The second harvest festival is rolling along smoothly as night begins to fall. Almost too much so-- Anandi is secretly a little disappointed there is not more mischief going on. This is not the first time she's found herself bored by all the wholesome celebration, and it's not likely to be the last. She sighs heavily at that thought as she hikes from the apple orchard to the cliffs, absently hoping that she might once again cross paths with Apolonia this evening.
As she draws closer to the bonfires, there is a familiar face illuminated by their blaze. How perfect, it's someone she had been meaning to catch up with. “Elena!” Anandi waltzes over to where a tall grey stallion is leaning in, hawkish, to Elena’s wide, sorrowful eyes. “May I borrow you?” She bumps her hip against the other girl’s, smiles sweetly at the stallion, and leads the palomino astray all so easily and succinctly, it almost seems polite. Behind her shoulder she calls: “So sorry, sir! You may have her back later!” She had a gift for bending the world to her whim and making it seem like a kindness. Part of that was to keep the conversation moving, keep events flowing. Without sparing a glance back, Anandi tosses a coin to the crestfallen grey. Maybe he’ll buy himself a nice drink, forget the doe-eyed palomino. Or not. She really doesn’t care.
“So, my dear...” She leads them away from the bonfire, closer to the cliffs, where moonlight illuminates the sharp, steep ridge in silver light. “How are you adjusting to things in Terrastella?” She doesn’t mention, of course, that she knows Elena has adjusted quite beautifully to her new role here.
In truth, Anandi had been keeping an eye on Elena. She was very careful about it, as you should be with these things. Her questions-- harmless inquiries, really-- were discreet. Her Eyes and Ears, the network small but steadily growing in number, were tactful. Most of all she was very careful to ensure that her agents not alter the ebb and flow of court life. Terrastella was the same as always; quiet, sleepy, and unassuming. Under the emissary’s tenure it simply was better observed.
So she doesn't reveal that she knows the new medic has already made a number of friends in Terrastella. In fact she was quite popular around the court, for reasons the emissary very much understood. There was something so very captivating about Elena. A rawness to her that made you want to hold her tight, protect her... or, even better, extend a hand and raise her from the dirt. Show her she did not need protecting. Fire could warm and comfort, but my how it could burn!
Anandi shrugs a wine skin from off her shoulder, takes a sip, and offers it to the palomino. “Meet anyone cute?” Her eyes light up wolfishly as she takes another drink from the skin, and passes it back to her new friend.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She had, sometimes, tried so hard not to care. She tried to go back to that place and it like it had never changed. Pick up the threads of a life that felt so old and so heavy and weave it back together though the bits and pieces of string were broken and frayed. She tried so, so hard, that last time she made it to Windskeep. But Elena should have known things would be different, that the things that bite and bleed and burn still find her (even with eyes of blue), but it didn't change the fast that her heart was still made out of paper that can break if even a breath is too hard. She tried. Tried to hold everything together, even as the things she used to loved worked to tear her apart. She tried to not let everything she loved lay six feet under, cradled in the arms of her parents.
She wants to be her mother’s daughter. She wants to respond with the kindness that her mother has always shown. She wants to be sweet and soft and accept the cruelty of the world that hits her with a turned cheek. She wants to be that young girl of her youth. The one with the bounce in her step and the laugh in her voice.
But she doesn’t know that girl anymore.
She can’t find it anywhere in her aching, bruised heart.
She returns here again and again. She shouldn’t really. The scene of confessions, of guilt, of shattered pieces of her heart. But there too had been pictures of softness, of blurred touches, and long gazes. So maybe she goes to feel one or the other, to remind her. She isn't sure though as she stands on the cliffs just quire what she is trying to remember.
(Is it the way he told her he loves her?)
(Is it the apologies they gave to each other for things that were no fault of their own?)
(Or was it the way they held each other, face to face, so many times in the span of a summer?)
She mulls over her thoughts as blue eyes look into the bonfire. “Sometimes…ash is the only way to cleanse,” her grandmother had said. There were no relatives left who remembered Paraiso burning to the ground, but Elena’s great-grandfather had been there, had watched the flames consume his home, Elena’s home too once—reborn from the ashes.
