It was poignant, somehow; the water horse and the sky horse, meeting on plain, two-dimensional land. “If there’s a better feeling in the world I’ve yet to discover it,” she says wistfully, and Anandi laughs. “You’ve yet to swim like I do, my dear!” To cut through schools of fish and watch them scatter in your wake, to roam like a lioness through forests of kelp. To dive deeper, and deeper, and deeper, to a world where not even the sun can reach you, a place illuminated by a starscape of strange lights and ruled by massive, mysterious beasts. “Then again, I’ve yet to fly like you. If only we could switch, for just a day.” She sighs dreamily at the thought.Once, a book of fairytales had drifted down into the deep. The pages were all scattered and so they were only able to read the stories in bits and pieces. Some they strung together into complete stories, but most remained as just snippets-- a magic bean that grew into a ladder to--, a lamp that, when rubbed, emitted a---, a rabbit (the illustration of it looked enticing-- they all crowded around to look at it with wide eyes) with a clock, scampering down a hole, saying he was-- and so on and so forth. One of the tales had been about a mother and daughter who woke up one morning in the other’s body, but Anandi never found out how the story ended. The paper turned to pulp, and they let it go to sink to the sea floor.
As they walked, Anandi in thoughtful silence, the court walls rose up in what seemed like defiance to the weight of the sky. And behind the walls, rows and rows of buildings made of stone that appeared, at first glance, to be standing only by virtue of exceptional balance. Here and there, Andi’s eye was caught by trellises heavy with purple and yellow flowers. As a whole, it was an impressive sight, and surely like nothing the kelpie had ever seen before. Or rather-- it was similar to what she had seen before, but far... more. Of everything. More color, shape, texture, scent.
"You're not horrible, though." Anandi glows at the compliment, and though she does not reply she oozes that shy smile again. "I’d like to know more about where you come from." The kelpie tilts her head, unsure where to begin, and decides to start where her last thought ended.
“Well, I come from the deep ocean. We don’t have cities down below. But we’ve seen paintings of them, and maps, and all sorts of things your people have lost to storm and shipwreck.” Such otherworldly things that could not survive the ocean-- waterlogged parchment tore apart, coins and figurines rusted away. An entire shipment of carrots drifted down once. They hadn’t a clue what to do with the floppy orange things, so Andi and her sisters held them like swords in their telepathic grasp and they chased each other, laughing, through the twilight waters. She smiles at the memory, and the expression is strangely girlish on her dignified features. “We sing a lot, and we dance even more, and we wait for our next meal to drift down. We live deep, where it’s… safer.” There were no other kelpies, like the one Samaira met, who would (probably) eagerly massacre her kind for brunch. “But it’s lonely down there, too, and sometimes-- most of the time-- it’s very very dark.” Day was a thick, eerie twilight, and night was… well, it was an all encompassing darkness. In comparison, night on the surface was a beautiful, dazzling thing. It felt absolutely decadent, to have cool starlight on one’s skin.
They’re drawing close to the city now, and Anandi reaches out to gently brush her muzzle along the stone walls. “Who built this place?” She asks her companion, finding it doubtful that it was the creation of horses. From what she had seen so far, her land-dwelling counterparts were not very industrious, and she would even go so far to say that some were lazy. (She had watched a man for an entire day once, and literally all he did was eat and shit.)
When they come to the great gates the kelpie pauses, suddenly uncertain and out of place. Surely everyone would see her for what she was-- an imposter, a murderer. A beast. But the look on Samaira’s face is kind and inviting, and Anandi has the sense that the other woman is not the sort to deceive. Not like she would. So she smiles weakly, feeling guilty for her lesser nature, and she asks: “Will you show me to where I might find lodging?” She does not ask about food or water; she knows where to find those.
And then she steps forth into the city she knows only by soggy pictures and faded maps, and she learns how sometimes imagination is far surpassed by reality.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
