When Anandi’s curiosity of the strange outer island was sated (she explicitly chose not to be interested in the relic everyone spoke of. A treasure hunt just seemed so… sophomoric) she made her way to the mainland. She was eager to explore further, to learn more, to fit together the pieces of this place so that it would begin to make more sense. Once she got her bearings, the real work would begin: finding a suitable husband for her sister.
Of course, she had learned the basics of this land before she left home. Her clan was well educated and well informed, and proud of it. They sent scouts to keep track of current events on sea and the surface. It was a matter of self preservation as well as plain curiosity– her people loved to gossip. Scouting was hard and dangerous work (Mínn kelpie meat was considered a delicacy in the shallow seas) but if Anandi was not royalty, it would certainly be her first pick of jobs. Instead she had a much more complicated responsibility. Only the most discerning of her clan was trusted to select a land horse to turn. It was not a thing that could be done willy-nilly on a whim– and oh, there would be many whims in the journey ahead. Turning was an unpleasant process, and of the turner it required a certain ingrained grace that only a princess would have. Not only that, the man she turned would be her future king and the keystone to the survival of her kind.
It was no small task, so she took her time with it. She was not inherently patient but she was cautious, very cautious. It took many days of surveying the coastline, occasionally asking for directions and waypoints, before she found herself near where the Dusk court was supposed to be. As she draws closer to land she spots a woman with wings on the cliffside. Anandi can see the way her feathers shift in the wind and she wonders what they would feel like in her mouth, what they would taste like, what kind of crunching sound would they make when she clamped her teeth down.
How enticing.
She lifts her head above the water and smiles sweetly at the stranger. “Hello! Do they call you sky horse?” she calls up the cliff, jade-green eyes sharp with curiosity. They called her water horse, usually with a tone of awe, fear, and superiority. Something about that name got beneath her smooth-slippery skin. It rankled her, sometimes, to be treated without the respect she had become accustomed to. The respect she deserved.
“You’re very beautiful,” she adds with a catlike smile and the flutter of lashes. “Dusk court is close to here, isn’t it? I would so very much like to see it for myself some day,” she sighs longingly and averts her gaze shyly, in a way that suggests if only there were someone kind enough to show me…
Samaira doesn’t see the girl below at first, surveying the coastline. She is resting upon the edge of the cliff like a bird, wings slightly open to catch the sun, front legs dangling over the side. Her eyes are partially closed, enjoying the peace and the spring-day weather. Alaunus is pressed against her side, his legs tucked beneath him; she can feel his feathers brushing against her skin every time the breeze blows.
She doesn’t see the girl below until she lifts her head above the water and speaks. The pegasus’ eyes pop open and seek out the source of the voice. What she sees is both a wonder and a familiarity. An equine of the sea, but this one is much different from the first one she had met. How many of them, she wonders, exist out there? Samaira wonders if this one, too, wishes to be treated as an animal who does what it must to survive.
“No,” the earthen woman responds, looking down from her perch on the cliff at the woman in the water, “they call me Samaira.” She flares her wings out to balance herself and leans a little more forward so that she can hear the words spoken from so far below. “What do they call you?” Her voice is smoky and almost humming, as her dark hair splashes against the ground like a waterfall and her moon-bright eyes stare curiously down, down, down.
”You’re very beautiful.”
The compliment drifts almost lazily upward, coming to rest upon Samaira’s skin like a dandelion seed. Her cheeks warm and Alaunus stirs at her side, rising to his feet in order to observe. Samaira thinks he would be smiling at her discomfort if he were able. To be sure, she is not quite sure how to take the words, regardless of the meaning. “Your eyes are very striking,” she says in kind, for even from this distance she can see their paleness contrasting against deep kohl lines.
Her bonded seems more suspicious of the sea-girl than Samaira, his sky blue eyes watching her with some caution. ”If you show her to the Court you might want to keep your distance,” he remarks, and Samaira turns toward him with a raised brow. ”I am not a helpless bird, Alaunus. But if she is truly searching for the Court then I see no problem in guiding her.” She turns her silver gaze back to the water and the one within it, and can’t help but wonder what it must be like to swim.
She imagines it must be similar to flying.
“I would be happy to show you the way, it’s just a few miles west,” Samaira says at last, wearing a smile upon her lips.
