Do you know Sereia’s dreams are full of places like this? She dreams of woods lovely and deep, where boughs of trees press up against each other and every stirring of the wind is a sigh and a rustle so utterly removed from the hiss of the ocean surf. There is no salt in the air here, though it clings to Sereia’s lips and body and hair and lashes. She brings the sea into the heart of this wild wood.
For a moment she stops and her golden eyes close. She listens, to the merry chirp of birds she has no names for, for the creaking of a branch, the tap of a woodpecker busy in the idle afternoon. She thinks how far her dreams are from this. Where sunlight falls unbroken and brilliantly warm. Sereia steps through the rays, her bpdy the hues of a sunset ocean. Yes, she does not fit here, and animals fall still as she passes. Deer flee before her. Though this girl is soft, though her smile is a thing of loveliness, her eyes soft as dawn, this woodland knows what walks beneath its canopy.
“I will not hurt.” The kelpie breathes. It is a promise and yet, it is a lie. She cannot stop hurting, though she continues to endeavour not to. Her tongue is wet with want, her sides slim without enough food. But she vows to not eat the meat her body needs, she vows for peace and she will find another way.
A twig snaps, a bird takes flight, its frightened call an echo in the silent woodland. Sereia does not startle, for she is the loveliest predator here. She turns her wide, curious eyes toward the noise and says, with hope blooming in her gaze, with a smile daring to creep across her caramel lips, “Who goes there?”
@
dark and deep
I offer you
eternal sleep.
~
