This world has so many treasures. And while Anandi's first reaction was to gush (in a way almost carnal) over the sustenance here, the diversity of scent and taste, she recognized that Novus had so much more to offer. There was natural beauty like she had never seen before- clouds and stars, meadows shimmering in the breeze, lazy rivers enshrouded in morning mist. There was rain, mysterious and cleansing, and sun, warm and soothing. It was not paradise- there was snow (she loathed snow) and mountains (she loathed climbing) and a lot of idiots (you can guess how she felt about them).Essentially, Novus was just a lot more of everything they had ever known or even imagined. First Anandi had come, then Indrani, and now Sereia. With each sister, this world only grows more and more appealing to the jade-eyed emissary.
“Yes, I’ve seen it! And there are little dragons there! And have you been to Solterra? Sand as far as the eye can see but no water!” She laughs at how wild it seemed at first, how utterly unnatural. Almost every single aspect of Novus was once so completely foreign, and yet Anandi had adapted to this strange world with surprising quickness. She may have grown up in the dark, naive to the workings of the surface world, but she was sharp in more ways than one, and she learned fast.
She laughs to think of the stories they once made up, the silly ways they escaped from the darkness and the tedium of their lives in the deep. “Everything here is beyond our wildest stories, isn’t it?” Oh, their stories paled in comparison to the brightness and strangeness of Novus. It was something that needed to be seen-smelled-felt-- tasted to be believed.
How different would Anandi be if she had not, on that first day in Novus (or, if not the first day, one of the first days) met Boudika? If the lion’s-tail mare had not rounded up the flock of birds, soothed the kelpie with the balm of acceptance: “it’s in your nature.”
It’s in her nature. It’s in their nature. The eating, the killing. Anandi just needed the slightest reassurance to accept this about herself. Why must Sereia be so difficult? So stubborn? She sighs dramatically as her sister rejects her offer.
“A carrot. And an apple!” She laughs so hard she almost snorts. “Oh, Sereia, I worry about you sometimes. We all do… you’re skin and bones.” The feline curl of her smile is somehow disapproving. Still, her jade eyes are warm. Despite the utter seriousness with which Sereia treats this topic, it is all a game to Anandi. Sometimes, she knows, she takes it too far. The teasing strays over some line and becomes torment. (Well, maybe all of it was torment, but it was all just good natured fun!)
The truth is that Anandi respected her sister’s choices, sometimes to the point of jealousy. Where one Minn’s morals had quickly wavered upon coming to Novus, the other stuck strongly to her principles. On a subconscious level Anandi refused to admit she was ashamed of herself, so she leaned heavily into self-righteousness. She told herself she deserved to relax once in a while. To be herself, as god must have intended: Wild with the hunt, all the green in her eyes gone to black. Why else would she be crafted with such power and beauty? The best swords were not meant to be displayed as decoration. They were meant to be used.
And what she did, the way she did it, it was a mercy. Always a clean kill, always done quickly. Besides, it’s just a fox. It’s not like she’s eating a horse. “Well if you insist,” she says with a sigh, nudging the carcass to the side for later. She knows its scent will continue to color the air for a long time to come, tantalizing the senses of any true predator… but that wasn’t her problem. She licks the blood off her teeth and returns her laughing green gaze to her too-thin sister. “It’s only natural, though. We are kelpie.” She tosses her head, a gesture somewhat defiant. Convince me otherwise.
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
A N A N D I
@
some say the loving and the devouring are all the same thing
☾