“They call me–” Water horse. Freak. monster. Something sour billows behind those jade green eyes. It is one of those looks she has tried all her life to control, to bury. It only comes out when she’s feeling frayed at the edges– hungry or tired, angry or lonely– and she draws it back in with a small sigh. The rotten fruit of anger, violence, rage is washed away with a few blinks of those long, dark lashes. “Anandi.”
She drinks up the compliment about her eyes with a coy, shy smile, and then comes the invitation she had been hoping for.
"Oh, I would love that, Samaira!" Her voice is sea foam, a fleck of soft, perfect white rising from the deep blue. Her attention is suddenly captivated by the feathered friend that rises to his webbed feet. "Oh! Does your... friend have a name?" She inclines her head towards the bird, looks at him with winsome eyes that hide the surge of memory, hunger, death moving through her like a wave.
Anandi had eaten her first bird just a few days ago. To her surprise, it did not taste much like a fish at all (sky-fish, she called them, before she was taught the word bird), and it also did not taste much like the air-- although this may have simply been because she has not yet acquired a taste for creatures of earth and sky. A sea creature, she could taste (not even that, she could smell) what depths it inhabited, what it ate, what made it jackknife with fear. This bird she consumed, all she could tell was that it was meat, and it was feathers (she did not care for those), and it was blood blood blood singing its heart song, singing for her, begging for her lips, tongue, teeth.
And oh, how generous she was to it.
The gull died quickly, with a sound not unlike a sigh. It should be a relief-- a skill-- to grant a quick death. And it was those things, she knows it was, but still some shadow-slick part of her was... disappointed. And, worse than that, curious:
What other sounds can it make for me?
Her stomach clenches, releases, clenches again.
"I'll be right up," Anandi calls sweetly to her feathered companion. She tells herself "I am not a slave to my hunger" and rides a wave to the rocky shoreline. "I am not a puppet to my desire," in one motion she rises from the sand on four legs. She sets her sights on the jagged, crumbling path up the cliffside, and distracts herself from the hunger with the climb.
The ascent of the seaside cliff is more harrowing than it looked from below. Built for kicking and paddling, her legs are unsteady on solid land; on more than one occasion she has to lean into the rocks to keep her balance. By the time she reaches Samaira, the sea water on her skin has mingled with sweat. Both cling enticingly to her silver-grey skin.
Anandi smiles broadly. "The view is even better from up here," she murmurs demurely, although her wide green eyes are fixated on Samaira's intricate, pale brown tattoos and not the landscape. She longs to close the distance between them, and for a moment the longing overcomes her-- she takes a single step toward the brown mare.
The ocean on her skin coalesces into a small sphere, about the size of a fist, and it hovers to the West. "Anandi," it calls to her, in the silent way kindred souls do, "look, Anandi." It flattens to a disc, then curves into a lens. Anandi looks (something on the inside bares its teeth, a wolf whose meal has been taken from beneath its nose) and she sees the Dusk court, magnified by her bonded.
"Oh," she sighs, "I've never seen anything like it." She looks to Samaira and tilts her head. "All my friends call me Andi." If one looked closely enough, they might see what sharp teeth the grey had.
"Anandi," Samaira says, testing the name in that smoky, accented voice of hers. "It is a wonderfully unusual name," and she wonders if all those who call the sea home have such monikers. The pegasus glances at her bonded as all attention comes to him from below. He stares down over the cliff with wide blue eyes, "She will make a meal of me," he says with some measure of unease, "don't let her come up here."
Samaira turns her gaze back to the green-eyed girl, "His name is Alaunus, he is my bonded." She is considering rescinding her offer for his sake, because she knows all too well what it feels like to be hunted. She understands the way his heart beats a little quicker and what it means to be prey. But then Anandi is announcing her departure from the water. "It seems we have no choice now," she says to the young heron.
She rises from the ground as Anandi scales the side of the cliff. Samaira is quite amazed to be honest, for that can't be an easy feat for someone used to walking on land, let alone one who lives their life in the sea. Pressing away from the edge, she flattens her wings against her side and waits to take her in from up close. And, then, they are almost side by side, there at what seems like the top of the world.
"Yes, from up here everything seems so much smaller. Except the sea, which only looks broader and more endless," Samaira says, glancing away from Anandi's captivating gaze and out over the ocean. "I can never decide if I love it more from here or on the beach." The thought is said idly, but the earthen woman realizes it is true.
