THE SHROUDS LEAN INTO THE SITE OF IMPACT - breaking light into diagonals and planes. one might fail to notice a hull amid the frozen waves.
The water is wrong here.
Locust doesn’t need to step into it to know that it is wrong, because fearful or not, she has a sailor’s eye - wrong, wrong, wrong in a way that makes her stomach curl and her eyes ache enough to make her head pound. There is something about it that is hard to look at directly, and it is not just the bright sheen of sunlight against the glossy blue, which seems to her to have no depth, like it has been painted on; something is wrong, and it is like a haze, covering the sea so that passer-by cannot see what lies beneath. (Not sand, she thinks, grimly, and certainly not water. It is a thin veneer, a shroud…)
She stays away from the surf, her hooves dug into the pale (pleasing, on the approach, but sickly on arrival) sand. Statuesque – metallic. Her coat catches like something made of silver in the afternoon sun, and, despite the sweat dripping dark trails down her sides and face, she does not move, just trains her squinted gaze on the water, as though she can hope to discern what lies beneath the idea of water. The heat is dizzying, out in the sun, with barely a breeze to interrupt it, but she is accustomed to it, from days on days at sea; but she is unnerved, and she can’t shake the feeling that she should run before the island can reveal itself for what it is, whatever it is. The bridge was too long. (She knows the distance between the island and the mainland. It was too long, and you should be able to see the opposite shore from the edge of it.) Even the water feels like an illusion, though she knows it extends back to the shore and near-endlessly in the other direction.
Her mouth is dry. The scent of salt water is mingled with something subtle, beneath it – like some cold undercurrent. Rotten fish, she thinks, it smells like rotten fish. But the scent is too subtle, like she is downwind and hundreds of feet away, and rotten fish are always pungent, if you are close enough to smell them. There is nothing on the pristine shoreline, and there are no dead things bobbing in the waves; she turns, momentarily, towards the woods, and the sharp-toothed birds that inhabit the branches, searching for a glint of silver in their fangs. After a moment, she looks back, her brow furrowed, towards the tide, which creeps closer with each passing moment. (She has not been here long enough to know if it swallows the shore entirely at its height, but it seems to be encroaching at dangerous speeds.) The birds wouldn’t be eating rotting fish anyways – there were plenty of living things to hunt in the waves and in the brush, and they didn’t have the look of scavengers about them.
A few others pass by her, laughing and chatting easily, side by side. (They look like young lovers, Locust thinks, with the most distant twinge of something akin to bitterness. (She, of course, tells herself that it is because she is no longer particularly young.) A smiling girl, with her long curls of red hair, and the speckled man that she is nudging, nearly ghosting her lips against the curve of his jaw; she is wearing those dark, oil-spill flowers in her hair.) There are a few other figures, spread out along the coast. The old man with a necklace of teeth – shark teeth? – who seems to be scouring the shoreline for more. A little girl with wings and a pair of curling horns that is nosing at a crab, which keeps snapping at her in turn. (She giggles. Locust wonders where her mother is; a girl so young should not be on her own.) A melancholic bay woman, with wild tangles of hair that extend to drag the ground, who stands like a wooden statue in the surf, staring out in the distance – towards the nonexistent shoreline of the Terminus, which cannot even be seen as a strip banding the horizon. A man with too many teeth and a pair of antlers, staring at the birds with a predatory gleam in his grey-glass eyes. Though they must be close, for her to make out so many details, she feels like she is a thousand miles away from them, and there is a strange buzzing between her ears, like a swarm of insects has taken root inside of her skull.
She looks back at the water, and she sucks in a gasp. For a moment, the ocean is not blue – it is the dark red-violet of wine, and the sand is not white but grey and full of jagged black rocks, like obsidian spines. Dead fish float belly-up in the water, along with beached jellyfish, bleached blood-red by the water, and sharks, and an octopus, and, in the distance, she thinks she sees a whale…and there are terrible things clawing at the shore, trying to pull themselves out of the water. With beaks. And – too many tentacles to count. Sharp claws. A thing with massive, jagged fins cuts through the deep water, and the fin seems impossibly large to her, even from a distance. Too big to imagine the size of the creature that possesses it. The sky, too, feels angry and red, and the sun is lurid and dark, the clouds an angry dash of orange that hang heavy and full on the horizon, cracked open by violent streaks of lightning…
But she blinks, and the image is gone, leaving her with nothing but the shudder of her spine and the pungent, nauseating scent of rot.
She tries to find humor in it, because she isn’t so sure that she didn’t just witness the end of the world, hiding somewhere beneath the waves. A trick of the light, maybe, or another strange thing about this island, which is already more than strange enough.
Or maybe she just drank too much last night.
@open! || lowkey inspired by The Time Machine tbh|| "sea of ice," callie siskel [title is from "like a scratchy record," alice notley] "Speech!" ||
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
Sweat gleams upon her skin. Never has she been so hot, never so terribly uncomfortable. The sand shifts beneath her feet as she wades down to the water’s edge. Beneath the sun it shines sleek and slick as silk. It moves like cloth rippling in the breeze – it does not move as the sea should. Slowly Florentine peers down into the waters, to see if her reflection gleams back. It does, strangely so. Were she any other creature, her blood would sing to run, her limbs grow tense with anxiety. But Florentine was forged of strange magic, she grew up in a world stranger than Novus and this, oh this sang of home.