“Okay, I’m intrigued.” Elena closes her eyes at the sound of the voice. It isn't either of them. What had she expected? To come here, and Azrael would be waiting with stars in his pockets, or Tenebrae, ready to hold her close and kiss a broken heart until its whole. She turns those pretty blue eyes to the grey stallion that stands with a whiskey smile and desire in his eyes. She feels it then, his wanting, it slithers on her skin, and lays like sludge in her stomach. “What?” She asks, so caught up in wishes she has told herself she doesn't want, the palomino has already forgotten what was said. “I said I am intrigued by you,” he says, sliding closer to her, but he has none of Azrael’s softness, nor the coolness of Tenebrae. Elena looks up at him and the smoke that rolls past her face smells like men’s longings. “Don’t be.” And it is not a confession, there is warning on her tongue. The stallion eyes her, leaning closer, but the sound of her name has those blue eyes turning away, onto a much more familiar and welcomed face.
“Anandi!” The recognition and relief is instantaneous. She quickly follows the girl sending back a burning smile in the stallion’s direction, a promise that she would not be returning to him. They settle into quieter place and Elena finally breathes. “Thank you, he seemed a little more than…eager,” she says with narrowed eyes. “You make for much more charming company,” she adds with a brightening smile then. “Well, actually,” she responds. “I’ve moved into a nice cottage off the water, and I am at the hospital quite often…healing—there have been some interesting cases up there,” she adds. Deep punctures from a woman, a woman who was not Elena. Deep punctures from a woman that touched him there, that Elena then too touched him, as she patched him and stitched him back together. She tore him apart, and apart he tore her.
At her next question, her heart thrashes underneath her ribs like a caged bird. “Maybe,” she says the words as if she were in confession and Anandi her priest. And like a good catholic girl, Elena sips the wine offered to her.
“It’s—complicated,” she says, before pushing the attention of herself with a roll of her shoulders. “And you? How are you?” She asks the emissary with warm friendship for the girl. Suddenly a memory catches at the corners of her mind. (The corners that are so unoccupied of men and healing.) “Did your friend Lucinda find you? She told me she was looking for you.” She asks with another sip of the drink. “Interesting woman,” she says truthfully, recalling that day in the swamp.
“I dont think I have ever seen eyes quite that green.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Softness, once lost, can be hard to win back. It should be tended to, nourished, given the space and time to grow. The instant Anandi left home, she lost the time, or concern, or maybe even the ability to do these things.
The first time she killed a land walker-- a cat-- her softness burst, like glass, into a hundred jagged pieces. It would take a very long time for the ocean to grind that sharpness down, if she let it-- but she did not. She killed again (a bird this time, feathers sapphire-green all over except for a burst of scarlet under its chin) and again (a deer, it’s white tail hypnotising as it bounced and swished and bounded not-quite fast enough) and again and again and a-
“Anandi!” The relief in Elena’s voice is palpable, and whatever small guilt Anandi might have had in luring her from the skeevy man is quickly evaporated by the warmth of that golden voice. The kelpie smiles, sharp teeth carefully hidden behind the lips, and she says, again, because it feels like biting into a green apple, “Elena." A fluttering exhale. "You’re so welcome.” She shoots another glance behind them, this one rather dirty, and returns to her friend with a roll of the eyes. “A little wine, a little firelight, people-- men-- get bold. I mean I don’t necessarily blame him.” She smiles beguilingly, recklessly flirtatious. There was nothing here for her to lose, and to be honest little to gain. Anandi did not want to bed Elena, or anyone for that matter who reeked so sweetly of candy-cotton innocence. She was not personally interested in anyone so soft, so wide-eyed, except as a pawn to be played, even sacrificed, at the most opportune moment.
(And maybe, she would admit grudgingly, it was nice to have someone to call a friend.
And maybe it was too easy to talk to the palomino, and
and maybe Anandi’s disdain for softness was borne of jealousy and, thus, a softness in and of itself.
-- all just maybes)
“I’m glad to hear you’ve settled nicely! I’ll have to visit you sometime.” A cottage near the ocean seemed so very picturebook perfect, so quaint, so… so Elena. She's picturing what it might look like-- sunflowers and mint in the front yard, a few lime trees-- when the next topic of conversation, romance, is avoided all too easily. Anandi smiles knowingly, and although she is terribly curious she will not push for more-- not yet. Just know she takes note of everything: the hesitation, the thoughtful sip of wine, the roll of the shoulders as though this was a thing that could be so easily shrugged off. Anandi notices all of it, and she remembers, and some day, somehow, she will use it.
