Juniper
what does her kingship accomplish?
Turn the winds whisper to her, urging her to look into the waters, into their briny midst and find the creature that purrs over the sand. Her words are starlight and silk, they are soft and seductive, and they take the girl off-guard for but a moment. Juniper knows she should look to the sea, should protect herself, should find the voice that could be a threat, but she does not. No, green eyes cannot leave the frothy surface of the waves that wash upon these beaches, cannot bear to raise higher than the lip of the smallest splash.
Her bones quake from the exposure and vulnerability.
She was never meant to sit upon the ground as a lying duck before a feast.
Instead, the goddess-girl dips her head lower, a small bow as her wings extend to either side. Always the performer, always the wild thing in the wings waiting to take center stage. When she looks up, it is to the stars and clouds, it is to the sighing of the wind that calls her so ardently. "The birds never learned as I did," she hums in response, languid words a chiming bell to counter the rich temptation Anandi's hold. They are not sharp, but laughing and sweet, bearing the innocence of youth that cannot quite be washed from ivory skin no matter how the years touch her.
"I'll trade it for a story from you?" She's quick to counter, glancing down ever so briefly into the darkness, to the land just offshore, to the woman half hidden in coral and sand. Heart sighs, eyes travel over the silver slip of a girl, and then she looks back to her sands, back to the safety of the land that is not the sea. Juniper pushes the shaking of her bones down, urges her heart to soften, soften like the clouds she rushes through, soften like the summer flowers she shreds and rebuilds, soften until it is no longer beating a furious tattoo, but instead is calm like the night.
She will not be afraid.
She is free.
Wings continue to flare, stretching and dancing with the angles of the breeze as she walks along the shoreline, never quite close enough to let saltwater stain her shoes. "Tell me of the ocean," the goddess-girl asks, looking back to the heights of the cliff, the heart of the sky, the holes in the ground. Looking, looking, everywhere but the sea. Everywhere but the root of her terror and irrationality. "In return, you may have my name as a kiss upon your lips." She smiles then, as radiant as the sun, as breathless as the breeze, and how she is a beacon of moonlight and dreams ! Juniper longs to feel skin against velvet water-slick sides, to know a distraction that offers the gentle shh shh shh of the waters without any of the threats.
It is something she does not yet say. If you look, you'll find it in the crinkling laughter of those green, green, piccadilly green eyes and the corner of her kiss-me lips. Perhaps the night also hides that, perhaps some things will only be revealed when they are close enough to sin.
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