He can hear the sea in the distance.
The sound of it is a roar undercutting everything else: the birdsong, the whisper of the grasses against his legs, the sounds of his own hooves on the earth. He can hear it below the bright sounds of his flowers blooming up around him, can feel it in their smiling faces when they turn gently around to him.
Always it is there, like a heartbeat: the lub and dub of it, the push and pull, the rising and falling and breaking upon the sand. And beneath even that, there is the sand of the shores calling out to the sand in his soul.
He is not sure how he has never noticed it before.
But now he finds himself turning towards it even before he has decided to. And his steps quicken until the sound of the leaves shush, shush, shushing against his sides matches that of the distant sea. Until the sea-foam rears bright white before his eyes every time before it shatters itself like breaking glass against the beach. And the image of it flashes still behind his eyes as he closes them, and breathes in the salty air, and listens to the sand beneath the waves —
Calling him forward.
Calling him to be sharp like glass after a lightning strike.
The moment his hooves touch the sand it begins to tremble. It begins to rise, fluid as the ocean — and just as wild — alongside him. The waves it makes glitters like gold in the sunlight, dusts his side like fairy dust.
And it all collapses when he sees the dark figure breaking through the waves like a scythe, dragging a carcass to the shore. He likes to think he would have smiled, on another day — without the sand singing almost-violently through his veins in notes of roaring currents and black tides. Note by note he can feel it rising, echoing in his ears like a second heartbeat lifting itself to replace the first. It does not quiet when she settles herself on the beach.
The sand is still churning around his hooves when he speaks. “You call it a home, I call it a free land for all the people of Novus.” He can feel it whispering against his fetlocks, ever restless. Like it is chanting at her no, no, no, this one is not for the sea, this one is our’s — he would always belong to the earth.
He does not step closer to her. He does not look at the blood on her mouth, on her teeth, on her tongue when she speaks.
Ipomoea does not need another reason to be searching for monsters. And so he does not comment on the shark that is still bleeding on the beach, turning the sand dark and red.
“Who are you?” he asks instead, and he wonders if she can hear the sound of the earth singing below the crash of the waves.
The sound of it is a roar undercutting everything else: the birdsong, the whisper of the grasses against his legs, the sounds of his own hooves on the earth. He can hear it below the bright sounds of his flowers blooming up around him, can feel it in their smiling faces when they turn gently around to him.
Always it is there, like a heartbeat: the lub and dub of it, the push and pull, the rising and falling and breaking upon the sand. And beneath even that, there is the sand of the shores calling out to the sand in his soul.
He is not sure how he has never noticed it before.
But now he finds himself turning towards it even before he has decided to. And his steps quicken until the sound of the leaves shush, shush, shushing against his sides matches that of the distant sea. Until the sea-foam rears bright white before his eyes every time before it shatters itself like breaking glass against the beach. And the image of it flashes still behind his eyes as he closes them, and breathes in the salty air, and listens to the sand beneath the waves —
Calling him forward.
Calling him to be sharp like glass after a lightning strike.
The moment his hooves touch the sand it begins to tremble. It begins to rise, fluid as the ocean — and just as wild — alongside him. The waves it makes glitters like gold in the sunlight, dusts his side like fairy dust.
And it all collapses when he sees the dark figure breaking through the waves like a scythe, dragging a carcass to the shore. He likes to think he would have smiled, on another day — without the sand singing almost-violently through his veins in notes of roaring currents and black tides. Note by note he can feel it rising, echoing in his ears like a second heartbeat lifting itself to replace the first. It does not quiet when she settles herself on the beach.
The sand is still churning around his hooves when he speaks. “You call it a home, I call it a free land for all the people of Novus.” He can feel it whispering against his fetlocks, ever restless. Like it is chanting at her no, no, no, this one is not for the sea, this one is our’s — he would always belong to the earth.
He does not step closer to her. He does not look at the blood on her mouth, on her teeth, on her tongue when she speaks.
Ipomoea does not need another reason to be searching for monsters. And so he does not comment on the shark that is still bleeding on the beach, turning the sand dark and red.
“Who are you?” he asks instead, and he wonders if she can hear the sound of the earth singing below the crash of the waves.
@lucinda
”here am i!“
