It is a lesser known fact that Sereia might arguably enjoy reading just as much as her sister, Jana. Yet where Jana falls deep into the waves of academia, Sereia succumbs to the world of stories. She will take them any way she can, sat around a campfire, that burns the salt from her skin, or down in the deep ocean scrawled upon the sand by a pirate kelpie passing through. But her favourite stories are the ones she makes up when she comes across a sunken ship, or, even better, an ancient city long ago swallowed by the rising waters.
Sereia has seen grand arches in these hidden cities. She has seen tiled floors and the ruinous walls of humble abodes now inhabited by fish and shells. Peering through glass windows she has wondered what the views had once been like. She has swam beneath great gilded statues that still glow like the sun, even now, after centuries beneath the waves. So it is no surprise that news of the unveiling of a grand archway draws the dreamer-girl out of the sea.
It is a joy to step upon land, to slip as deeply as she dare into the throngs of land-horses. She wonders if she might ever fit here. Always Sereia hides her teeth, her ravenous hunger and her eyes that grow dark with a wicked want. She endeavours to hide from herself, and the world, every part of her that is kelpie. Her smile is a secret thing, hiding sharp teeth. Her hair always long, always allowed to fall forward and veil her gills. Her long elfin ears, always self-consciously carried.
Never does she let herself see the parts of her that are quite lovely, how her ears are elegant, like the ripples of the ocean, her smile soft and warmer that the summer-sea, her eyes the gold of a setting sun, framed by lashes as dark as night-time clouds. For all that Sereia is lovely, for all that she is the gold of a sun-drenched sea, she has never seen how she is too slim, her body too slight. Her chest and ribs are always too angular, her body too starved, her kelpie deprived.
Yet Sereia, ever peaceful, ever the one to shy from blood and violence can never bring herself to hunt willingly. It is no surprise then, that she makes her way to the arch, through the markets, where sweetly flavoured foods line stall upon stall. The air is filled with heat and sugar, liquor and cooking smoke. She steps swiftly past the meat stalls that make her salivate - she swallows it down- and reaches instead for a bun, filled with raisins and syrup.
She eats as she walks, away from the markets, where laughter fades behind her and the shadow of a mountain looms in hues of blacks and purples, blues and greys. She wanders until the lights of fires are but a solitary firefly’s glow in the dark. There, before her a great arch rises. It reaches up for the sky and Sereia’s head tilts up, up, up. She follows its ornate carving and bright paintwork. It was made to be illuminated in silver and the moon and stars bathe it silver and wonderful. This is architecture that has not known time, or the sway of the deep blue sea. Moonlight pours in a thousand colours upon the ground and she steps into its lights, feeling how the colours adorn her. Ah, in these windows she could be anyone, anyone at all. The dark of night and the bright of colour hide her gills, her lovely secret smile, her golden-blue skin. With the veil of colours upon her, a second skin, a wonderful dress, unearthly and more elegant than she, Sereia turns to the person beside her and muses brightly, “Who would you rather be tonight?”
@Griffin
but what must be the smile
upon her friend she could bestow
were such her silver will
~ Emily Dickinson
