Don’t look back. You can't. That is the cost of moving forward.
This is what Anandi tells herself when she starts to feel trapped in her private study. When she glances up to see the ocean, steely grey and wanting. The ocean, so close, and yet-- a world away from her maps and letters, her rank and station, her wine and candles and all the other extravagances of the surface world.
To her benefit she has a lifetime of training in suppressing her urges, denying her instincts, swallow her desires. As much as she misses home, she doesn’t have time to be homesick. She doesn’t have energy to look behind her. And, maybe, she doesn’t want to see the trail she’s left behind on her way here, the way she carved bloody and sunken into the soft earth. Maybe she doesn’t want to think of Leto, and Lucinda, and all the other terrible, wonderful things she’s done, and the weight of all the decisions she’s made.
So Anandi looks forward, to the girl that stands before her. “I think I am alright.” she says, and an entertained smile lights up Anandi’s girlish face. She did not have much patience for those without self-assurance, but she seemed to constantly make exceptions for anyone with a pretty face. As violent and cruel and predatory as the kelpie could be, she did like to be liked, particularly by the beautiful. So she kept her teeth hidden and her eyes demure, and although there was just something about her which made you uneasy, it struck you that this wasn’t entirely a bad thing.
“I’m Anandi. And yes, this,” she gives a shrug-like gesture to their surroundings, “ is the one and only Dusk Court.”
Where to? Anandi eyes her companion again. Salt-flecked and a little ragged. And-- by the jut of her hips, she could use something to eat. “The gardens.” She announces. “We’ll find you something to eat there. And you can wash up in the fountains.” They were quite spectacular, at least Anandi had thought so the first time she saw them-- which was just about a year ago now. My, how time flew by on the surface world.
The emissary leads the way to the gardens on the South side of the court proper. Along the way she points out places of interest- The Lazy Whirlpool (one of the court’s nicer inns), a spattering of pubs, the markets. Finally they reach the terraced slope facing the sea. Rows of fruit trees and vegetables line the lower levels. The vegetation becomes less practical and more decorative with each tier; the top row is a bounty of fragrant roses, jasmine, lilies. Their scent is swept by the ocean breeze up to the towers of the court.
Anandi glances to the window she knows leads to Marisol’s study. And she wonders, for a brief selfless second, what her sovereign is up to. If she can smell the roses and the sweet salt breeze. If she too ever wants to slip beneath the sea and just be.
But the emissary is here and now and sweet Elena is standing by with those bright blue eyes. Anandi steps forward, through the rows of the garden and toward its heart. There lies a giant fountain, built over a natural spring. Two children splash in the knee-deep water, squealing as they splash each other. On the way she picks an apple and floats it with her telepathy toward Elena. "Eat," she says gently, and although her voice is not unkind there is a certain tenseness to her. Like the word was a test.
Or maybe she was always like this; electric.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
