It’s cute how her companion grows wide-eyed and speechless at Anouk’s cool touch. Anandi smiles, pleased by the young mare’s reaction, and any jealousy she harbored is lost to amusement. Anouk returns, anyway, as Anouk always does, pressing a smile against her flesh, or as much of a smile as a drop can make. “She smells so different. So lovely,” it hums in Andi’s mind, and something deep and jagged churns in her stomach. Samaira smells of clean earth and untouched flesh, supple and sweet. “Indeed she does,” the kelpie replies, a little less innocent, a little more sinister. The only response is a silence heavy with disapproval. Anouk did not like to speak of friends in such ways.And Anandi dearly needed friends, if she wanted success and any measure of status here.
“Animal helpers?” That seemed… unclean… but in her brief time on the surface she quickly learned that most of this world was dirty– literally dirty, a word that did not exist Below– and there was not much anyone could do about it. She spared a moment to pity these land dwellers, and felt very benevolent for doing so. “I’d like to see that.” It was true, for she was intrigued, despite her minor distaste at the thought of an animal touching her wounds. And she’d like to see Boudika dancing and Apolonia… well, doing anything at all. The more she saw of this world, the more she wanted to see. “I’d like to see you fly, too,” she adds with a smile that seems shy. (Anandi was not shy, no matter how much she might look it.) “Isn’t it better than being stuck on the ground?” She missed the ocean for many reasons– the liquid embrace of it, the feel of currents moving through you, the sound of the sea floor rolling and rubbing against itself– but what she missed most of all was the freedom of movement. One could go not just left and right, front or back, but up and down, too, and all with far more agility than four sticklike legs provided.
As they walk, the dust of the trail settles on Anandi’s hips and back, shoulders and belly. She begins to look a little less divine, a little more like a land horse, except for the fine, expressive features of her face and the expressive coral-colored fringe, which has relaxed and folded, like a fan, to her neck.
Samaira speaks of her encounter with the beast and it is disappointingly normal. “Oh.” A pretty frown puckers at the edge of her expressive lips. “Well, he was probably horrible. Most of–” she almost says them– “us are.” Her tone is neutral, almost light, as though they’re talking of some matter of fact like the weather, like snow. Not me, of course, I’m not like the rest, can’t you tell?
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
