He doesn’t run.
Foolish man!
No matter how loudly she had screamed it and no matter how the wind picks it and sweeps it along in its frantic rush, still he does not run!
Yet Sereia does. She runs, fast and fleet-footed. The sea is as sand beneath her feet, it does not slow her nor trip her. Yet is splashes, hissing and shouting. The surf slaps beneath her feet and each landing of her hoof is like a clap, clap, clap that yells run! Run! Run!
She sees when he recognises her, oh it twists her stomach where she lies deep, deep beneath her kelpie instincts. Sereia might have sobbed, a wracking sound shaking bone and sinew, carving itself deep into the essence of her being. But a sob could not be heard, not above the roar of the sea or the thundering ache of her savage hunger.
The desperate need for food ripples like a deep, terrible growl. He is close, so close he glows like the sun, so close she already knows what his skin will taste like. The gilded man does not move and Sereia’s kelpie laughs, sure he will taste like sunlight, sure his blood will slip down her throat like a god’s ichor.
She is leaping, leaping and her jaws part, yawning for his throat. Her teeth sharp and already stained red as a rose, sink deep, deep through golden skin. They reach deep for blood and bone. She holds him fast, cradling his throat, her pause is like an embrace, until suddenly she drags. The kelpie holds him tight, tight, tight and pulls him with her back, back into the sea that crawls up the beach to meet him. The sand at their feet weeps red, with his blood, with the blood of others.
Come! Come! Her kelpie blood sings, come and join me in the sea. But there is no life for him beyond this. Her kelpie wants only the meat upon his bones, his torso a gift upon which her existence will depend. It needs him. In this moment, he is, quite simply, life-giving.
@
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
