She learned that on the surface they called the sea Terminus. Like it was the end of things and not the beginning. Of course, she understood why they might call it that. To them the sea meant only death. Sharks and jellyfish, angry tides and sharp rocks... and perhaps most dangerous of all, the call of the ocean. There were tales of men and women so enamored with the sea that at night, with only the moon as their witness, they walked into the water and were never seen again.
Poor landlings... they could never know how life thrived beneath the surface. What bounty lay just out of sight! Pods of dolphins that stretched to the horizon, shoals of fish that moved as though seized by a single mind. In the deep, massive creatures were born, lived, and died without ever feeling the light of the sun on their skin. (They could never see it, of course, because they lost sight eons ago). The depths of the ocean were beyond even Anandi's knowledge-- it would not be madness to imagine it was as deep as the sky, for both were without end to the known world.
(Sometimes she would peer into the night and wonder at how the stars glimmered like lanternfish did, back in the deep sea, in the depths beneath her. If she could swim deep enough, would she circle back to the stars? It did not seem impossible, sometimes, that there would be light on the other side of every darkness.)
Anandi feels the warm current that suspends her body. She feels her strength and agility triple, now that she is back in her element. Perhaps the horses were right, and as long as those like Amaroq and Anandi lived, the sea was only a terminus for them.
The kelpies lock eyes and flash teeth, the oldest of dances. Anandi knows she should be afraid. She is afraid. But the fear is like blood in the water, each second diluting into the rest of what runs through her mind- intrigue, mostly, but also bare-toothed pride. (Pride was a quality her people tried for generations to breed out of themselves-- but their efforts had the opposite effect, and her family's pride only grew consolidated and impenetrable, like a small stone that sat just before the heart of every Minn kelpie.) She also knew how fear might be the death of her here, where to flee would be
Wide-eyed and breathless with uncertain curiosity, she moves around the horned stranger like it's a game. Sometimes trees of kelp rise between them, carving him into bite-sized chunks of silver and blue and black, colors deep and rich like the fur of a seal. He was easier to look at then, for he was more familiar to her in bits and pieces instead of a whole, wild-eyed kelpie. (Was he one of the many clans that hunted her kind to near extinction, driving them to the twilight of the sea? He must be. He must be, and still she is not afraid.)
The graceful, circular movement draws Anandi slowly closer to the man that looks like death. Her eyes drink him in, every sharp angle and smooth line, every color of his skin a different shade of blue-green in the filtered sunlight. He is a creature of beautiful efficiency, not very much unlike herself. Although, over the years her kind's form had modified to emphasize the beautiful. Her curious eyes and lovely lips, lined in inky black to draw the gaze in, and the sheer expressiveness of her face, which could paradoxically convey childlike innocence and sinful knowing at the same time. It was not by chance that she was born with such features. Such talents. It was evolution, and she was the newest, shiniest model in a line of killers to whom, in the end, one would willingly bare their neck for the feast.
Finally her eyes return to his. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be underwater with another. How intimate it could be, to share a space without a single word. She found her nose was so much sharper here, in her element. She could smell a drop of blood a mile away. She could certainly smell the oily meat of the kelpie before her, the danger of him like nothing she's ever tasted on the water. (They didn't get many visitors, down below.) Her own scent? Nuanced as all hell-- it could most succinctly be described as a flower with razor-edged petals.
Soon she drifts close enough to place her cheek alongside his horn and wonder how many things bled to death here, looking him in the eye.
Surely, none of them ever looked at him like she does now.
Anandi does not know for sure he won't end her right there and then, pierce her throat with a flick of the sword. (Can he hear her heart flutter with uncertainty? With terrible excitement?) She smiles, lazy and catlike. Like she knows something he does not-- maybe many things. Not even Anandi knows if she is bluffing anymore. And then she leans in to place a kiss on his cheek, just to see how he might react.
Like a deep woman, the sea hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill.
@Amaroq <3
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