Some days she wants to be where the water kisses the land, embracing it again and again, letting it rush up around her hooves and drown all her thoughts in its war-drum beat. Others, she loves to be here on the cliffs, looking out over it as the sun shines off its surface and its soundtrack is more a melody alongside the peace of the breeze and the birds and the sky.
When Anandi takes a step closer, Alaunus shifts further behind Samaira, pulling her attention back to the moment. He is no small sea bird, with a wingspan farther across than Samaira is tall at her shoulders. But she can sense his nervousness even without him voicing it. Her bonded had not been present the last time she had met a horse of the sea, she remembers.
"Steady, Alaunus. If you wish to fly ahead and stay in the sky, go. I will be alright." The young heron bobs his head and with a few beats of his wings is airborne, circling higher until he is riding the wind above them. Samaira watches him for a moment before giving her attention back to the woman before her. "Does that mean you wish me to call you a friend?"
Samaira remembers the man without a name that came from the sea. He hadn't been so amicable, and it makes her both curious and uncertain. "If you are ready to walk, I can lead the way to the Court," she offers, waiting for the sea-girl's okay before beginning to turn away from the cliff. Her moon-bright eyes linger on the floating orb of water that had come to life from the other's skin. "Is it magic?"
It may seem like a silly question, but the only magic Samaira has encountered in her life is Alaunus' healing and the forbidden magic some warlock had wielded and used to give Cassius wings of shadow and smoke and darkness. A shudder passes along her spine, remembering her horror as he unveiled them to her. There is quiet for a moment, as she attempts to shed the memory. Above, Alaunus' shadow falls over her, calming her.
"I met one of your kind, once," the pegasus woman says, alluding to the sharpness of teeth she got a peek at earlier, "or, if not your kind exactly, something similar to it." And Samaira wonders if she will ever see him again. He had returned to the sea. Would Anandi, as well?
Samaira is extremely complementary. Anandi likes that. She smiles, pleased, only the very tips of her teeth revealed. "Thank you." At the word bonded, she nods in understanding. Alaunus would not be a meal, then. Not if she wanted to remain in the winged mare's good graces. She hides her disappointment with a thrash of her tail, deep enough below water it would be unseen by the pegasus. It was fortunate that she had recently eaten, or it would be much more difficult for her to maintain her charming demeanor.
When Anandi reaches at the top of the cliffside and her heart is racing with the climb (her land body was fortunately very strong, if not particularly graceful) she notices with some jealousy how long Samaira's mane is. Her immediate thought is that if she had to die of strangulation, that thick dark mane would be her choice-- it must feel so soft, smell so sweet... but she fears this was too morbid a hypothetical situation to share, too unwanted a compliment, so she just keeps smiling sweetly and half-heartedly listening to the pegasus talk about the cliffs and the beach.
"Does that mean you wish me to call you a friend?"
"Yes, I would like that very much," there is a blush in her voice, as if the idea were Samaira's and not her own. "No one here has been so kind to me," this was a white lie-- Samaira did not need to know about the kindness of Boudika, or the openness of Apolonia. "And it isn't easy, to be in a new place with no friends." Anouk chimes in her head a wordless complaint and the mare coos to it "you're more than a friend, Anouk. You're soul."
When the pegasus asks if the water is magic, the short answer is I don't know. The ball of water was magical in nature, but Anandi did not think it was magic, per say. If it was, it was an elaborate magic, something only the sea could craft-- for the thing had a soul, or what seemed like a soul. There was no other explanation she could think of for the connection between them.
"It is Anouk. A gift from the ocean." The lens of water releases its form and trickles across the air to Samaira where it re-shapes itself into a ball before her nose. It hovers in the air with a strange sort of expressiveness-- it seems to be thinking, or observing, although you would be hard pressed to explain what gave you that feeling. Finally it moves forward to press into the top of Samaira's dark brown nose in a gentle kiss, before spreading into a thousand little drops of water that soar back to the sleek curve of Anandi's neck. There they nestle against flesh, spreading into a dark, wet stain.
The water mare looks keenly at her companion. "Anouk likes you. I've never seen her kiss another." Something like jealously colors her words, tightens her tone, but it quickly passes. "We are bonded, like you and Alaunus. Is it a common thing, on the surface?" There were no bondeds in the sea, not that she knew of. And when she was underwater, Anouk went silent. It was not a magic she understood, although she was curious.
