The wind howls like a song as she steps down the rough-grass banks onto the beach. She leaves footprints in the sand as she steps out, out toward the ocean. The sea is grey and angry as it pushes itself up upon the beach, breaking into foam that hisses as it retreats. Sereia listens to how it berates her for being gone so long. She smiles at the way it looks bleak and uninviting. Even in summer, the overcast sky casts an iron grey hue across the surface of the water.
It thrums like a living thing. It whispers into her veins and her nerves. Though she stands where the tide can only lick her toes, where her body is still, the only tranquil thing here, inside she is awakening. There is a crease across her brow, it speaks into her soul and the part of it that awakens and stirs. Her tongue grows wet and her eyes bright and feral. The ocean does not claim her, but it does set her body alight.
Tendrils of hair wrap around the curve of her slim throat and the wind tugs them this way and that. Her chin tips up and she takes a deep breath of the sea-salt air. She has been roaming for weeks, listening to the siren call of the earth, trailing woodland paths and sinking beneath the earth into caves that burrow deeper, deeper under ground.
The seaside wind tousles her hair, throwing locks across her eyes and the wet of her lips where they stick, salt-sweet. Nothing wipes the smile from her mouth, though its corners fall as a bird swooping low out of the sky. Down, down they turn as she feels belonging rising like a cry in her bones. It is whalesong, sad and yet eerily beautiful. Even Sereia who fights her ties to the sea, who tries to untangle the two entwined parts of her soul, can recognise the beauty of belonging.
But it is not a pining for the sea that brings her down to Terrastella’s windswept bay. Sereia would have lost herself in the inland hills and towns were it not for her sisters. She turns away from the bleak surf and feels dread and joy tangle in her veins. There is no need to hide her too-sharp smile now and she does not feel shy as the wind lifts her forelock from her eyes, her nose. Her sister already knows just what monster lies within Sereia. There is no hiding here. Her mouth, her wicked hunter eyes greet the light. Lovely, lovely, only a whisper of violence lingers there, but all Sereia can hear is how it shouts, wicked loud.
“Andi,” the Minn princess calls to where her sister stands above a kill. It was easier to look out to the sea and feel that uneasy belonging stir within her than it is to see her sister now.
Blood.
Sinew.
Bone.
Sereia cannot walk slowly enough, though she tries. It is a divine test, but Sereia has been training her life for these moments. She knows this torture. Her kelpie is chained. All of Sereia clinks with the shackles she will not remove. She cannot remember where she put the key. There is no escape.
Maybe the wind helps, maybe the sand has some strange magic because she arrives beside her sister sooner than she wishes. The girl presses her muzzle to her sister’s nape and studiously ignores the kill at their feet. Does Anandi hear how her sister holds her breath and avoids where blood blooms red upon Andi’s skin? Growing up together has exposed much between the sisters, there are no secrets here. Her stomach twists, she knows it dares to rumble. Her tongue is wet with hunger and the kelpie twists and turns and wants, wants, wants. But Sereia breathes slow, slow, exhaling and sipping air as if it is exquisite agony.
It is.
Yet the girl's smile has turned up its corners for her sister. Where sallow darkness once pressed itself between her lips, now daylight gleams along its length. “I have missed you,” the Minn girl whispers to her sibling. It is as if there is no corpse there, as if meat does not tinge the air with its alluring metallic scent. Agony. Agony. Blissful, terrible agony.
Sereia fills herself up with this reunion, she leaves no space for wanting or hungering for anything else. She looks to Anandi and studies her, remembering every detail of her sister’s body - anything to stop her kelpie turning to the feast below.
There was no monster hiding beneath Anandi’s skin. Cruelty did not slink in her shadows, violence did not burrow in her soft flesh like a disease.She wrestled with herself, sometimes to the point of agony, but there was no point to it. Her darker nature always won. And it whispered with a wicked smile:
You are the monster.
Anandi quickly learned to embrace the hunger. She allowed herself whatever flesh she wanted, whenever she wanted it. After just a few months on the surface, self control was more or less abandoned. There were no consequences here other than her own guilt, so she carved that from her chest and tossed it back into the sea. It was just so much easier this way.
The one exception to her wild hunger was horses, which were too much like family, like distant, pitiful baby cousins. They were too beautiful, too close to herself. In all truth she envied them, and those she knew she coveted like prized trophies. Anandi was vain, and possessive, and hungry, so very hungry, not just for the consumption of their flesh but control of it. She wanted their love. And their respect. Even their hate, she would gladly take that too, gulp it down like blood and slam the empty cup on the table. The more she had of everything, the more she craved.
You are the monster, silly girl. You are the monster.
Anandi rips into warm flesh, single-minded. Even the ocean doesn’t invade her thoughts; not when there’s death on the tongue, copper in the air. Nothing matters but this moment, this beautiful crimson moment, this untouchable wholeness. Any predator knows: the glory of life is in the power to take it. And the delicate balance that results.
“Andi.”
