Samaira is extremely complementary. Anandi likes that. She smiles, pleased, only the very tips of her teeth revealed. "Thank you." At the word bonded, she nods in understanding. Alaunus would not be a meal, then. Not if she wanted to remain in the winged mare's good graces. She hides her disappointment with a thrash of her tail, deep enough below water it would be unseen by the pegasus. It was fortunate that she had recently eaten, or it would be much more difficult for her to maintain her charming demeanor.When Anandi reaches at the top of the cliffside and her heart is racing with the climb (her land body was fortunately very strong, if not particularly graceful) she notices with some jealousy how long Samaira's mane is. Her immediate thought is that if she had to die of strangulation, that thick dark mane would be her choice-- it must feel so soft, smell so sweet... but she fears this was too morbid a hypothetical situation to share, too unwanted a compliment, so she just keeps smiling sweetly and half-heartedly listening to the pegasus talk about the cliffs and the beach.
"Does that mean you wish me to call you a friend?"
"Yes, I would like that very much," there is a blush in her voice, as if the idea were Samaira's and not her own. "No one here has been so kind to me," this was a white lie-- Samaira did not need to know about the kindness of Boudika, or the openness of Apolonia. "And it isn't easy, to be in a new place with no friends." Anouk chimes in her head a wordless complaint and the mare coos to it "you're more than a friend, Anouk. You're soul."
When the pegasus asks if the water is magic, the short answer is I don't know. The ball of water was magical in nature, but Anandi did not think it was magic, per say. If it was, it was an elaborate magic, something only the sea could craft-- for the thing had a soul, or what seemed like a soul. There was no other explanation she could think of for the connection between them.
"It is Anouk. A gift from the ocean." The lens of water releases its form and trickles across the air to Samaira where it re-shapes itself into a ball before her nose. It hovers in the air with a strange sort of expressiveness-- it seems to be thinking, or observing, although you would be hard pressed to explain what gave you that feeling. Finally it moves forward to press into the top of Samaira's dark brown nose in a gentle kiss, before spreading into a thousand little drops of water that soar back to the sleek curve of Anandi's neck. There they nestle against flesh, spreading into a dark, wet stain.
The water mare looks keenly at her companion. "Anouk likes you. I've never seen her kiss another." Something like jealously colors her words, tightens her tone, but it quickly passes. "We are bonded, like you and Alaunus. Is it a common thing, on the surface?" There were no bondeds in the sea, not that she knew of. And when she was underwater, Anouk went silent. It was not a magic she understood, although she was curious.
" I met one of your kind, once," Anandi stiffens, almost (almost) imperceptibly. " or, if not your kind exactly, something similar to it." Samaira could not know the exquisite differences between clans, between individuals, even. How some (herself) were refined, cultured and others (just about damn near everyone else, outside her family) were the scum of the sea. She carefully controls her temper, lest it leak into her voice or face. It is difficult. She wants to scream you stupid, stupid girl.
Instead she smiles.
"Were they horrible?" Her tone is light, with the subtle twist of a sneer. tell me how horrible they were. She rarely encountered other kelpies-- her clan did its best to stay away from them. In her mind they were all bloodthirsty brutes, willing to kill one of their own if that's what the hunger commanded of them.
(She carefully forgets her own bloodlust since journeying to the surface. That was different.)
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