" I met one of your kind, once," Anandi stiffens, almost (almost) imperceptibly. " or, if not your kind exactly, something similar to it." Samaira could not know the exquisite differences between clans, between individuals, even. How some (herself) were refined, cultured and others (just about damn near everyone else, outside her family) were the scum of the sea. She carefully controls her temper, lest it leak into her voice or face. It is difficult. She wants to scream you stupid, stupid girl.
Instead she smiles.
"Were they horrible?" Her tone is light, with the subtle twist of a sneer. tell me how horrible they were. She rarely encountered other kelpies-- her clan did its best to stay away from them. In her mind they were all bloodthirsty brutes, willing to kill one of their own if that's what the hunger commanded of them.
(She carefully forgets her own bloodlust since journeying to the surface. That was different.)
Samaira smiles in understanding, "I am still learning how to make friends myself," she says. It is a rather difficult feat to accomplish, when she is so wary with her tender heart and willowy trust. But she tries her best, every day, and continues to make progress.
It helps, she thinks, having her place in the hospital. She has grown rather comfortable and close with many of the doctors and patients there. It feels right.
The earthen woman watches the small ball of water, Anoul, with fascination. A soft, "Amazing," slips past her lips and drifts into the air as she watches it move so gracefully, so smoothly. And yet, Andi says she does not control it. It is its own being.
As Anouk settles before Samaira, her moon-bright eyes widen in wonder, and when it presses into her nose and pulls away, she's sure that she must look like a foal that has discovered a butterfly for the first time after it has landed on their muzzle. Her gaze follows Anouk to Andi, where they rest upon the grey mare.
Her cheeks grow warm at the mention of a kiss.
"Oh, my…" the pegasus isn't quite sure what to say, either about Anouk's fondness or to ease Anandi. Samaira is grateful when the subject changes, to a question she is more prepared to answer. "I don't believe so. I only know of a few others with bonded," she thinks of Asterion and Cirrus, Israfel and Solaris, and she's sure she's seen one of the doctor's at the hospital with a bonded.
"There are animals at the hospital, they assist the medics with the patients. Very smart creatures, but they are bonded to no one." The lemurs, she's been told, were as gifts. Helpers, assistants, and there are similar ones all the way out in Solterra as well.
Samaira nearly stiffens as Anandi does, and wonders what she has said that came across so wrongfully. She is surprised when the other woman smiles instead, but wary. Her wings ruffle at her sides as she considers the questions, and thinks of the kelpie man with no name who looked like salt and ice and sea.
"Not to me," she responds, "though I cannot say if he was horrible to anyone else."
He came out of the ocean, spoke to me, and then returned to it. Who is she to say how many other times he had done something similar? Or something else?
And then she remembers, oh how long ago it had been, that she had still been injured that day on the beach. If he had wanted to be horrible, he'd had the perfect opportunity to be so. Now Samaira wonders, why hadn't he?
It’s cute how her companion grows wide-eyed and speechless at Anouk’s cool touch. Anandi smiles, pleased by the young mare’s reaction, and any jealousy she harbored is lost to amusement. Anouk returns, anyway, as Anouk always does, pressing a smile against her flesh, or as much of a smile as a drop can make. “She smells so different. So lovely,” it hums in Andi’s mind, and something deep and jagged churns in her stomach. Samaira smells of clean earth and untouched flesh, supple and sweet. “Indeed she does,” the kelpie replies, a little less innocent, a little more sinister. The only response is a silence heavy with disapproval. Anouk did not like to speak of friends in such ways.
And Anandi dearly needed friends, if she wanted success and any measure of status here.
“Animal helpers?” That seemed… unclean… but in her brief time on the surface she quickly learned that most of this world was dirty– literally dirty, a word that did not exist Below– and there was not much anyone could do about it. She spared a moment to pity these land dwellers, and felt very benevolent for doing so. “I’d like to see that.” It was true, for she was intrigued, despite her minor distaste at the thought of an animal touching her wounds. And she’d like to see Boudika dancing and Apolonia… well, doing anything at all. The more she saw of this world, the more she wanted to see. “I’d like to see you fly, too,” she adds with a smile that seems shy. (Anandi was not shy, no matter how much she might look it.) “Isn’t it better than being stuck on the ground?” She missed the ocean for many reasons– the liquid embrace of it, the feel of currents moving through you, the sound of the sea floor rolling and rubbing against itself– but what she missed most of all was the freedom of movement. One could go not just left and right, front or back, but up and down, too, and all with far more agility than four sticklike legs provided.
