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.
@
"Speech!" ||
