Oh, Anandi had no idea, did she, that this land would be so full of such marvelous creatures. She had no idea how much she would come to admire them. Their beauty, their elegance. Even their stupidity, when it happened, which was not as often as she assumed, was utterly charming. How fond she would grow of their delicious scent and (most of all) the way they looked at her like she was a goddess.
“I am tired of running.” Anandi, wide-eyed, nods understandingly. (She does not understand.) “I know,” she whispers. (She does not know.) She licks her teeth. Jittery with need. There’s blood in the water, and she so wants to insert herself into the wound. Make it all better.
It is a kind of love. Maybe.
What does it mean to be different? Special? Anandi laughs. “It means you seduced the kelpie, and not the other way around.” So sweet, so honest. “It means I would make you mine,” How soothing her voice is, all velvet and starlight. It was a shame, how often landlings failed to realize the ocean could be warm. The ocean could be sweet. It could even, sometimes, be generous. “Not as a meal but as an equal.”
Oh but that soft voice promises of unseen barbs. In the crooked curl of her lips is a promise: yet-- we will never really be equals. You will always be a shadow of me, a star held up to the moon.
But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you learn to like it.
Anandi did not think her first time would be like this. With a beautiful girl stepping slow and sure into the sea. Up to her neck in seawater, looking over her shoulder. Summoning, with a voice that knows mud and stars and ocean. Summoning, with a look that could melt mountains. So lovely and so wanting. Mine, the kelpie marvels greedily. All mine, always. She will always remember the feel of the bone knife pressed to her throat. How her pulse rose half in fear, half in challenge. cut me, drink me, make me feel real.
Leto, brave, perfect Leto, she says: “Then come and let’s do something right.”
The words sink in like a fishhook. Anandi’s eyes glaze silver with moonlight. She wants to suspend time to lap it all up. To savor the way her bones ache so much with desire it feels like they might snap. But she was never very patient. Particularly not with the carrot on such a short stick.
Anandi growls, all divine savagery, and in the span of a heartbeat she’s pressed against Leto’s sweet summer flesh. Her tail, grown long and snakelike, wraps around the other mare’s legs. It tightens. There is little gentleness. There are no instructions. Anandi grabs that beautiful neck in her teeth and, feeling the pulse of life on her tongue, she pulls. Down into the water that roils and bubbles around them like a cauldron. Down into a heat that feels like desire itself.
And with the night and the ocean as witness, a most fated turning begins.
I scraped my teeth on destiny like eating a mango
it ran down my chin
the oldest story of all
@Leto <3
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
