HE HAD BEEN SOMEONE BEFORE THE FALL
Of all the things the fates could have thrown at me, it is this: A water horse.
She cannot hide it, even in her cautious approach. She reeks of saltwater; briny; fish. No matter what, they always smell like fish.
She looks like one. Finned. Tailed. I almost ask,
Don’t you know, the land isn’t for you?
It does not matter she is not of my homeland. They are all the same. Does she have teeth, I wonder? Does she hunt? Perhaps she sings. I have heard stories of water horses that sing, and lure, and whisk men away to their death with their beauty. I almost laugh aloud then. I almost smile. There is nothing beautiful here, in a creature not meant for the world she inhabits.
I watch her.
I watch her.
I know what I must look like. I have practiced this face for years. Contemplative; expressionless but not hard. As she nears me, I face her approach and there is a softening to my mouth, to my eyes, a suggestion of a smile that is there and gone as if I were pleasantly surprised.
I am.
Not for the reasons she might think. Her presence is just an affirmation to the sights I have already seen; there are water horses in this land and with that I feel relief. Archaic. Heavy. It is the relief a predator must feel when the rains come, bringing back great herds of prey. She is my purpose. That is her only beauty. And the rains have brought her.
“It is cold.” I agree. We are opposites; we clash. My golds are not her blues; and her blues belong beyond the crest of the hills, back toward the sea. “But it seems as if you are a way from home, especially if you don’t like the weather.” And I gesture with one hoof at her fins, her gills, her two sets of eyes. What do I not gesture at? It is so clear she does not belong here, and I think of how each one of those attributes that make her so adept in the water would slow her here. Her tail would not aide her if she ran here, far from her beloved water. But I feel powerful. I feel swift. And I think I could catch her so easily—even as she stands at a careful distance, weary of me.
There is a part of me, however, that disagrees. I feel the cold sinking into my injured leg. I feel the way that it aches, and aches, with the weariness of misuse. I could still lunge at her. Even without a spear, I have the weapons of a soldier. It would not be so difficult to push past the pain of an old injury, one that the mere thought of fills me with a bubbling rage. It was her type of people that had done it to me.
Instead of acting on the sentiment, I toss my own head back, toward the increasing rain, and feel it slick my face and hair back from my eyes. I expose my throat and watch her carefully from slitted eyes, beneath the pretence they are slitted only to keep the rain from them. “I am going into the city, if you would like to accompany me. It is not far, and it is not cold.” I drop my head again and gesture with my chin at the shadow of Denocte. Despite the rain, I can tell the wind has shifted; because the scent of Denocte's bonfires reaches even here.
In a place with no warmth.
In the presence of an enemy.
And I bide my time.
"speech"
