Ah the serenity of nightfall, the joy in seeing one time blend to the next, the simplicity in remembering the cycles that guide us, never wavering. It holds no peace this eve, though. Perhaps nothing could still the thrumming in my veins of confusion and near anguish at my understanding of what has come to pass. I keep my pistons moving, as if walking off the face of this earth would somehow drop me back into the void from which I surfaced. The nothingness had at least made sense to me. I had a motive, I had a reason for moving and for living and striving and being. Now, I had none of those things and I could not be sure if it was because I had been freed to be shown a place where I could exist in the love of all things and the passion for existence in all its forms, or if Gaia had forsaken me and thrown my soul away to some strange land for daring to ask understanding.
How had I not seen it earlier? How had I not understood when I first emerged from the in-between? What a foolish young girl, they would say. How naive and trusting. Astral steps never did really touch and feel and yet I have done nothing but feel since I arrived. Savour the crush of snow beneath my hooves, the subtle chill of winter morning air, the fleeting warmth of the sun at the height of the day, the prickle of the atmosphere as lightning crackled and forced my skin to crawl across my bones in a way that was unnatural but not unpleasant.
I shook my pelt and kept moving, but the residue of that encounter could not be shaken from me, same as the chill that reached into my organs and twisted violently. It had nothing to do with the moon being full in the sky and nothing to do with the breeze floating up from the ocean.
Ocean… I swore under my breath so that none but the shifting sands could hear. I had found the edge of the earth and I knew there was no sense in walking into the nothing of the waves, but that didn’t kill the childish curiosity in it. I had never known the edges of land beyond waterfalls and rivers that cut clear paths to and from places that I would never see, a beginning and end that might as well not exist. I had seen lakes that may well have been oceans but always had another side I could travel the circumference to. I had seen the idea of oceans, had been beneath the waves and lived among the aquatics but only in spirit, in consciousness. My soul could experience the weightlessness and fluidity, but my corporeal shell had never seen them, never tasted or touched. I may have traveled a hundred lands with oceans and seas and all of them meant nothing more than a dream. Because dreams can’t hurt you, they can’t touch you and drag you under and swallow you whole. My astral self had always been with a partner, the safety of a sage, or Lorelei or even the voice of Gaia to guide me back to a sense of real.
But this is real. The bitter salt taste is real. The shifting smooth sands are real. The slick mist and the rumble and the foam of the waves are all very real. And the tide is coming in…
I stood at the furthest edge of the beach, staring out into the nothing of the ocean. The churning waves dark and inviting. They teased me closer, beckoning for me to roll into their depths and find a home within them. Their shifting colours glittering before me under the moonlight, the foam speaking in whispers from voices in ancient tongues. The draw to the sea, the call of the void, the need to know drew slow steps from my pistons, daggers sinking into the wet sand compact by waves and time and however many souls like me that had been summoned to just touch and taste and-
An icy glacier rocketed through my bones as the first rolling wave swept up to greet me like a hungry lover and caress my skin and suck the breath from me in a great moan. Forget all other chills, they were a minor fall breeze by comparison. Snow and blizzards and mountaintops could not compare to the aliveness of the ocean as it tried to greedily suck the marrow from my bones through my flesh. I tossed my tiara back and my silver rejoiced with the sound of the waves and joined in chorus as I shook with delight, closing my eyes to savour the eagerness of it to bring me under.
”She’s hungry…” I spoke to no one, to anyone who would listen, who could be out here in the deathless nothing of the shore. Madness they had said, to go to the sea at tide, in the night and in the cold. But I had to know what she was like and I licked my lips in euphoria to taste her and the bitter salt suddenly felt and tasted so very very sweet. I stood there, the dark tendrils lapping at my cannons and begging me to step just a bit closer, to fall into her embrace and the promises to be gentle to me that I knew were lies, but spoken so sweetly they tempted me anyways.
i will swallow if it will help my sea level go down
« r » || @Leto
