This keening soul;
Sand shifts beneath her feet and it is nothing like soil. This place is ever changing and loud in its metamorphoses.
The stranger steps like a dancer, she stalks like a wolf and Leto retreats like a doe and lowers her skull like a lion. They are both predator and prey, this girl of the sea and the girl of the earth. Shades of grey cover them both, struck dumb by the bolt of orange that crowns the other girl’s head.
Anandi is a creature that moves like a dancer and who plays a flute for her better than the sea that whistles in song? It adorns her in froth, salt-slick and bright. It begs her to stand so it can place corals and pearls in the corners of her smiles.
Leto has known a boy like this before. He, a kelpie thing with long wicked teeth and ever darker smiles. His laughter is sea-breeze, his touch sea-spray. She still knows here he went, upon her skin, for those inches of her are salt-drenched forever.
Her smile is Artemis’ bow. It is the full glare of Solis’ wicked bright sun. Beneath it Leto stands, a girl uncovered, her shade all gone. The Swamp is so distant now and what horror is this – for she thinks nothing of earthy swamp pools when here is an ocean watchful and wicked and wild.
Intrigue and lovely and such words are not content to play merely in her ears. They also rest, tempting apple red, upon her tongue. They beg to be spoken and whispered. The sea seeks to reclaim those words, to hear them again. The wind lays salt kisses along the deep-sea black of her lips, but she does not open them, not matter the salt no matter the temptation.
Her chin tucks in, her nape arching like the bow of a ship. Anandi steps, creeping into that small free space Leto makes. And it is just a moment of pause, a moment of question until temptation has her reaching forward. To taste the sea-blue blood of an ocean girl.
Fate.
That word hangs, bright and present as the sun. It gilds them both in glory and presses girl and beast (though which is which? Are they not each just a little bit of both?) closer and closer together.
The sea-tide rises, it is beckoning the kelpie girl back and, yes, Leto already knows what this creature is. She knew it when she met a boy as silver as the moon with a smile that cradled the sky. His teeth were stars, poised to puncture the inky black night.
The starfire girl looks to this sea-storm girl, who makes death beautiful, who smiles like a siren sings, and stands like a god’s creation. It might be okay to drown, she thinks then, if all the sea were full of them: these kelpies with their too-wide smiles and salt-water kisses.
fate.
Leto does not miss the hunger in that gaze. It prowls in tooth and claw across the black satin of her torso. It promises to wash the sigils from her flesh and engrave her with the biting churn of waves.
Is that why this creature was here? With her green eyes that tie seaweed tight, tight about her limbs. Yet Leto stands within their hold, willingly, curiously, dangerously. No! Fate had not brought them here. Her death was not now, not today… No!
“Maybe.” The traitorous word slips, cool like an elixir, sweet as sugar. Her eyes are star-bright and all the sky is silent. Where are the stars that burn the night for her? Where is their smoke? All is silent, for nothing matters here but the sea, the sea, the sea.
And then suddenly she is moving and the stars are at last breathing. Gone is the doe stood still beneath the unwavering gaze of her hunter. Now a cat stalks across the sands, panther black with silver eyes sharp and hungry as teeth.
The stars are not just breathing, but keening and crying and laughing and igniting. The sky is white, white white. The stars burn the black that holds them, they shed their tethers, the rock and dance and ricochet.
Leto reaches for this kelpie girl. Reaches, reaches, reaches, until her breath, forest deep is upon Anandi’s skin, her throat, her shoulder, her cheek. There is no part of this girl that Leto does not study and wonder and drown within. “There is a girl fated to drown.” The star-girl breathes her story across the sea-girl’s skin, “It was foretold in blood and bone so very long ago…” Her words trail off and her lips draw back, silver meets green and holds, holds, holds like the moon paints the earth. “Have you come to kill me?”
Leto asks like a whisper that feels like drowning.
@Anandi You asked for a novel, right? | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
