It would certainly make life a little simpler.
Sereia smiles a small amused smile, drenched in sadness. It would, she agrees. If she were a tiger she would hunt without conscience. The kill would be about survival alone, she would not think of morals, or ethics. There would be no space in her entity for either. It would be her or her prey.
But Sereia is not a tiger. She told Raziel she would rather die than eat meat. She would. She did not lie to the Solterran man in that moment. She does not lie to this stranger now. Every day she wished her will was stronger than her kelpie’s need to survive. So far it has not been. When the agony of an empty stomach consumes her, when she collapses from hunger and starvation, then her kelpie rises, dominates, hunts and kills. It is reckless in its pursuit of survival. It kills more than it needs, as if it hopes to stock up, to have food for more than just a night.
Ah, her kelpie, the instinct that makes her want the things she does not want to want. The drive of her basic instinct, it seethes in her veins, it throbs like a second heart, keeping her alive, waiting for the moment she slips with exhaustion. A tiger knows of no such battles. It hunts, it kills, it eats, it lives.
The man I loved was killed by a water horse.
Her eyes press shut, a crease of agony forming across her brow. Sereia wants to turn to him, she wants to press an apology into his skin, embrace him and vow that none would ever die by a kelpie tooth again. Her gaze falls away from the statue, it casts itself back upon the stranger. Every morsel of remorse within her pours itself upon him through her wide-eyes gaze. Sadness shapes her lovely eyes. The swan-girl does not go to him. She does not touch him as she wants to, she does not cradle him in her arms, as much as she yearns to, left it turn into a deadly embrace.
Until her dreams she had not thought of it. Until her dreams she had not realised how much she wanted to get close, to be held by another. Another who is not a kelpie. Another who is as normal as she begs to be. Sereia realises now why that dream boy comes to her. Her hopes have woven themselves into her dreams and she has sent herself Dune. Someone she can get close to, whose body does not stir her kelpie into a frenzy.
Touch me. Please, gods, anyone. But anyone who is not a kelpie. They remind her of everything she longs not to be.
Touch me. I want to live as others do.
“I am sorry.” She says, her voice a seaspray whisper, the tide brushing over shells. “He did not deserve that and you did not deserve to lose him.” Sereia looks back along the path in the direction of the kelpie statue. It is out of sight, but she feels its presence, even here. Like her own slumbering monster. It grows hungrier day upon day. She shudders, knowing what is to come, wondering how to stop it. “They are savage and relentless.” The girl breathes, speaking of her true nature. She condemns herself, paints herself as something terrible.
And maybe she is.
He holds her gaze when at last she looks back at him. He talks of honesty and Sereia is only full of lies. Lies that she can live upon bread alone. Lies that she can one day rid herself of her kelpie. Lies that she tells each time she convinces someone she is not lethal, that she does not taste their blood upon the wind and know how their bones would feel broken between her teeth.
The stranger, beautiful and golden shames her with his talk of honesty. He skin itches, she is worse than the kelpie statue, worse than the sorrowful soldier. She cannot be here, where this stranger sets his green eyes upon her and values honesty.
Sereia is a compulsive liar. It is her worst fault, if only she saw it. She thinks her worst is her kelpie. There is nothing Sereia does not kill with her denial. She kills herself with not eating that which is befitting of her nature. She kills horse and every other beast by driving her kelpie into a starved frenzy. She kills everything in her bid to kill nothing at all.
So of course she would lie again tonight when she pretends to be nothing like a water horse.
“I hope you find the truth and the justice you desire.”
And Sereia turns, fleeing into the night, like a wraith fading into darkness.
@
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