“Lucinda.” She says the name sourly. “Did you find her company... agreeable? I haven’t seen her in a while, but I’m certain we’ll catch up soon.” Despite all efforts to keep her tone breezy, there is a noticeable tension in her voice. A brittleness. Anandi has never been so repulsed by and attracted to anyone or thing in her life. It was quite uncomfortable. “Her eyes are okay,” she admits stiffly, and then quickly changes the subject. “Personally I like blue eyes more. How about you?” Another swig of the wine, and the bottle is passed back.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena wears love well, and heartbreak better. She was startled by a vision of herself the other day, by the sad, sorry face that had stared back at her from the reflective surface of the mirror. That girl had worn tragedy in her eyes the shadow of warm, clear oceans. Elena wondered if this is what others saw when they looked at her. She cannot say if this look is familiar because Elena feels so lost in her own identity that she wonders what face is her own.
She sighs at the sight of the girl with the hidden teeth smile and it is the sound of autumn, of leaves crumpled and dry and bent beneath the wind, of things beautiful and desolate, lonely. She can feel a smile tightening the corners of her mouth. Anandi would never be an unwelcome face in Elena’s mind nor that crystalline gaze. The smirk in her lips was smug, playful as they turn away from the man. “I don't think I will ever quite understand men,” she admits with a blink of blue eyes that makes her look so heartbreakingly innocent for a moment. She laughs then, it only adds to that sweetness that coats Elena as easy at the salt air, here beside the ocean. “And what of women? Do we grow bold?” She asks before her mind quite has a chance to catch up with her mouth. After all, it had been beside a bonfire that she had first asked a man—a monk— to dance with her.
“Please do!” She responds when they have settled beside the cliff, a place more secluded, away from the prying eyes that rove over female bodies as if they were created just for them. Elena shifts under her smile, avoiding the truth seemed just as good as a lie and the golden girl feels it thrum against her heart guiltily.
A topic change is welcomed, Elena thinks the topic is avoided, so unaware of Anandi’s knowledge. Maybe if she had known, maybe if she had been away, she would have asked if she knew about the monk, if she knew about the girl, if she knew about all the other secrets. Maybe Elena would have asked if she could tell her.
But then again, maybe not.
They are just maybes after all.
Head turns just slightly in a silent question as glacier eyes watch the mare almost wearily. “My apologies,” she offers. “I had assumed the two of you were friends, but that may not be the case?” She asks hesitantly. “Lucinda seemed—hurried,” she decides on, teetering between other words, always trying to maintain some sort of politeness.
Anandi had granted her the grace of changing subjects and so Elena allows her the same. “You aren't just saying that to get in my good graces are you?” She asks with mock suspicion, fluttering dark lashes. “My whole family is full of blue-eyed blondes,” she responds. “I’ve always liked dark eyes.” She says, dark like an abyss, like Aerwir’s, not like the monk’s, no, not like his at all. “Maybe it is the mystery of them,” she says almost to herself. She takes a drink. “Or maybe it’s just easier to see my own reflection in them.” She laughs because it isn't true. “So tell me, Anandi, what secrets have you learned in our time apart?”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
As they sway towards the cliffside, where the sea beckons with boundless patience, Elena admits “I don't think I will ever quite understand men,” to which Anandi can only smile ruefully. Men, women, children, they weren’t terribly hard to figure out from the kelpie’s point of view. Everyone wanted something, the tricky part was figuring out what it was. That either came with hard work and experience, or (as in Anandi’s case, at least in her opinion) you were simply born with the natural gift of reading people.
And then she asks “And what of women? Do we grow bold?” To which the answer immediately comes to mind: “Oh, women aren’t so simple.” Her eyes are a bright, laughing shade of green. “But sometimes yes.” Often times, in fact, the firelight and the wine made women angry, or hungry, or violent.
Anandi was often all three of those things. But here, tonight, with the sea breeze on her skin a constant comfort, she is bubbly and bright. “No need to apologise! It’s just… complicated,” the kelpie concedes with a soft laugh, tossing her mane from one side of her shoulder to the other. Revealed in the moonlight are three long, thin scars- claw marks. If anything they add another layer of intrigue to the mare’s nuanced beauty, although she is convinced otherwise. She does not quite realize it is the contrast of soft and sharp, smooth and rough; the enticing push and pull of her very attitude all take a beautiful woman and elevate her to-- Anandi.
