Anandi didn’t like the honeybees. She didn’t like the brambles, either. Or the burrs, or even the sunshine, for the most part, although it could on occasion be pleasant. The things she enjoyed were a little more nuanced than the easy pleasure of a sunny summer day. She valued tension and luxury. Silk and feathers, salt and smoke, and moonlight-- always moonlight-- to soften some edges, sharpen others.
The emissary smells them before she sees them. The kelpie is gifted with an excellent senses, fine-tuned over generations to track, hunt, kill. One of the strangers has the air of… of freshness. The other smells like dusk; juniper, salt, swamp.
Anandi watches carefully through dark-lidded eyes as the two women come into sight, then walk forward to stand at the steps of the capital. One of them is antlered and incredibly small (snack sized) and some god-awful instinct in the kelpie is charmed by how cute the little stranger is. The other is normal sized, maybe even a little tall. This one is a graceful beauty, and Anandi finds herself charmed once again, but in a different way.
“Hello there.” She smiles at the women as she steps forward to greet them. The sun kisses all the angles of her silver-grey body, and beneath its warm light her eyes gleam a brilliant shade of green. “I’m Anandi. Can I help you?” Her lips curl into a demure smile, careful not to flash the sharp edges of her predatory teeth. Her predatory (and, thus, sometimes violent) nature was often the subject of conversation or conjecture, but she did not want it to be her defining feature-- especially since she had so many others.
@Mephisto @
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