Slowly she moves, straining to view herself from different angles. She strains to see her abdomen, that pregnant swell that just grew and grew and grew. It still grows… Gosh you are big! Baby just wants extra padding! Tidbits of passing comments drift through her mind. She is big, no, she is huge. How much space did a child need – really? And when would it deem it had baked enough?
With a huff the gilded girl draws back from the strange water, leaving her reflection behind. She moves, the swell of her stomach rocking gently. Always fae, always graceful, Florentine now moves slowly, disjointedly. Her wings fold against her sides, making her stomach seem even larger. There is no smile upon her lips, no delight for this strange island and the magic that would normally fill her with such joy. No, she is restless, uncomfortable and ready to stop being pregnant.
A girl, silver- sleek, steps back from the water’s edge. Something dark twists and swirls behind her eyes, it slips like poison into her nerves and the girl moves, dogged, stalked, electric. Aware of the changing waters, at home with such a fickle land but, above all, fed up with being pregnant, Florentine drifts, no, waddles towards the shying girl. The dusk girl draws level with her, casting an amethyst eye enviously over her slim, cool, figure. A hot, flustered huff escapes the girl’s gilded lips, “Any tips for how to get a baby out?”
STACKED LIKE STONES, they taper to a pinnacle, simulate a mast. Friedrich's painting, a ship en route to the Arctic, is en route still-
Locust is a pirate.
She is more than familiar with the usual yarns – of strange things in the water, or strange sights that might greet your weary eyes when you pass through certain stretches of sea, bizarre…triangles and currents where ships disappear. This does not feel like those, because the sea is a god of its own, mindless and hungry, and this is not the doing of the sea. She heard stories, while she was away, of the strange gods of Novus, how they stepped down from their spots on high and threatened their mortals, or tested them, or punished them. She doesn’t really know. Religion has always seemed like a pretty tool to her, and she’s never much cared for it, beyond what meaning can be found in the tides and the changing waves – that is to say, no meaning at all. Just being.
But, unless the various accounts she’d heard from travelers were all the result of some mass hallucination or religious awakening, Novus’s gods were very much real, and, unlike the last time she was here, they were very much alive and awake. And this island was the creation of the strongest among them, the father god, the time god…
(Just her goddamned luck. She’d been hoping for – something. Treasure, or a relic that could alter the past, or…maybe, now that god was here, and god was somewhere nearby, some kind of meaning, because that was what gods were supposed to give. Instead, she’d just found cursed trees and ugly premonitions, but, then again, she didn’t believe. She’d given her soul to the tides; why would this land’s time god take any mercy on her?)
When the golden woman appears, and subsequently approaches, Locust cannot stop her eyes from widening momentarily. She’s taller than Locust, though not by much, and winged – and her coat is a brilliant golden hue that gleams like precious metal in the sunlight, though it is disturbed and darken by long, painful trails of sweat. She looks exhausted and awkward, hooves slipping in the sand as she supports a weight that she would not normally carry, and Locust eyes the swell of her belly (She must be near time to give birth, so why is she here? crosses her mind.), and then the gleaming amethyst chips of her eyes, the violet flowers in her hair. She’s a pretty thing, and wild – but bound to the ground, while so heavy with foal.
She approaches her, for some reason that the silver cannot discern (but mothers were often outgoing), and, with a huff, says, “Any tips for how to get a baby out?”
A faint, almost-fond chuckle that leaves a bitter aftertaste in her throat forces its way out of Locust’s mouth. She remembers this part, and how she’d loathed it; Maribelle was a small child, with a similar stature to hers, but her lean, dancer’s frame had not adhered well to pregnancy, in the later months. “In my experience, they come when they want, pesky things. No consideration for their mothers.” There is a softness in her tone that cements her jest. (She loves children, though she is afraid of them more than anything nowadays.) “We should get you out of the heat – how far along are you?” Away from the sea, too, she thinks, but she does not say it; if she has not noticed the strange texture of the water, Locust doesn’t want to risk startling her by drawing attention to it. With that, she turns towards the treeline, her strides slow and short so that the other woman can keep pace.
@Florentine|| sudden inspiration? anyways, an unusually tender Locust for ya || "sea of ice," callie siskel [title is from "like a scratchy record," alice notley] "Speech!" ||
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
The sun was fire along her spine. Coolness came in waves that rippled along her back. Florentine cast her eyes at the ebony sea, black like ink, so very, utterly, strange. She would have dared to set a foot in it, she might have dared swim if the waters allowed her. Yet it was no longer just her – could she forgive herself if the water was less welcoming and her child paid the price for her recklessness? A sigh slips, whimsically past her lips and she turns her gaze, bright with longing, from the water’s edge.
Beneath the bow of her gilded lashes Florentine watches as the stranger laughs. How much like Seraphina does this girl look? Except for odd difference in appearance and her laughter – oh when did Flora last see that other once-queen laugh? Had she ever in Florentine’s presence?
