She climbs out of the river. As always her limbs are newborn shy. Each landbound step is as if upon spiderly limbs. The more she changes, rising out of the water becomes easier. Her limbs become more used to the land. Sereia grows less like a newborn and more like a girl of the land, one born as much to the earth as to the sea.
The water pours off her gilded skin as she climbs the bank. She does not look, nor even pause to take stock of her surroundings. The sun is tumbling out of the sky at her back. It bathes the wide river in a purple as deep as a bruise. The sky is cast in hues of crimsons and blues and golds. The kelpie is bathed as the sunset and dawn skies. She holds those colours upon her skin, a portrait of dying day and rising dawn.
In the growing dark, deep into the woodlands shadows, she sees lights glowing. The move like fireflies around a fire that glows a radiant gold. Sparks crackle in the air and she hears the sounds of laughter peeling out of the trees. Never before has a group made their camp here, upon the outskirts of the citadel.
Slowly the girl steps away from the water, leaving a path of droplets. Still damp she weaves her way into the woodland. She follows the light as if she were a moth. Yet, for all her meek heart, there is nothing so mild about Sereia. She is a lion, a creature in possession of the beauty and grace of a swan. Yet aggression bleeds from her every pore, her kelpie rattles its chains along her rips and it sings off her every bone. The girl moves like a predator no matter how much she longs not to be one.
A dark figure stands upon the edge of the camp, his spear reaching up as if to pierce the sky. The smell of desert heat and sweltering sand. Intrigue draws her closer. She slinks closer, closer, peeling out of the shadows, adorned in gold and the deep blue of the ocean. With firelight dancing across her skin she pauses and watches the man. “You seem tense.” The girl breathes, a melody of seafoam and salt. “Does Delumine not suit you?” The girl murmurs as she continues edging forward, timid like a doe. Yet her kelpie watches from her predator eyes. As the firelight reaches her face, the girl tips it down. The wet strands of her golden mane fall over her face, shielding her mouth - anything to hide the shame of her monstrous nature.
“Welcome.” She whispers and she cannot help studying him, this man who comes from a place so parched of water. A part of her is in love with such a concept - if she were to ever rid herself of her kelpie, she might find a desert in which to live - far, far from the call of the sea and its wicked kelpies.
@Jahin
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
