When Anandi’s curiosity of the strange outer island was sated (she explicitly chose not to be interested in the relic everyone spoke of. A treasure hunt just seemed so… sophomoric) she made her way to the mainland. She was eager to explore further, to learn more, to fit together the pieces of this place so that it would begin to make more sense. Once she got her bearings, the real work would begin: finding a suitable husband for her sister.Of course, she had learned the basics of this land before she left home. Her clan was well educated and well informed, and proud of it. They sent scouts to keep track of current events on sea and the surface. It was a matter of self preservation as well as plain curiosity– her people loved to gossip. Scouting was hard and dangerous work (Mínn kelpie meat was considered a delicacy in the shallow seas) but if Anandi was not royalty, it would certainly be her first pick of jobs. Instead she had a much more complicated responsibility. Only the most discerning of her clan was trusted to select a land horse to turn. It was not a thing that could be done willy-nilly on a whim– and oh, there would be many whims in the journey ahead. Turning was an unpleasant process, and of the turner it required a certain ingrained grace that only a princess would have. Not only that, the man she turned would be her future king and the keystone to the survival of her kind.
It was no small task, so she took her time with it. She was not inherently patient but she was cautious, very cautious. It took many days of surveying the coastline, occasionally asking for directions and waypoints, before she found herself near where the Dusk court was supposed to be. As she draws closer to land she spots a woman with wings on the cliffside. Anandi can see the way her feathers shift in the wind and she wonders what they would feel like in her mouth, what they would taste like, what kind of crunching sound would they make when she clamped her teeth down.
How enticing.
She lifts her head above the water and smiles sweetly at the stranger. “Hello! Do they call you sky horse?” she calls up the cliff, jade-green eyes sharp with curiosity. They called her water horse, usually with a tone of awe, fear, and superiority. Something about that name got beneath her smooth-slippery skin. It rankled her, sometimes, to be treated without the respect she had become accustomed to. The respect she deserved.
“You’re very beautiful,” she adds with a catlike smile and the flutter of lashes. “Dusk court is close to here, isn’t it? I would so very much like to see it for myself some day,” she sighs longingly and averts her gaze shyly, in a way that suggests if only there were someone kind enough to show me…
you're always running
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