The emissary looks up with a startled growl. The threat of violence obvious in the coiled crouch, the pinning of the ears. The eyes, huge and green, predatory and sharp as knives. But even as she hunches low in defense over the dead fox, recognition floods her. She knows that voice. And as her piercing eyes register the intruder at hand, they quickly soften with recognition. Oh, gods, she missed those beautiful golden eyes.
“Sereia!” Anandi squeals with delight, and when she grins her teeth are still bloody.“Oh, Reia! I'm so happy to see you” And they’re together, pressed up against each other so close it’s hard to tell where one sister ends and the other begins. Sereia’s mane is full of trinkets and treasures, gifts of land and sea, and Anandi lips at them with wonder. “Oh, isn’t it amazing here?” The bounty of it, the splendor. The sky and all its colors. The clouds, different every moment of every day. The stars-- the stars! How delightful, to share these things with her sisters!
“Oh!” She takes a step back, gestures to the half-eaten fox carcass on the ground. “Are you hungry? Please, join me. It’s a fox.” Her smile is generous, her manner benevolent. If she had noticed the way her sister carefully avoided looking at the kill, she says nothing about it. Her eyes remain hungry, in ways more than one. Endlessly hungry.
I am the monster.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
The fox is orange and fragile and open upon the beach. It yields itself up to Anandi’s prying teeth. No longer is the air just salt-laden, but now full of metal and the sounds of worked meat.
Where one sister delights, the other shudders. Sereia breathes shallowly, cautiously. Studiously she does not look at the broken body at her feet, nor at her sister’s crimson smile. Anandi has always been beautiful. The fox blood on her lips makes her ever more so. Maybe it is only another kelpie who could appreciate such a sight. Even Sereia cannot deny how she is made to find beauty in the hunt, the kill, the blood. Yet it does not stop her rejecting such thoughts. She does so with every fibre of her being, the effort drawing from her energy day after day, moment after moment. It saps her until she has become too thin, too angular.
The sisters press together. Anandi smooth and rounded curves, full of health. Sereia, angular, pointed, her body ailing, her soul striving for something other. Her sister’s joy is feast enough in this moment. Reia smiles, presses herself into the silver of her sister’s skin. It is warm here, filled with childhood memories of sleeping together, playing together.
With her muzzle, Sereia bumps at her sister’s cheek, “It is beautiful.” The girl agrees with a smile, always too small, never letting the full length of her lips bear such a curve. She takes a breath, “Have you seen the Night Markets? They trade in all manner of items. Some from the bottom of the ocean and others from foreign places.” Now Sereia’s smile is growing. It creeps its way along her mouth, unstopped by sorrow. Her control slips as her joy pervades. “There are things worthy of fairytales there,” the kelpie laughs, low and small. Then, as Anandi reaches to lip at the shells and deep-sea trinkets woven into her mane, Sereia sighs contentedly, “Do you remember the stories we used to make for all the trinkets we used to find in the shipwrecks?”
They were an escape, each and every tale that fell from her lips. It was easier to imagine herself embroiled in a fantasy than to remember reality of hunger, the pain of wanting meat and the grief, the guilt, that accompanied such desire.
Ah. Sereia’s smile falls away like ice into the sea as her sister offers her catch. The shadows stretch and darken upon her mouth and she looks to her sister with regret. Anandi knows, she knows. Yet was this not a broken tune of her childhood? Always they hoped she might relent and join their feast of blood and flesh. “No, Andi.” Sereia chides, sad, disappointed. She does not even lower her gaze to the poor, spilled fox.
Her kelpie’s chains run along her ribs like a stick along railings. Anandi has seen her sister’s kelpie, she knows the savagery that Sereia keeps locked away, chained. “You know what happens when I eat meat.” She takes a breath, it is full of blood and sweat and salt. The girl shivers, “Besides, I had a carrot and an apple on my way here.”
And she smiles a small, shallow smile. Beneath its thin guise is a kelpie’s scream. Can anandi hear the sound of rebellion within her sister’s ribs? It is the clank of chains as a prisoner riots.
This world has so many treasures. And while Anandi's first reaction was to gush (in a way almost carnal) over the sustenance here, the diversity of scent and taste, she recognized that Novus had so much more to offer. There was natural beauty like she had never seen before- clouds and stars, meadows shimmering in the breeze, lazy rivers enshrouded in morning mist. There was rain, mysterious and cleansing, and sun, warm and soothing. It was not paradise- there was snow (she loathed snow) and mountains (she loathed climbing) and a lot of idiots (you can guess how she felt about them).
Essentially, Novus was just a lot more of everything they had ever known or even imagined. First Anandi had come, then Indrani, and now Sereia. With each sister, this world only grows more and more appealing to the jade-eyed emissary.
“Yes, I’ve seen it! And there are little dragons there! And have you been to Solterra? Sand as far as the eye can see but no water!” She laughs at how wild it seemed at first, how utterly unnatural. Almost every single aspect of Novus was once so completely foreign, and yet Anandi had adapted to this strange world with surprising quickness. She may have grown up in the dark, naive to the workings of the surface world, but she was sharp in more ways than one, and she learned fast.
