She dances and she does not think of the bones that groan beneath her feet.
She dances as all ocean-made things do, as if it is water holding her not smoke and darkness.
Her every move is gliding, feline, sleek. Sereia is balletic and yet there is something other in the way she twists and turns, swirls and bends. That something other is not ocean born (like salt upon her skin) but deeper still. It is feral and comes from her marrow. Her body hums with it, it is a song louder than the cry of the howling wind. It is a song whose rhythm echoes in her soul. It is a feral and hungry thing; lacing through the dance of a kelpie, instinct driving each fine foot to step, step, step like a heartbeat. She is alluring, in the way all predators are. Powerful, sleek, dangerous.
The girl moves until her dance has pulled nearly every breath from her lungs. She only stops when her too-slim sides swell and swell and swell again and never draw enough air in. Even then she smiles. Always it is that small, shy grin. It is the look of a girl letting a part of her slip free. She does. It is not Sereia who lets her body move in this ocean dance, but the kelpie.
Maybe that is why her eyes linger on the softest parts of those who dance around her. Maybe that is why she presses too close and breathes, and breathes, and breathes, in, in, in. She hears hearts thrumming and blood rushing, the air is sweet (not with sugar but with skin and muscle, bone and thriving hearts). Smoke and the salty tang of flesh lay themselves across her tongue.
There is heaven in her pain. She knows this is a thin place here, where bliss and anguish meet through a veil as thin as gossamer.
Long lashes press upon her cheek and the girl breathes in and remembers what it is to hunt and crave. At once it is too much. But already she is close to a girl, their limbs nearly tangling. Oh, Sereia already knows how she would taste. Her lips are parting, her sharp, sharp teeth reaching...
They reach their prize and graze across the other girl’s skin before Sereia rouses.
Oh.
No.
No!
Scrambling back, untangling herself deftly, daring not to breathe, to taste the bead of blood upon her tongue, Sereia flees. Out, out, out from the throng of dancers she emerges. She laughs, reckless, overjoyed. Her eyes snag upon a man at the edge. He is crowned in flowers, with feathers at his ankles. Covetously she studies his wings as she steps toward him, panther sleek. Her body is slim, a flower unnourished by the sun, choked of sunlight by the weeds of her own self-loathing. Yet she smiles, lovely, sweetly.
The girl tips her chin down toward her breast until her hair tumbles forward veiling her eyes, her lips and the ruby red droplet of blood. She does not lick it away. It is bliss when her hair sweeps her mouth clean. “I prayed for feathers every night as a child.” Sereia whispers to the man and his flowers. “But ocean girls are not made for the sky.” Her lips tip up into a sad smile that he might be able to see, if she would only let him. She doesn’t.
“Why do you look so sad?” Sereia’s gaze trickles across his face, soft as butterfly wings. “There is only space for one of us to be sad tonight. Can it be me?”
@Ipomoea - So, so glad to write with Po again, I have missed him <3
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
