey shale, her salted mane whipping against the cool wind with each daring leap. Stretched thin with each stride and with the extension of her lean neck, her fins show translucent and then turn muddy again as her stride collects.
Jahra nearly bounds away from the rocks and into the emerald forest but the wind catches her attention again ─
A familiar scent.
But she knows, oh, she certainly knows, that it can only be her mind playing tricks on her. And yet ─ what is the harm, if she were to go check?
Just to put her mind at ease, she tells herself.
But there she is ─ Aehra, in all of her still-a-bit-gangly, long-eared, scarred beauty. She speaks to the sea over her shoulder in a voice that has always been music to Jahra's ears. A wide grin breaks across the woman's face as she comes to a stop and waits for her daughter to notice her.
“Non scire matris tuae es tu hic?”
She laughs gleefully and closes the distance between herself and Aehra swiftly. She wraps her neck around the Seaborne and breathes in her familiar scent wrapped in salt from the sea. Exultant tears threaten to drip from sapphire eyes as she pulls herself back far enough to make eye contact with her daughter. “Et nesciunt beatam me ad te.”
She peeks around the nearby area, finding nothing but ocean and wilderness. “Quid existis abesse? Iter para tutum fuit? Nonne quis venit ad vos es certus ut factum est in una?” Her questions spill out, rapid fire, as relief and glee and worry all being to intertwine.
@Aehra the flowers chorused, "bloom now ─ bloom free" ─rise, again
How long she wanted for the ocean’s reply was a curse, her pupils blown wide as she plead with Cosmos for an answer. But the water continued to lap at the shale upon the shore, its spray light and frolicsome against the pale tufts of her fetlocks. It was rare that she grew frustrated with the litheness of the sea, but its careless liberty inspired a quick bout of envy within the Seaborne.
What must it be like, she thought. To not have a care in the world?
Perhaps that was what it was to be a girl again, disencumbered by the strange realities of adulthood. The line between when she had come to discern a filly’s dreams from the perturbing truth of life was a blurred one, and she had yet to understand when she’d become fully disillusioned.
And now here she stood at the lip of the world, pretending to pour through such pretentious methods of thought that were so desperately beyond her understanding! Better questions for her mother, she was sure, when at last she found—
The plush of her lips parted in a gasp, and the sand around her danced upward as she reared back onto her haunches, the flail of her forelimbs an inelegant display of excitement as she locked eyes with the familiar lavender of a beloved face. Her laughter was shrill and childish as she fell to all fours, her silver forelock a dizzying, bouncing array of starlight that shattered around her glacial features. She whinnied, gleeful, as she pranced nearer to her mother.
“Mama!” Aehra laughed, a childish exuberance swallowing her woeful thoughts, and her head bowed low as she found refuge in the larger mare’s embrace.
(Each night she prayed that she might never stretch too tall; that the height of her sloping withers might never surmount the sanctuary of her mother’s hold. She was safe, for now, with her caerulean eyes still tipped back an inch to gaze at her dam.)
But oh, she counted a thousand blessings and swore upon her lucky stars. It was no small fortune that she had found her mother so quickly, and despite her petulance over the sea's observing silence, she understood it now as she always had. It was purposeful no matter its enigma, and despite the violence with which its tide consumed the shore, it always possessed a facet of impending truth.
Withdrawing from Jahra's embrace was a sluggish task, one that she approached with heavy reluctance. It hardly seemed so long ago that she had watched her leave, but the time that had passed since then had been woefully void of a fortitude she had known her whole life.
Adventure would always have its appeal—but home would always be her nose buried in spools of lavender hair.
"Atque inibi verba mater adiuvisti me," Aehra explained, and her excitement manifested in a playful brush of her shoulder against her mother's. No matter the questions the Scholar peppered her with, she was happy to rope the older mare into her antics, drawing her towards a stroll across the beach with a playful flair of her tail. Her hooves sank against the supple sand, and she coveted the precious relics of such wondrous nostalgia.
This. This was where she was meant to be, held between the cusp of the sea and her dam.
The richly patrician nature of her accent unfurled with the words of her mothers' native language, adapting easily to the ambiance of the sloshing water.
Home. Home. Home, her heart thudded; her heart sang.
"Et cupiebat venire, nisi ego ei non licet esse mihi. Volui te invenio, quod inepta esset ad me, et dimittam te, solum in primo loco." Aehra's eyes sparkled as she imbued her words with an air of playful scolding.
The scent of Aehra's mane ─ sea salt, remnants of Edana, tendrils of Aelin's familiar perfume ─ draws warm peace into Jahra's chest. She lingers in the embrace, wondering, as mother's do, just how the time had gotten away from them so quickly. She had merely blinked her inquisitive sapphire eyes and Aehra had grown from the sea and sand ─ such a wobbly creature she had been that day, upon the shores of Edana and in the company of Campion.
It's a young woman who lingers beneath the curve of her chin now. They both hope for the same thing, unknowingly ─ that Aehra will never outgrow her birth mother. That she will always be able to find peace against Jahra's beating heart. That she will not forget her mother's heart beats only for her, this wonderful living magic woman.
Jahra laughs, hesitant to sever their embrace but happy to follow her daughter down the curve of the beach. “Nonne multo ad persuadendum illo sumas?” she asks with a contented grin, and a knowing light in her gaze ─ Jahra's affection for Aehra is challenged only by Aelin's. She would have had a difficult time letting the pegasi girl leave the nest.
Jahra's bright eyes follow Aehra and her lively steps across moistened umber sand beneath her hooves. Jahra keeps in-time with her movements, matching her gait whenever she may change it and smiling warmly with hardly a care in the world. She is here to find adventure, and accompanying her only child across uncharted loam feels just like the adventure she needs.
A snort, playful in its exertion, follows Aehra's false scolding. She pulls her nose to her chest in mock affront and shakes her head to rid her eyes of vibrant purple tendrils. The display is followed quickly by a warm hum and a gentle nudge upon Aehra's poll (no longer donned with the fuzzy mane of a child, but with the ethereal gossamer of a woman) when she is able to catch up to her daughter. “Vacant enim vobis quod non nefas,” she murmurs the words with love and gives a gentle tug on Aehra's mane before lengthening her own stride into a lope across the sand.
“Dic mihi, amica mea, vos estis, quia de exploratione? Et invenimus optimum latebras suas coram mater advenit?” She calls the inquiry over her blue-grey shoulder, an easy smile across her lips. She knows with near certainty that Aelin will not be far behind Aehra; perhaps, even, that will mean that Lumaris and Avallac'h and Campion will elect to join her, too. The prospect of their entire family arriving makes her feel giddy, and Jahra tosses her tined head skyward with a resounding neigh.
@Aehra the flowers chorused, "bloom now ─ bloom free" ─rise, again