“The first time we met, her dragon gave me this.”
It seems unnecessary to mention she had been in the process of drowning Lucinda at the time, but it might be garnered, by the small wicked smile curling like the blade of a sickle, that the exchange with the dragon was not completely one-sided.
But Lucinda is the last thing in Novus she wants to be talking about right now. She laughs freely as they talk by the sea, the wine in her blood making her feel warm and soft and something more like a girl made for laughing and less for,
well.
Crueler things.
(And yet. The sweeter she feels the more her kelpie wails, smothered by the velvet of inebriation, thrashing in the dark. It demands blood, and viciousness, and kindness of a different sort. The mercy of a clean kill- was there anything closer to god?)
She licks a stray drop of wine from her lips. “Your family, do you miss them? Are they in Beqanna?” She remembers in precise detail their first encounter when Elena had spoken of her homeland. Anandi had a knack for places, the feel and history of them. Maybe it was genetic, encoded generation after generation in the tiny spiral ladder that the body used as its blueprint. Or maybe it was just a personality trait. Regardless, she was always looking for a home, or else a place to fall back to. Minn kelpies could be vicious, but at their core they were hunters, not fighters. Challenged or pressured a certain way they would rather fall back to a safe place… and so she found herself always taking note of places to take shelter in a storm, underwater caves to hide, and foreign lands in case her people needed a place to flee to.
But ah, here comes an interesting question! “So tell me, Anandi, what secrets have you learned in our time apart?”
“Secrets, hmm?” Lashes bat innocently over eyes that gleam conniving. Should I tell you what they think of you, the paltry commonfolk who come to you for healing? How much they adore their golden-skinned newcomer? Should I tell you what rumors you incite, spreading yourself around Novus like a sweet sickness?
No. Of course not- Anandi did not want anyone to know how much she knew. It would not be prudent. She could share a small rumor, though, most of the court was already whispering about it. “Well, the blacksmith’s apprentice is infatuated with an-” impoverished swamp rat “Illati.” She laughs. “It’s quite sweet, really, except his sire is convinced the girl cast a spell on the boy.”
How typical, for a stallion to forget what it felt like to be a boy.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Her home, Paraiso had disappeared, into the mists. ‘Only those pure of heart will find it.’ Lovelace had told them. She wonders if her heart is still pure enough to be led back home. She has done good things, kind things, things her mother would shine upon proudly. She has healed those who needed it, she has helped a child in need, and she has risked her life to save strangers. But Elena too, has done things that darken her heart, that leave her feeling less than pure. She has buried kisses in the skin of a monster, who blossomed bruises on her skin in return. She has looked at someone with cold winter in her eyes, and like the sinner she is, she cast the first stone.
Elena is not so pure of heart, and she wonders if, even if she found it, if anyone would recognize her anymore.
She has dreamed that he stands there waiting for her, Ramiro, the obsidian unicorn, he stands on a cliff side calling her home. Elena is not even sure if she is remembering him properly anymore because she remembers him int he same way she remembers all those figures from her youth. The blurry outlines and the hazy shadowy faces of them. She can think about him and remember the vague colors of him, the idea of him really, but little else. Just that he stood like a God over everything and looked upon it all, knowing it was under his protection. She wonders what Ramiro would think of the little golden filly who has grown tarnished and dull with the test of time and the test of her virtues.
Elena watches the changing shades of Anandi’s eyes, enjoying the air of impish delight the woman always held. Maybe it was the sunflower girl’s love of danger that kept her so drawn, so in love with the want of Anandi’s friendship. Everything pushes her instincts away from her and Elena fights through it all to stand stubbornly at her side. “Or have we just always been the bolder sex?” She asks her, thinking of her mother, the way the sickness wracked her and the way she still stood so tall until it all but dragged her six feet below.
The golden girl listens carefully in regards to Anandi’s relationship to the dragon woman. The scars catch in the light and halt Elena’s breath in her lungs. “Oh, Anandi,” the empath says with a sigh. She is shocked by the calmness the exudes from Anandi’s skin and onto her own. “Anandi,” she starts to admit, never one to keep a guilted secret except for those she has deluded herself into believing. “I told her where to find you, if she did anything else, I am sorry, it’s my fault,” she admits to the girl, watching her with blue eyes for any sign of rage, of hatred, any of it she would deserve.
