She has dared to come. It feels foolish but oh how she yearns to step amidst the crowd and, for but a moment, become a land horse. A vendor calls, loud above the crowd that sweeps down the cobbled streets.
Sereia dares to take only sips of air as she steps off the street and into a shop full of colour and wonder. Her golden eyes widen as they skip from bolt to bolt of vibrant cloth. Her heart thunders in her chest. She dares to step in deeper, where bodies are pressed closer, where the thrum of blood is louder, louder in her ears.
Slowly, slowly she breathes and ignores the way her stomach twists. Hunger pools deep and her teeth feel sharp, sharp across her lower lip. The food she ate on her way here, a cake, a flower, a crop of grass, none of it satisfies. All of it is paltry to her meat-yearning body.
It is no wonder she is slim and angular. It is no wonder her hunger is a wild thing within her stomach. She keeps it malnourished and it sleeps, it sleeps, until it doesn’t-
She is a long way from the sea and the girl has never felt so right. Though her mane still bears shells and trinkets of the ocean’s deep. Sand still clings to the gold of her skin, it is pale as dust. Her body smells of salt and sun.
A boy suddenly appears as her eyes befall a strip of blue satin piped with gold. She reaches for it as he reaches for her. He touches, a shell within her mane. The girl freezes for he is so close, his skin so sweet his body so frail in its youth. Her hunger rouses, it yearns and tells her of the feast it needs, the feast it begs for. She tamps down her kelpie and closes her eyes, breathing in, shallow, shallow and out anything to bring in the smell of smoke from the street, of the sweet honey cake another boy clutches.
Slowly Sereia turns her gaze upon Pan. Her eyes are warm like the sun, beautiful, inviting. All of her was made to be inviting, so she could feast, so she could hunt. Her smile is wide, wide to accommodate her teeth. She lowers her crown and a shock of golden and blue mane falls across her face, shielding her too-wide smile.
Beneath the thick fan of her lashes she watches the boy, studies the green of his scales. “I am not lost. I wanted to be here.” Sereia says lightly, slowly and dares to smile, small, small. “But i can help you find the sea if you wish?” Her eyes close and she dares not breathe as her kelpie rouses and whispers through her nerves, through her veins, and together we can feast.
When her eyes open, they are dim with regret, her teeth bite down into her lip. “That is a nice satchel.”
@Pan
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
