[AW] shorebird

[Nicnevin]

SHE'S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

I am not falling, exactly.

I don’t even feel like I am moving. In those strange, slow moments between one realm and the next, I feel incorporeal, and, although I have always been assured of the knowledge and skill of the priestesses, I cannot help but wonder if they have made a mistake; it feels like I have died another death, shed another skin, and become something burning-bright and golden. Like sunrays. Like the sunrays that barely make it through the thick weave of branches that seem to block out the entire sky when you walk through the forest of my homeland, and, for a brief, fanciful moment, I find myself thinking that, if I have perished, it will be wonderful to be a warm, bright sunray-

And then I am out of that comfortable brightness; it falls off my shoulders like a veil. I am standing…somewhere incomprehensible.

This world is not golden. It is not painted in brilliant shades of red-orange and pale yellow; the light is not like honey. There are no trees anywhere to be seen, only dark crags of rock, awash with scrappy, dull green grass that browns and dies near the edges. The air does not smell of sweet things and spices – instead, it smells of something utterly unfamiliar, and, as the wind whips against my face, the scent makes my nose burn. I gag, trying to make sense of it, and shake my head.

Nothing prepares me for what I see when I look up.

I have never seen the sky before. At home, the branches in the canopy grow so thick that they block out every last inch of it, though the priestesses have always insisted that it exists above them. I have always heard that it is blue, but it is grey, and it looks…rough, somehow, like there are layers to it. They resemble cotton, sometimes, and smudges at others. I’ve heard, occasionally, of something called a cloud, which brings another something, called rain, which is supposedly when water falls from the sky.

I always suspected that the travelers who told such tales were lying or exaggerating – but, as I stand on the edge of the cliff, staring up at the sky, I’m frighteningly aware that maybe they weren’t, which means that I know even less than I ever expected.

But it’s beautiful, somehow. Not as beautiful as our forest, because nothing ever is, but beautiful nevertheless.

I risk a look down from the sky, to try and find the place where it meets the horizon, and what I see sends me stumbling backwards. It can’t be possible that I’m looking at water. There is never that much water in one place, and water isn’t supposed to be that murky, steel blue color; water is the color of polished sapphires, and always so clear that you can see the bottom, and I can’t see anything at all in…whatever this is meant to be. It stretches out from horizon to horizon, undulating strangely, each bob crested by something white. Whenever a bob tumbles over itself, it makes a sound, so the water sounds like – something. I don’t know how to describe the noise; I’ve never heard anything like it before. It’s almost like wind, if wind had substance to it.

I’ve been the wind before. I know how it feels to be formless, weightless. That…liquid mass is not wind, but it is almost like it, in the way that it moves.

It is my curiosity, mostly, that draws me forward. I stretch out my wings, test the wind, and jump into the air – without the reminder of branches above, flight feels strange. Unnatural, almost, but no more overwhelming than the rest of – this. It’s almost too much, almost everything, and I don’t know where to put the way I’m feeling right now. It won’t fit in my chest.

I circle down – nice and slow – but hover a few inches off the ground where the liquid mass meets…something. It is dense and pale, and it reminds me of grain, but much, much smaller; where it touches the water, it darkens, but further back, towards the coast, it’s so pale that it’s nearly white. I extend one hoof tentatively to touch it, and it pushes down several inches, leaving a little half-moon shape when I jerk it back. It seems…solid, probably, and, even if it isn’t, I can fly. I land slowly, one hoof after another, and, although it shifts awkwardly beneath my hooves in a way that doesn’t feel at all solid, I don’t feel like I’m about to sink into it.

The liquid rushes towards me, then falls back in on itself. I don’t understand why - there were rivers, back home, and streams, and they moved, but not like this. It seems like it is getting closer, somehow; each frothy extension seems to travel a bit further than the last, that white sticky stuff lingering on the grains like a marker. I extend one leg hesitantly, unsure of what the liquid may do to me if I touch it, and tap the very tip of it to the surface.

Nothing happens. Absolutely nothing – and, before I can pull my hoof away again, the liquid bites back, splashing my entire foreleg in it. It seems to cling oddly, as though there is some solid quality, and, when I pull my leg back and rest it in the wind, it feels like there is something gritty caught in my coat.

It only strikes me after I have taken a mouthful of it that it is a very, very foolish thing to do. I don’t even have enough time to curse the impulse before my mouth is flooded with a reprehensible taste; I manage to spit out some of it, but some of it is sucked down my throat, and it makes me want to vomit. I choke, trying to cough it up, and fall back several steps, my wings flaring out to keep my balance. My mouth feels raw, and there is this horrible, stinging sensation in my nose.

I bury my hooves in the grainy substance, eyeing that gnawing liquid skeptically. Disgusting, absolutely disgusting – but I don’t feel ill, beyond a nauseating aftertaste, so hopefully it isn’t anything dangerous. I shake my head, looking up and ahead and down the shore each way.

The landscape looks repetitive, somehow, in its foreignness - and it occurs, abruptly, to me that I know nothing about this place or its people, and I have absolutely no idea where to go.

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@open! || hi, this is nic, and she knows absolutely nothing about anything in spite of living like fifty lives before this. || gregory orr, "once the two of us"

"Speech!" 

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