AT NIGHT, IN BED, MY LIES EMERGE AS PEARLS
The first, in midwinter, Tahitian gray and silver, cold against my throat, was born a foreign object, perilous inside my chest. I slept all night to ease the pain, and while I did, I made it round, lustrous.
She rarely goes inland.
Though Locust fears the ocean, anymore (gone is the girl who would swim with sharks and dive for pearls), there is a part of her that struggles to be far from it. She might dislike it, but there is some part of her that is, like a water-horse, inextricably tied to the sea, and, as she departs Denocte’s capitol and moves inland, towards the great spires of mountain ranges that border the Night kingdom, she cannot shake a prickling sensation that runs across her skin like a swarm of ants, and, much as she wishes that she didn’t, as that last strip of blue slips out of her view on the horizon, she cannot help but look back.
Locust lingers, for a moment, on a grassy hilltop, the fresh scent of rain and newborn spring lingering on the wind, and she watches the gleam of the mid-afternoon sun on the water, which, from here, seems undisturbed by the rolling crests of waves.
The grass can be a sea of itself, when it grows tall enough. The wind sends waves through it, strumming down ridges of seed-heavy stems in its wake; she stands in grass so deep that it nearly rubs against the curve of her stomach. Everywhere, the sky is visible, as pristine and empty a blue as she can find in open waters, and here, on solid ground, she can almost pretend that she is still swimming, that each stride to carry her forward is actually a kick, that the bent strands that suggest the presence of a doe or a groundhog are the dark shapes of sharks or stingrays, and that the brush of innumerable strands of grass is actually water, an undivided and blue collective. But it isn’t, of course. It isn’t, and she can’t quite pretend that it’s the same, much as she’d like to.
Her denial can’t stretch far enough to stain a canvas of green bright blue. She keeps walking.
After hours – long enough for the sun to coat her in a fine layer of sweat that makes the grass seeds stick to her limbs, itching incorrigibly – she crests a hill, and she finds herself at her destination. Silk-smooth blue water, clear as a mirror, stretches out as far as the eye can see, lapping patiently at the foothills that roll out in all directions. Fresh water doesn’t bother her in the same way as salt; it can be cruel, but most often it is calm, and she never goes far enough into it to experience the dangers it might provide. It is only salt that turns her stomach, only salt that makes her think of a canopy of black water that could blot out the sky, only salt…
There are water-horses in fresh water, too. Different from their oceanic counterparts, she has been told, but water-horses nevertheless, and just as ravenous. (If not, some Terrastellans would have her believe, even moreso.) As she wades into the shallow water, allowing the cool, clear lake to lap at her sweat-streaked skin, Locust is aware of the burn of her knife at her foreleg -
(When Mooneye gave it to her, she thinks that it was kind. A beautiful weapon. So slender, so dark, so tantalizingly sharp. Is it crueler, now? She has heard that weapons retain the blood that they shed, and they can weep it out under the right circumstances. Certainly, it has shed enough to weep, now. She wonders how long it will take her to stumble, and cut herself on the edge.)
But nothing disturbs the serenity of the lake. No fin rises from the blue water, dark and imposing, promising teeth. A fish darts about her legs. Save for the wind, it is silent.
(Of course, you are never caught by what you see – it is what you don’t that will make a meal of you.)
@Morrighan || a little starter for you! I'm excited <3 || "tba," tba
"Speech!" ||