A breath slips past her lips and it is so much like a huff, “no consideration at all.” She agrees with a wry smile, though her skin is dark and gold runs in rivulets down her sides. Sweat beads like diamonds around her eyes and she glitters, darkly beside the water, sunshine in the darkest of night.
“In your experience…” The Dusk girl muses as the stranger’s lips drop their smile, “do you have children then? If so, give me all your tips, this –“ And her wings flare at her sides as she indicates to the generous swell of her belly, “-was only supposed to be a fond farewell to my mate. So I am a little unprepared.” She ran a kingdom at the age of three and yet, the idea of raising a child – giving it manners, teaching it life lessons, keeping it alive, was far more terrifying. “I can barely keep myself alive.” Flora muses softly, her eyes darkened by the past’s looming shadow. If her child was to be anything like her, then keeping it alive was truly the greatest challenge. The laughter comes, soft, gentle, playful. For even in death Flora could laugh.
Her wings rub, soothingly at her belly and she nods lightly as the stranger leads her on toward the shade. Slowly she moves behind the other girl’s lead, her stomach swaying, pendulously with each step. “Ah, that would be nice,” Flora says as the dark of the treeline beckons them forwards, reaching with shadow fingers to grasp coolly at the gold of her torso.
How far along are you? “All at once terrifyingly close and yet not close enough.” She murmurs in answer, another wry smile slipping across the gilt of her lips as laughter rings like a bell. “A day or so, I think? The baby feels ready. I am Florentine, by the way. What is your name?” And Flora does not see the way shadows team within the sea. She does not let her eyes linger where the water moves like silk and suede and nothing at all like oceans should.
STACKED LIKE STONES, they taper to a pinnacle, simulate a mast. Friedrich's painting, a ship en route to the Arctic, is en route still-
The breeze drifts through her white coils of mane, but, cool as it is, it is hardly a balm to the suffocating heat. She occasionally glances past the golden girl, back towards the water, as though she is worried that something will spring from it to antagonize them – but it remains calm, despite her suspicion.
She asks her if she has children, and Locust is quiet for a moment, her teal stare glazing over. “I did,” she admits, her voice softening. She wonders if she should explain any further, if her silence or the truth will be more worrying – finally, she opts for the truth. “But my daughter died…several years ago. Her name was Maribelle.” For the golden girl’s sake, Locust does not mention the gory specifics; what new mother would want to hear of a child devoured by kelpies, her mother helpless but to watch? She is not sure if it would be better or worse if she could have done anything to stop it. The golden girl mentions that her pregnancy was supposed to be nothing more than a farewell to her mate, and, so, Locust tilts her head and asks, “Are you raising your child alone, then?”
She, of course, sees no issue with that – Maribelle’s father had been no mate of hers, but she hardly raised the girl on her own. Child-rearing is difficult, and even more difficult when one was alone. “I was unprepared for motherhood, too, when I had my daughter. I’d never intended to….I barely knew her father. Fortunately, I had a good family, who helped me care for her.” She doesn’t mention that they, too, are dead; there is no need to impress her troubles on a perfect stranger, much less one so near childbirth. (She does not even like to think about it.) There is no reason, she thinks, to put her under unnecessary stress. Tips, then – she asks for tips. She nearly tells her that she is hardly a good role model, but refrains. “Don’t expect to sleep much for the first little while. Birth is painful, but, unless you experience complications, it is likely less painful than you’ve been told – you’re built for it, after all. The first few days afterword are terrible, though.” But maybe that was just her. Maribelle’s pregnancy was hardly easy. “Do you have any questions in particular? I can’t guarantee that I’m the best person to ask, but I can try to tell you whatever you want to know.”
The girl admits that she struggles to keep herself alive, then, and Locust exhales softly, sudden tension running the length of her spine.
A wistful smile that is not a smile creeps across her velveteen lips, and, when she speaks, there is a quiet, raw bitterness to her voice. “I think the hardest thing to accept,” she admits, “is that you can’t always protect them. I never feared for my own life like my daughter’s – and I am very used to being in dangerous situations.” She was a pirate, after all.
She says that she is a day or two away from birthing, and Locust turns to stare at her, wide-eyed and blinking. “Why are you on the island, if you are so close to giving birth?” Her brow creases in concern, and confusion – for Locust is not such a strange, otherworldly creature as Florentine, and, though the dangers and secrets of the island sing to her like a siren’s wail, she cannot fathom the idea of exploring it while pregnant. (Then again, her pregnancy was also a miserable experience; she spent a considerable amount of it sick.) “It seems a dangerous place to have a child.” It seems a dangerous place to be at all, she means, and she tries not to think of the sea that is not-a-sea and the way that she still smells the afterthought of rotting fish the moment she allows her mind to slip to the tides.
It occurs to her, then, that she gave her name – and asked hers in turn. “Florentine – a pleasure to meet you. Call me Locust. Where are you from?” She doesn’t think that she’s seen her around Denocte, though they docked in the bay less than a week ago.
@Florentine|| <3 || "sea of ice," callie siskel [title is from "like a scratchy record," alice notley] "Speech!" ||
