In the business of the market, where life thrums vibrantly on in colour and laughter and where sweet things drip syrup onto plates, Sereia can almost forget just how much she does not belong. Here on the stalls are things from all across Novus. Foreign traders sell their wares with a smile - some still bear the dust of Solterra, others the flowers of Delumine and yet more the feathers and trinkets of Terrastella.
Here, where merchants have forced the sea to give up her secrets and laid them on tables to be sold, here, where coins clink with the merry sound of commerce, here is where Sereia can almost forget how much she hungers. She can almost forget that she hears their hearts beat, wetly, that they call to her in a way more deadly than a siren’s call. They lure the girl in and never know it is death they welcome. And maybe that is why, when Amaunet draws near and turns her gaze upon Sereia, that Sereia does not blanch when she sees the slash of crimson paint (so much like blood) across Amaunet’s face.
There is a violence to these girls, yet one looks more poised for it than the other. The latter is but lean and angular, soft in all the places her kelpie is weak. Sereia smiles, a warm thing, a shy and lovely thing - like clear waters in a paradise cove. But that smile is forever a lie (though she prays that it were not) for beneath Sereia’s gilded and blue skin is a sea that churns stormy and relentless. It claims lives with jackal teeth and an unnatural strength. It lets fearlessness breed within Sereia’s soul as though she were a poisonous flower. Beautiful to look at and deadly to hold.
“I think red suits you.” Sereia observes, her eyes still lingering along that crimson line. She can feel a desperation stirring, the awakening of a monster. Sereia smiles, shy, and pretends she does not feel the roiling violence. The desperation of a starving animal growing ever more violent. The stranger drops her coins upon the table, they are dented and strange. They have aged in a way things never do in the sea. Keen, brazen, Sereia picks one up. She studies it, watches the way light gleams across its face. “I have not seen coins like this before.” The merchant grumbles for his missing piece and Sereia ignores him, “Where did you get them?” The girl turns her gold-bright eyes upon Amaunet, “Thank you, Amaunet.” The scarf wraps about her throat, soft as a breeze, “Though you did not need to.” Sereia has all the money of Minn behind her, there is nothing for which she wants, but for the secrets of the ocean and the eternal end to a kelpie’s hunger.
Sereia looks up from her scarf. Up the smooth column of Amaunet’s throat, past where her pulse beckons her with every throb. Up to where Amaunet’s eyes gleam dark and strong and violent.
“What brings you to Novus?” Seriea asks and smiles a smile too wide, too lovely, too dangerous.
@Amaunet
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