As they walk, the dust of the trail settles on Anandi’s hips and back, shoulders and belly. She begins to look a little less divine, a little more like a land horse, except for the fine, expressive features of her face and the expressive coral-colored fringe, which has relaxed and folded, like a fan, to her neck.
Samaira speaks of her encounter with the beast and it is disappointingly normal. “Oh.” A pretty frown puckers at the edge of her expressive lips. “Well, he was probably horrible. Most of–” she almost says them– “us are.” Her tone is neutral, almost light, as though they’re talking of some matter of fact like the weather, like snow. Not me, of course, I’m not like the rest, can’t you tell?
@Anandi yeah I think they could probably arrive at the end of your next post if you want? <3
Anandi seems unsure of the lemurs at the hospital, so Samaira takes a moment to think of a better way to explain the ways that they assist the doctors there. “They spend a lot of time with the patients, to help make them feel better,” she thinks of them, curled up alongside patients resting in their hospital beds, offering them warmth and comfort. “But they also help with fetching supplies, or ingredients for the potionmakers.”
When the other woman smiles at her and says she wishes to see her fly, Samaira can’t help but pause, warmth rising in her cheeks. She shifts her wings where they rest against her sides, “Maybe the next time we meet… it would be unkind of me to leave you down here when I’m to be your guide.” She turns her gaze away from Anandi momentarily, toward the sky.
Flying is wonderful, and it is everything she could have ever dreamed it to be when she was a girl. Truly, she’d been missing so much, being unable to fly. A soft smile turns up the corners of her lips as she thinks about the wind brushing across her feathers and tugging at her hair.
“If there’s a better feeling in the world, I’ve yet to discover it,” the pegasus responds. She wonders if swimming is the same, and imagines it must be, just wetter. Again she finds herself imagining what it must be like to swim beneath the waves. Samaira hasn’t even set foot in the water, only looked out upon it with awe and wonder. But with her wings, swimming would be difficult she thinks.
Their steps eat up the coastline beneath them, carrying them closer and closer to the court which rises up in the distance like a beacon, shining in the sun. The waves crash against the cliffs like a drum beat and Samaira thinks about what Anandi says, but isn’t sure that she agrees. Still, she chooses not to question it. No doubt she has dealt with far more of her kind than Samaira has.
“You are not horrible, though,” the earthen woman says, moon eyes bright as she glances over at her companion. Her skin is smoon and grey and her eyes are bright and green and in the sun she is flecked with the glimmering sparks of dried salt. And, much like the man, has not attempted to make a meal of her. Though all things can change, she supposes, but Anandi acts with such grace and dignity. “I’d like to know more about where you come from.”
It was poignant, somehow; the water horse and the sky horse, meeting on plain, two-dimensional land. “If there’s a better feeling in the world I’ve yet to discover it,” she says wistfully, and Anandi laughs. “You’ve yet to swim like I do, my dear!” To cut through schools of fish and watch them scatter in your wake, to roam like a lioness through forests of kelp. To dive deeper, and deeper, and deeper, to a world where not even the sun can reach you, a place illuminated by a starscape of strange lights and ruled by massive, mysterious beasts. “Then again, I’ve yet to fly like you. If only we could switch, for just a day.” She sighs dreamily at the thought.
Once, a book of fairytales had drifted down into the deep. The pages were all scattered and so they were only able to read the stories in bits and pieces. Some they strung together into complete stories, but most remained as just snippets-- a magic bean that grew into a ladder to--, a lamp that, when rubbed, emitted a---, a rabbit (the illustration of it looked enticing-- they all crowded around to look at it with wide eyes) with a clock, scampering down a hole, saying he was-- and so on and so forth. One of the tales had been about a mother and daughter who woke up one morning in the other’s body, but Anandi never found out how the story ended. The paper turned to pulp, and they let it go to sink to the sea floor.
As they walked, Anandi in thoughtful silence, the court walls rose up in what seemed like defiance to the weight of the sky. And behind the walls, rows and rows of buildings made of stone that appeared, at first glance, to be standing only by virtue of exceptional balance. Here and there, Andi’s eye was caught by trellises heavy with purple and yellow flowers. As a whole, it was an impressive sight, and surely like nothing the kelpie had ever seen before. Or rather-- it was similar to what she had seen before, but far... more. Of everything. More color, shape, texture, scent.
