The girl smells like the ocean.
Anandi’s attention (wide, roving, wild thing) narrows into a thin line of focus as she wonders: what are you, to smell like something the sea gave back.
The emissary had stopped in her tracks without realizing it. That smell hit her hard in someplace deep and feral. That smell was safe, and wild, and home. It was her scent, and it shocked her to smell it on another.
“Hey,” Andi calls across the courtyard, the kind of girl comfortable with raising her voice to get someone’s attention instead of just walking up to them first. The kind of girl that will ask you to sit with her, if you look lost, in part to be kind but mostly to have your gratitude. It was a sort of currency, of an emotional nature. Moments of gratitude, shame, even joy could be collected and some day, when the time was right, repaid.
And Anandi was very good at keeping track of what she was owed.
She draws closer to the sun-kissed stranger, but to her disappointment the girl is just a girl. Not a siren, or a kelpie, or something the sea gave back. Shipwrecked or stranded, yet seemingly not lost. Ah, well. She could still be interesting, even if she wasn’t dangerous. “You hungry?” The kelpie’s gaze skims the stranger’s salt-tangled mane, lingers for a pointed moment on the hungry crook of her golden hips.
“Thirsty? Tired? Come on, I’ll show you around.” She beckons her head and begins to walk further into the court. Every movement graceful, precise, and something precariously balanced between dangerous and generous.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
