IN THE PARAMETERS OF CANVAS, THE COFFIN OF THE FRAME -
the art of wreckage, how to figure ourselves in the ruins of what we can't traverse.
It’s a mild, grey day, and she wouldn’t normally be out for it, least of all beachcombing. Maybe she would have been when she was younger and more foolish, but not now – now she knows better than to wander the beach carelessly, much like she knows better than to waste time. With the boat docked in Solterra, however, and her deliveries completed, Locust has found herself left with too much free time and too little to do with it. It is this kind of day where she feels the absence of her crew most strongly. She can’t think of anything poetic to compare it to; only that they are gone, and she is still here, prodding absently at washed-up driftwood and kelp-covered objects, the occasional gleaming seashell. The sound of the ocean – sometimes forgettable enough to be almost silent, and sometimes all but roaring when the wind lessens – is ever-present behind her, but she keeps her distant from the sea.
Looking too closely at it makes her stomach turn. She can handle it on the boats because she is working, and she doesn’t have to think about it. Locust doesn’t know what brought her out today; she probably just didn’t know where else to go, and, so, she always goes back to the sea. She doesn’t want to anymore, but she doesn’t know any other way about it.
It is from some distance, while perched atop an inky crop of stones leading up to the shoreline, that Locust sees the man. He’s soaked – mane sea-swept and sticking to his skin, crusted in salt and sand, faintly steaming. (A mage, or some trick of the light? It’s hard to tell, but Locust can’t be bothered to care about the difference anyways.) As he stumbles to his hooves, she stares him down impassively, considering his awkward steps and scraggly features as best she can from the distance between them. It is always a gamble to approach strangers on the shore. (Locust wants to be sure that it is one she can win.)
He could be some poor, shipwrecked passenger, thrown to the tides. He could also be one of them, all sharp teeth behind a deceptively familiar face. (That was the worst part of them, Locust thought. They could be anywhere and anyone, and most of the time they’d never be fool enough to let you know.) Still, on the off chance that he is something washed up by the tides, not a carnivore, Locust cascades down the rocks like a crest of sea-foam, her hooves pressing ebony half-moons into the pale, wet sand. There is the salt in her lungs, and the sea in her ears, and, in a few long, quick strides, she has closed most of the distance between them, though she keeps some of it as a precaution. She tilts her head at him, white strands of her forelock threatening to tumble in her eyes with a click of pearls, and she smiles, though the gesture is not quite warm. “Did you wash up from a shipwreck?”
She isn't sure if he did. But - hopefully he will explain, even if the circumstances of his arrival are something else entirely. (Better yet, if he is one of them, though she cannot imagine a water-horse looking so bedraggled in his own element.)
@Dondre || <3 || "sea of ice," callie siskel
"Speech!" ||
