There is a battle going on behind those stormy eyes. Anandi watches it unfold with sleepy-sharp cat eyes. On one side there is the wary, sensible fear of one wild thing in the presence of another. On the other there is intrigue, and attraction, and that oh-so-ancient allure of the unknown.
Curiosity wins. Curiosity will always win, when it comes to girls like them.
“Poor birds. And if I prefer a kiss instead of a name? What would the cost of that be?” She blinks slowly. The setting sun at her back paints them both in blushing colors. Come closer. Let me take a better look at you.
It doesn't matter what the cost is. Anandi is committed. Whatever the beautiful stranger wishes, she need only ask. So she begins to talk about the sea. “The ocean you know is a lie. Nothing more than a reflection of the sky.” It reveals only what it wants to-- which is not very much.
“There is a story about how the moon fell in love with the sea. And the sea loved the moon, as much as the sea can love anything. But the moon became sad, for she only ever saw the surface of the sea. She wanted to swim with its children and feel its gentle touch and know its depths. So the moon began to cry, big fat silver tears that fell to earth and rolled into the ocean.” Anandi glances to the sky. The slivered moon could hardly compete with the sun’s radiance, but you could still see its vague outline. Like a piece of the sky was missing.
“It is said those tears became the ancestors of my people. Kelpies.” There were other names, of course. Orestes had rattled them off to her like a cursed laundry list. But her tribe had always called themself kelpie and it was the name Anandi identified with most. “Once they knew the depth of the sea they never returned to the surface, and the moon lost her children forever more. So we have the moon in our veins, but our mother-- our mother is really the sea.”
That’s not how everything really happened. The truth was more complicated and less romantic than that. But it’s the story they were told as children. It was their creation story; and wasn’t there an element to truth in every myth?
Anandi licks her lips. “So how about it? Do I get a name?” A tilt of the head, a generous smile. All of it coming easy, so easy; the sun setting on her back and the ocean swaying like it was drunk. It was an extraordinary ease of being she possessed, and maybe that’s what drew her to the kohl-eyed pegasus: they were birds of a feather, if only in one way.
call it singing
A N A N D I
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
