[AW] shorebird

[Nicnevin]

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

When I don’t know what an oh-shin is, she looks at me with a particular curiosity – like you might look at a rare species of bird, or something that’s not quite supposed to be where it is. (I suppose that I am rather out-of-place, here.) This is the first good look I’ve gotten at her face; her eyes are mismatched, like mine, but different colors. They’re young, in some way, too, somehow, even though she’s physically older than me. The priestesses say that outsiders rarely remember their previous lives, so they usually seem younger when they are young, like new souls. I notice, too, that she is dangerous. It’s not just the hurlbat she carries; I didn’t pay too much attention to the look of her, when she came walking up, altogether too elated by the presence of another person to care, but she’s built strong, and she carries herself with a certain confidence.

I’m taller than she is already, and armed with horns, but I doubt I’d stand much of a chance against her if it came to a fight. But it doesn’t seem like it’s going to. She’s smiling at me, halfway, with a gleam in her eyes that I don’t quite recognize. I smile back – it’s a little bit uncertain, a little bit wobbly around the edges, but certainly not forced.

“Yeah. The ocean.” She draws it out very carefully; she’s noticed, I’m sure, that I don’t really understand what I’m talking about. Her accent sounds to me like those little bobs in the liquid – it rises and falls, nearly melodic.

“The…ocean?” I repeat, carefully, just to make sure I’m getting it right.

“Have you never seen it? Or – heard of it?” She says it like it’s a very strange thing that I’ve never heard of the ocean. I wonder if it is; I wonder if oceans are common knowledge to people in this land, unlike in my own. I shake my head, which sends chestnut strands of my mane fluttering back into my eyes. (I give up on actually keeping them out of my face. In this wind, the effort is totally futile.)

“No, never – my homeland is a great forest, and I've never left it, before today.” Not in any of my lifetimes. Perhaps it is a strange coincidence; most theorists believe that it must be possible for souls within the forest to be reborn outside of the forest, else we wouldn’t have space for them all. (I am not so sure, but, then, I have been the ephemeral wind and morning dew, and I knew that I was not alone when I was them.) But – souls are everywhere, and death and life are everywhere, and so must be rebirth, even for outsiders, though I have been told that it is much more difficult for them to remember their previous lifetimes. It is only the natural way of things.

I watch her thoughtfully, wondering if it is really so strange to have never heard of an ocean before. “We almost never allow travelers into the forest,” I add, by way of an explanation, “and we very rarely leave.” When I consider it, I am not so sure that anyone who has left the forest has ever come back to us – a thought that is troubling, considering my present circumstances. But those travelers, I tell myself, did not leave intending to come home. (I do not know that for sure. I have never met any of them, in any of my lives.)

Besides. The fate of my people lies on my shoulders – if I do not find the heir, I am not sure what will happen, but I am sure that it will be troublesome. Worst comes to worst, a struggle for the throne could ensue. We have enough trouble from outsiders; internal conflict would put the forest in horrible danger.

“What…is the ocean? What is it made of?” I look back at the grey liquid suspiciously, the memory of its awful taste reemerging from the spot in the back of my head where I’d carefully buried it.

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@Apolonia || <3 

"Speech!" 

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