Anandi has been alone for what feels like so long. Untethered from the family that, for most of her life, was simply everything. Her closest friends, her deepest enemies; her confidants, her rivals. Her world, deep down there in the cold and the dark.
To be so suddenly not alone is a surreal feeling. The ripping of the bandage, in reverse. A coming together, a comfort, a wholeness that had been so far removed she had begun to forget what it had felt like to begin with.
The sight of Indrani hits like a hammer to the throat. She stops in her tracks. She thinks she might be crying. “Sister!” Anandi leaps into motion. She runs, legs long and strong, graceful but-- there would always be something a little odd to the motion. Her stride marking her as other just as much as the coral fringe on her poll or the wicked sharp gleam of her teeth. She skids clumsily to a halt, and closes the scant remaining distance to her older sister in a prancing trot.
“Indrani.” The emissary is definitely crying now, pretty little tears that she beats away with a frenzy of long-lashed blinks. She steps forward to embrace her sister, chest to chest, and a little giddy laugh emerges from her. A white flame of joy, so hot it could not ever be taken. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She knows she ought to unravel herself, show her sister the court, say something, say anything, but right now she just wants a long moment wrapped in something familiar. And Anandi was good at getting what she wanted.
I forgot that joy, too, ought to be mine
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
