“They call me–” Water horse. Freak. monster. Something sour billows behind those jade green eyes. It is one of those looks she has tried all her life to control, to bury. It only comes out when she’s feeling frayed at the edges– hungry or tired, angry or lonely– and she draws it back in with a small sigh. The rotten fruit of anger, violence, rage is washed away with a few blinks of those long, dark lashes. “Anandi.”She drinks up the compliment about her eyes with a coy, shy smile, and then comes the invitation she had been hoping for.
"Oh, I would love that, Samaira!" Her voice is sea foam, a fleck of soft, perfect white rising from the deep blue. Her attention is suddenly captivated by the feathered friend that rises to his webbed feet. "Oh! Does your... friend have a name?" She inclines her head towards the bird, looks at him with winsome eyes that hide the surge of memory, hunger, death moving through her like a wave.
Anandi had eaten her first bird just a few days ago. To her surprise, it did not taste much like a fish at all (sky-fish, she called them, before she was taught the word bird), and it also did not taste much like the air-- although this may have simply been because she has not yet acquired a taste for creatures of earth and sky. A sea creature, she could taste (not even that, she could smell) what depths it inhabited, what it ate, what made it jackknife with fear. This bird she consumed, all she could tell was that it was meat, and it was feathers (she did not care for those), and it was blood blood blood singing its heart song, singing for her, begging for her lips, tongue, teeth.
And oh, how generous she was to it.
The gull died quickly, with a sound not unlike a sigh. It should be a relief-- a skill-- to grant a quick death. And it was those things, she knows it was, but still some shadow-slick part of her was... disappointed. And, worse than that, curious:
What other sounds can it make for me?
Her stomach clenches, releases, clenches again.
"I'll be right up," Anandi calls sweetly to her feathered companion. She tells herself "I am not a slave to my hunger" and rides a wave to the rocky shoreline. "I am not a puppet to my desire," in one motion she rises from the sand on four legs. She sets her sights on the jagged, crumbling path up the cliffside, and distracts herself from the hunger with the climb.
The ascent of the seaside cliff is more harrowing than it looked from below. Built for kicking and paddling, her legs are unsteady on solid land; on more than one occasion she has to lean into the rocks to keep her balance. By the time she reaches Samaira, the sea water on her skin has mingled with sweat. Both cling enticingly to her silver-grey skin.
Anandi smiles broadly. "The view is even better from up here," she murmurs demurely, although her wide green eyes are fixated on Samaira's intricate, pale brown tattoos and not the landscape. She longs to close the distance between them, and for a moment the longing overcomes her-- she takes a single step toward the brown mare.
The ocean on her skin coalesces into a small sphere, about the size of a fist, and it hovers to the West. "Anandi," it calls to her, in the silent way kindred souls do, "look, Anandi." It flattens to a disc, then curves into a lens. Anandi looks (something on the inside bares its teeth, a wolf whose meal has been taken from beneath its nose) and she sees the Dusk court, magnified by her bonded.
"Oh," she sighs, "I've never seen anything like it." She looks to Samaira and tilts her head. "All my friends call me Andi." If one looked closely enough, they might see what sharp teeth the grey had.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
