Elchanan has never liked the sea much, but it is the only place in this godforsaken where he is not plagued by the light, the light, the light.
Down here on the gray shore, banked by a steep, ragged cliff, the setting sun cannot reach him. It is slipping below the horizon to his back, casting a red-purple light onto the darkening sea but unable to catch him from where he stands underneath an outcropping of rock, watching the waves crash without any real interest. The day is finally beginning to cool; wind sweeps in on off the water, tousling the long hairs of his tail until they start to snarl.
The light, the light, the light. And now the sky is turning a deep, bruisey purple flecked with stars, and in one corner hangs a sliver of moon that the priest watches with a yearning so deep it makes his heart clench and his stomach turn. His spine and shoulders are still itching where the sun splashed onto them yesterday. Tomorrow he will look for Samaira in the hospital, a place he did not even know existed until some horrifically kindly old woman said he could find the pegasus there. (Her mane had been repulsively tangled, and it took significant willpower not to insist that she brush it out right then and there.)
Elchanan is not the type to think before speaking. Or to worry about anything at all, really. But there is no distraction here on the empty, darkening beach, and so his mind turns unwillingly to what he might say tomorrow, how he should dress, what gift he might bring to curry her favor, after he (some might say) disappeared for a few weeks too long. Still—all the evidence suggests he could show up filthy and empty-handed and she might still find something to cling to. Delicious.
The beach here is hardly anything to be enamored with, a hidden curve of blackish rock particles bordered by a misty cliff. So of course the priest is startled by the sudden appearance of a shadow turning the corner into the bay—a small, stockily built mare whose features are lost in the encroaching darkness. Elchanan blows out a disappointed breath, and calls: “Good evening.”
Just let me find my way back, let me move like a tide come in.
This wasn’t her beach, but it had begun to feel like it. Others walked freely upon it, sucked at its oysters and lounged upon its shores, even when the winds were a conqueror’s whip in the hands of gods. Saphira knew no god of wind. There was only water, and the salt that crusted along the rocks. The barnacles that crusted along the ships that went out each day with her heart. Her heart.
She was not interested in this stranger, and was only faintly impressed by his luminosity. Unusual, for anything but a phosphorescent fungus or the moon. He looked the latter, but something said he was a fungus, too.
”Good evening.”
Oh. Talking. It could be said that Saphira began each day hoping not to be acknowledged. She had almost ended her day like this. ”Might be,” she offered, gruffly. ”S’not over yet.”
She stood a very fair (very generous) distance from the man and his luminous, fungal presence. She knew that it would be polite to say more things. She also knew that the things she’d already said could have been more polite. She did not want to act upon these thoughts, but if he was the friendly sort he would keep talking until he pulled some feeble thread from her anyway. ”You go any closer to the water and some gull is going to think there’s two moons out tonight.” Perhaps it was a joke. It sounded nigh funereal in its special lack of whimsy.
The distance between them remains significant. Even Elchanan can read her stiff posture, and despite his initial desire to bound closer and introduce himself with the usual amount of unbridled enthusiasm, he holds himself firmly in place. Someone stronger than him would still be leery of leaning any closer to the strange woman who looks at him with cold, deep-blue eyes. They match the water, which churns and froths over the stretch of sand that separates them; and again he has to bite his tongue against the urge to remark upon their similarity.
For a moment he wonders if it was a good idea to say anything at all. Perhaps this was one of many times that someone smarter would have just kept their mouth shut, walked past her without saying a word and left without being scathed. But it is a small beach—she would have noticed him. And he would have felt guilty ignoring her anyway.
It’s difficult to tell through the encroaching shadows, but El thinks her coat is the soft gray of a well-polished sword; her hair, which falls in roughly curled clouds, is a nearly phosphorescent white. When she speaks, her voice is rough and tinged with something that sounds almost like disappointment at the fact that she has to acknowledge his existence: you go any closer to the water and some gull is going to think there’s two moons out tonight.
El tries not to let his ego be bruised by her stiff coldness. But that part of him has always been particularly sensitive.
He laughs. It’s a faint sound, made carefully and purposefully light; and carelessly he lets his lips fall into a smile, the sharp white teeth flashing like an arc of moonlight for the half-second they’re exposed to air.
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” the archpriest answers. His voice is relaxed but wry: it has the drawling tone of someone who knows they are being made fun of and ignores it regardless. “I’m Elchanan. I hope this isn't private property. I'm from..." A brief pause. Well. Not here.”
