[P] only a star, only the sea

[Antiope]

Antiope.

Antiope remembers the sea. Not that the sea is easy to forget here, it is everywhere, but she remembers the sea of her home. She remembers it being the first sound she heard when she woke from the statue. The temple of the gods who had made her, it stands on a cliff overlooking the sea. The sun rises right into the columns, bathing the entire structure in golden light during the early mornings.

She hadn’t known the sea for long, because once she and her sisters had been crafted, the gods had sent them away. Perhaps one or two of them had been stationed in a place close to the sea, but Antiope had been sent to the jungle, where she became the warrior tigress.

The last she had seen the sea of her home, it had been awash in red. A sunset so deep it had obscured the entire world.

Antiope wades out into the tepid waters, which eat hungrily at the lengths of her mahogany and ivory hair, dragging them beneath the surface and then releasing them to allow them to drift and float upon the surface. She has never swam in the ocean before, and she can feel the current pushing and pulling against her body as she goes, further and further. The sand and stone is strange beneath her hooves, not quite solid.

Behind her the court is a shadow, a sentry, watching and standing guard over the woman who dares to go swimming in the sea when the sky is barely light enough to chase away the stars. But Antiope has never been a good sleeper, especially now, and she wanders too much and rests too little.

So she presses further into the water, until her hooves can no longer touch the floor of the ocean and she must kick her legs to keep going. Until only her shoulders are cutting through the dark mass of the waves and everything below is hidden.

When the wave comes, it is like the maw of a massive beast—opening wide, wide, wide—and it swallows her entirely, dragging her down beneath the water. For a wild moment Antiope tumbles, and rolls, and forgets which way is up and which way is down, and her hair is wrapped around every part of her. And then her lungs are begging for air, for breath. For a second… for a terrible, horrible second, she wonders if she almost-dies again if Rezario will be there when she wakes up.

Like last time.

But then the lioness in her bones is comes awake and Antiope gets a burst of strength enough to untangle herself and push up until she breaks free of the water. Her eyes are still glowing, fiercely bright and golden, when her hooves touch the shore again.

Antiope is dripping saltwater from everywhere but even from her eyes, because as angry as she has been at everything, she has never properly mourned him. Either of them. And she looks back over her shoulder at the ocean, and all she can see is it red, red, red.

She doesn’t notice the other equine standing there at first, doesn’t think about her long strands of hair pasted against the curves of her body or the fading of her strange magic-eyes to jewel blue. “Isra,” Antiope says, and it is something of a broken hello.

"Speaking."

credits

@Isra <3