“They’re lonely.” She looks back to the court, from here its many bonfires flickering like starlight. “These events bring strangers together who would otherwise never meet, except maybe on the battlefield.” Anandi understood these events, at least she thought she did. Her issue is that they were trite and boring, at least the few she’d been to. Have a drink, light a candle, dance with someone pretty. She longed for an event with caviar, broken noses, and shattered glass. But it was unbecoming for an emissary to have this opinion, so she kept it to herself. Her entertainment was had in other ways, mostly in the dark or underwater, and in this way she maintained a faultless facade.
On paper, the perfect emissary. Except for that minor kelpie problem-- Which, she would argue (fiercely, unrepentant), was actually a strength.
Lucinda quickly sees her for what she is. Anandi is impressed, but her expression is relaxed, unphased by the threatening gleam in the other woman’s eyes. That lazy, feline confidence: I’m faster and sharper than you. Remind me again, what do I have to fear?
“Oh? Most respond to me with fear and loathing.” If they recognized her as kelpie to begin with, which they often didn’t. Anandi has not yet decided if the other woman was foolish, crazy, or… something else. Something familiar. Like they already knew the end to this story, even if they didn’t. Like the ocean called to them both-- in different ways, sure, but it called, and it could not be ignored.
Suddenly she thinks of Leto.
She thinks of Leto and a yearning rises, a little nagging feeling she knows she should ignore. Leto was like this. Beautiful, fearless, fierce. But she is gone now, lost beneath the waves. And in her wake, a gaping, pining hole.
Anandi shakes her head as though the wanting was a physical thing that could be dislodged like a fly. “So, what do you think?” She turns in a little circle, laughing like a child. “Do I meet your expectations?” And when she stops and looks up, moonlight carving her cheekbones like porcelain, she does not look anything like a child. She is wild and beautiful and a little terrifying, this daughter of midnight sea. She glances to the ocean, which rises to her hocks and tugs at the sand beneath her hooves. Her tail flicks, a memory of cutting through water.
She takes a step toward the rising tide. Meeting Lucinda's eyes, she tilts her head curiously-- almost as if in invitation.
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
A N A N D I
@Lucinda <3
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