She laughs to think of the stories they once made up, the silly ways they escaped from the darkness and the tedium of their lives in the deep. “Everything here is beyond our wildest stories, isn’t it?” Oh, their stories paled in comparison to the brightness and strangeness of Novus. It was something that needed to be seen-smelled-felt-- tasted to be believed.
How different would Anandi be if she had not, on that first day in Novus (or, if not the first day, one of the first days) met Boudika? If the lion’s-tail mare had not rounded up the flock of birds, soothed the kelpie with the balm of acceptance: “it’s in your nature.”
It’s in her nature. It’s in their nature. The eating, the killing. Anandi just needed the slightest reassurance to accept this about herself. Why must Sereia be so difficult? So stubborn? She sighs dramatically as her sister rejects her offer.
“A carrot. And an apple!” She laughs so hard she almost snorts. “Oh, Sereia, I worry about you sometimes. We all do… you’re skin and bones.” The feline curl of her smile is somehow disapproving. Still, her jade eyes are warm. Despite the utter seriousness with which Sereia treats this topic, it is all a game to Anandi. Sometimes, she knows, she takes it too far. The teasing strays over some line and becomes torment. (Well, maybe all of it was torment, but it was all just good natured fun!)
The truth is that Anandi respected her sister’s choices, sometimes to the point of jealousy. Where one Minn’s morals had quickly wavered upon coming to Novus, the other stuck strongly to her principles. On a subconscious level Anandi refused to admit she was ashamed of herself, so she leaned heavily into self-righteousness. She told herself she deserved to relax once in a while. To be herself, as god must have intended: Wild with the hunt, all the green in her eyes gone to black. Why else would she be crafted with such power and beauty? The best swords were not meant to be displayed as decoration. They were meant to be used.
And what she did, the way she did it, it was a mercy. Always a clean kill, always done quickly. Besides, it’s just a fox. It’s not like she’s eating a horse. “Well if you insist,” she says with a sigh, nudging the carcass to the side for later. She knows its scent will continue to color the air for a long time to come, tantalizing the senses of any true predator… but that wasn’t her problem. She licks the blood off her teeth and returns her laughing green gaze to her too-thin sister. “It’s only natural, though. We are kelpie.” She tosses her head, a gesture somewhat defiant. Convince me otherwise.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
She smiles and she laughs and she forgets herself for a moment. Sereia sinks into love, into family, into the comfort of being known. She guards against herself, but she does not have to hide. Not here, not before Andi. There is comfort in knowing that she is so utterly known and she does not have to hide if she so chose.
The golden kelpie gives herself over to the laughter and the joy of talking about the beauty of the mainland. Her heart stutters and skips like a newborn lamb over every memory she has of the Night Markets and Solterra.
"I saw Solterra in my dreams," The girl sighs wistfully, drunk upon a mystery that has lain unsolved in her mind. "When I went it was just as I had dreamed. Isn't that strange?" Her smile grows, it dares to reach into the lengthened corners of her lips before thw can stop it. Then, she thinks of the pygmy dragons her sister mentions, “I have seen them too!” Sereia laughs, “they are so small and so cute, their fires more like little matches.” She remembers one that hiccuped and singed the ends of her hair - she was only fortunate that her hair was still damp from the sea, or else she might be little more than ash on the wind now. “They are a little dangerous though,” Sereia adds lightly, her grin turning playful, ironic given they are the dangerous ones here.
And then a thought, it strikes so fast, so suddenly that they are spilling from her tongue before her mind can even censor it, “I wonder what a dragon would taste like.” In her bones, tangled within the chains of her sinew, her kelpie is laughing as instinct and desire spill unchecked past her lips.
Regretfully Sereia quiets. She cannot clutch back the words. She cannot wrestle them back into her mouth, no matter how much she wishes to. Her smile evaporates like rainwater. Her smile does not return. How can it when Anandi’s laughter turns from with her, to against her. The younger sister tips her chin up, defiant, guarding her morals. “They taste quite sweet and keep me alive.” Barely. She feels all her angles and her ribs like black keys upon a piano.
After a moment Anandi nudges the corpse away and Sereia watches it roll, limp and lifeless, spilled open. Bone and blood and raw flesh turn the air sweet and metallic. It smells wonderful. She looks away and bleats, “But it had a life too. It is not inanimate. It had friends and family and maybe children. It is no better than eating a horse.” Her gaze finds the verdant green of her sister’s eyes, “A life is a life no matter what.”
And it feels no different to take the life of an animal or the life of a horse. Sereia would know.
There was no monster hiding beneath Anandi’s skin. Cruelty did not slink in her shadows, violence did not burrow in her soft flesh like a disease.She wrestled with herself, sometimes to the point of agony, but there was no point to it. Her darker nature always won. And it whispered with a wicked smile: 