“No,” she says. It is not completely the truth. “Well, a cousin, but we were born in lands far from Beqanna, my home was called Windskeep,” she says brightly. It sounds like a secret on her tongue and tastes just as sweet. “What about your family?” She pries.
Elena smiles at her news, unaware of what secrets about herself sit there unwhispered, unshared, as seen as the wind. “And who is this?” She asks her. “Maybe she did,” she says with an impish grin. “We women are awfully good at weaving spells.”
If only she had such abilities over shadows and starlight.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
When Elena admits she had told Lucinda where to find Anandi, it feels at first like a betrayal. There is a flash of annoyance in those serpentine green eyes. Her lips twitch as they resist the urge to sneer. Of course Elena told Lucinda. Of course the witless golden girl did not think to consider that not everyone was so innocent.
But the anger fades quickly and quietly, the kelpie’s shoulders relaxing as she sighs. “Oh, Elena. Don’t blame yourself, it was inevitable. We are… bound, in a way. Ever since I made a Kelpie of her.” It was a bond far different from that she had with Anouk. It did not bring the two mares closer- if anything, the opposite was true. They orbited each other in perfect balance, each push echoed by an equal and opposite pull; they would not ever escape each other, could not unless they collided in an act of mutually assured self destruction.
The Making of Lucinda was most certainly a failure, a lapse of judgement, yet Anandi could not bring herself to admit she regretted it. If questioned about this lack of regret, she would sooner confess to an abundance of pride than a fondness toward the other mare.
“We were born in lands far from Beqanna, my home was called Windskeep.” Anandi tilts her head, intrigued. It seems Elena was well-travelled, something the kelpie admired. “What about your family?”
“I have two sisters in Novus, Sereia and Indrani.” She practically preens, pink fringe folding back proudly. “My other sisters, and the rest of my family, live in the deep sea. For now.” Had she already told Elena she is kelpie? There’s been too much on her mind lately; she cannot remember. There’s also, perhaps, been too much wine tonight; the edge of everything is softened to the point where it does not matter, anymore, who knows what she is.
“It was Tomke, the swamp girl.” She was a pretty roan with big eyes and delicate features. It was a shame she spent her days splashing around the mud; she would do well in court. But it was no skin off Anandi’s back.
Elena grins impishly, and Anandi grins back. When they first met, she had written off the healer as a good girl. Charming but boring. The kelpie had of course been mistaken, although she had yet to see just how devious the blonde could be. “Come, let’s get more wine and see what spells we can cast tonight.” She presses her shoulder into Elena’s, and leads her toward the merriment gathered round the closest bonfire.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
@Elena please excuse this post going in 5 different directions! I wanted to close this thread since it's from Fall <3 (so we can start another, current one ;D)
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
The anger that Anandi feels flitters against Elena’s own heart for a moment, but she is thankful that it passes quickly. “You did?” She asks, and this time, Elena’s face is the one that turns to shock.
Andi smiles and Elena thinks of the color orange. Wild, untamable, and brazen. She has always liked the color orange, and it explains why the golden girl has found herself so fond of Anandi. Her kelpie nature hardly changes her mind, she trusts the girl, would continue to do so, until it were broken.
Darkness begins to spread across the sky like a bruise as they speak about their families, about their homes. “I have yet to meet them,” she admits. “But I can only imagine they are lovely,” she adds with the Elena softness she was so known for. “I have never been to the deep sea, but I do enjoy its coasts,” she adds with a laugh. Elena wants to grow small there, grow young again, and stare at Anandi with big blue eyes and ask her what it is like in that big blue ocean, what secrets it hides. But as she looks at the kelpie girl, Elena cannot help but think she holds the best of its secrets in the firelight.
Elena laughs as she bumps Anandi’s shoulder when they begin to walk. “Don’t tempt me, Anandi,” she says, she cans tip taste the wine on her tongue. “The witching hour is upon us.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
The second harvest festival is rolling along smoothly as night begins to fall. Almost too much so-- Anandi is secretly a little disappointed there is not more mischief going on. This is not the first time she's found herself bored by all the wholesome celebration, and it's not likely to be the last. She sighs heavily at that thought as she hikes from the apple orchard to the cliffs, absently hoping that she might once again cross paths with Apolonia this evening.
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