"You're not horrible, though." Anandi glows at the compliment, and though she does not reply she oozes that shy smile again. "I’d like to know more about where you come from." The kelpie tilts her head, unsure where to begin, and decides to start where her last thought ended.
“Well, I come from the deep ocean. We don’t have cities down below. But we’ve seen paintings of them, and maps, and all sorts of things your people have lost to storm and shipwreck.” Such otherworldly things that could not survive the ocean-- waterlogged parchment tore apart, coins and figurines rusted away. An entire shipment of carrots drifted down once. They hadn’t a clue what to do with the floppy orange things, so Andi and her sisters held them like swords in their telepathic grasp and they chased each other, laughing, through the twilight waters. She smiles at the memory, and the expression is strangely girlish on her dignified features. “We sing a lot, and we dance even more, and we wait for our next meal to drift down. We live deep, where it’s… safer.” There were no other kelpies, like the one Samaira met, who would (probably) eagerly massacre her kind for brunch. “But it’s lonely down there, too, and sometimes-- most of the time-- it’s very very dark.” Day was a thick, eerie twilight, and night was… well, it was an all encompassing darkness. In comparison, night on the surface was a beautiful, dazzling thing. It felt absolutely decadent, to have cool starlight on one’s skin.
They’re drawing close to the city now, and Anandi reaches out to gently brush her muzzle along the stone walls. “Who built this place?” She asks her companion, finding it doubtful that it was the creation of horses. From what she had seen so far, her land-dwelling counterparts were not very industrious, and she would even go so far to say that some were lazy. (She had watched a man for an entire day once, and literally all he did was eat and shit.)
When they come to the great gates the kelpie pauses, suddenly uncertain and out of place. Surely everyone would see her for what she was-- an imposter, a murderer. A beast. But the look on Samaira’s face is kind and inviting, and Anandi has the sense that the other woman is not the sort to deceive. Not like she would. So she smiles weakly, feeling guilty for her lesser nature, and she asks: “Will you show me to where I might find lodging?” She does not ask about food or water; she knows where to find those.
And then she steps forth into the city she knows only by soggy pictures and faded maps, and she learns how sometimes imagination is far surpassed by reality.
It’s so easy, the way Anandi calls them her people and the way that Samaira doesn’t even question it. How strange it is, that she never wondered when it became this; no longer her and this new world she had found herself in, but a world that was her home and a people that were hers to care for.
She wonders what sorts of bizarre and wonderful things have been lost to the sea from above, and what it has taught them about the equines here. Or, perhaps, what it has made them imagine the equines here to be like. She imagines all manner of things that the water won’t destroy like coin and jewels and silly things they could never use like glassware.
When Anadi talks about singing and dancing, it brings a smile to Samaira’s lips, though there is a dark shadow of understanding in her eyes at the hesitation of the word safer. “I hope that you will find the kind of safety on land here that I have, and that you won’t feel lonely.”
If the pegasus knows anything it is about running, and loneliness.
There are so many good memories of her life, even as difficult as it was, on Irindor. But the running, it has a way of overshadowing everything. The fear, and isolation. She was happy—as happy as someone can be when they are unwanted, an aberration—but she was alone.
“I’m not sure,” Samaira responds, though a little disappointed, as she watches her companion reach out to touch the wall surrounding the court. Although she wasn’t used to living in a city when she first arrived, she still had always lived in a home. The idea of buildings and walls never surprised her.
“Perhaps the gods, or the first equines to live here,” she offers, although she knows the answers aren’t exactly satisfactory.
Samaira is not the most spiritual, and to tell the truth she has not spent much time at all in regards to the gods of Novus. She’s sure there must be a history book somewhere that talks about the creation of the courts, but she has not read it. Most of her time is spent in the hospital with her patients. “I would be more than happy to,” the pegasus says with an answering smile, following Anandi into the court, where they dissolve into the crowd just two more equines on the cobbled street.
When Anandi’s curiosity of the strange outer island was sated (she explicitly chose not to be interested in the relic everyone spoke of. A treasure hunt just seemed so… sophomoric) she made her way to the mainland. She was eager to explore further, to learn more, to fit together the pieces of this place so that it would begin to make more sense. Once she got her bearings, the real work would begin: finding a suitable husband for her sister.
![[Image: 13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753)
