Day after day, at twilight, she slipped from the water and waited in the same place. The shoreline where they first met.
She recognized it was a foolish endeavor. Made more foolish each evening that passed. Leto was gone, deep or far or both into the sea, where there was no way Anandi could track or find her. She could either comb the ocean, a task she did not have the time for, or she could keep returning to the last place they met and hope-- hope in a withering way, hope despite reason-- that Leto would return.
So she kept returning, and the frantic yearning kept growing in the pit of her stomach, and each evening she was entirely alone with the tattered shoreline. She quickly learned the tides and how they changed with the hour. The ocean was fickle here. Sometimes the waves crashed huge and angry, other times the sea was near flat and slick as a mirror. There was no in between.
It was one of those mirror evenings. The sea was a passive, adoring reflection of the sky, pink-purple brilliance, when then the illusion was shattered with a quiet splash and a race of ripples.
Leto.
Anandi clamors to her feet, but makes herself walk slowly to the edge of the water. No visible sign at all of eagerness-- but of course, she is here, and no amount of cool could hide the plainspun facts of the situation. She was clearly waiting.
“Hello stranger.” Her words have a forced casualness, a palpable strain. Leto hurt Anandi by vanishing as she had. Worse, she offended her. But beneath her terse words, there is nervous excitement. She felt absolutely horrible after making Leto and so quickly losing her. It was a failure on her behalf, and she felt more monstrous than ever before. Leto was her sister now. And as enraged and offended as Anandi was, her heart would always hold a weakness for the other mare. “I’ve missed you,” she admits, and steps closer to press her lips to the other woman’s neck, near her cheek.
She inhales warm salty air. The scent of a wild thing, tumbled in the ocean until the sand scrubbed her into something new. Something new and fresh and wild--
But, see-- Leto was not free.
Leto was hers. It was very important that Anandi established this. But she had to be very careful about it, so as not to push the other mare too far. If she did not bow to her maker, she might as well be an enemy. And Andi did not want to make an enemy of a sister. “Tell me about where you’ve been.” She nips softly on the bare neck she had just kissed. Soft as a kelpie. She wanted to know: exactly how thick was Leto’s skin?
She sank a girl and rose a god - or so it seemed. She thinks how Asterion had once watched her, as if she were a deity. How would he look at her now?
She rises from the sea and it tumbles from her ebony skin. Salt froths across her shoulders and spine. It knows who she once was and has baptised her into something new. Her lashes gleam as if with tears but Leto cannot remember the last time she wept. It is unlikely she will again.
Even with the sky aching above her in violent hues of reds and purples, Leto has only eyes for the girl who changed her. There is a silent, feline regard and slowly she begins the stalk up, up the beach. Bones click in her hair and ribbons of seaweed hang between bells.
Her tail drags through the sand, gathering dirt and golden grains. She moves like a broken bride of the washed up waves. Leto holds Anandi in her gaze and remembers what it was to be cradled between her jaws as they sank through the blood stained sea.
They move toward one another, two magnets drawn by violence and belonging. Her eyes blaze with the myriad lights of a spinning galaxy. The stars they bear are numerous as dust and they burn, wicked white. Slowly her eyelids close as Anandi presses near and kissing below the angle of Leto’s jaw Their bodies are yin and yang as Leto twists as if they embrace.
I have missed you. Anandi’s words breath, casual and soft, in the space between them. The kelpie she created says nothing, but tilts her head with its crown of bells and shells. Ribbons of seaweed sway like serpents charmed by the ocean.
Leto inhales of the scent of her creator and the salty air. The wind howls as it cuts itself upon the bare crags of the cliffs. It is so barren here, so feral and strange. The beach welcomes the kelpies as if it remembers the day of Leto’s rebirth.
Anandi’s heart beats in her breast, Leto feels the thrum of her veins and reaches to slowly, keenly ghost her lips along the hidden map of arteries and veins that run beneath her creator’s pallid skin. They throb with life and, feline, Leto’s maw parts. Her teeth gleam, hungry to taste, hungry to-
Anandi’s nip is sharp, possessive. Her kelpie progeny reels away with a squeal that pierces the tranquility of the beach. Her nape twists, arched and regal, yet her gaze is savage with hunger. Slowly she sighs, breathing, swallowing down hunger, desire and the restlessness of the sea.
“Watching you.” Leto says with no ounce of gloating, no malicious delight. She had lingered in the waves (where evening stained the sea as inky black as her skin) and watched Anandi wait. “How long were you going to wait?” The kelpie murmurs in a seaspray hiss. “Did I make you wait too long or not long enough?” She asks, revealing nothing of the desire that finally brought her up the beach as Anandi lay in wait, again. Hunger prowls in her stomach, ravenous. It roars in her veins and Leto trembles as if the gathering wind was able to chill her to the bone.
“Don’t bite me.” She complains in a purr. “I came, did I not?”
@Anandi <3| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
Would it always be this way? This terrible push and pull between them, like two buoys untethered in a storm. Anandi did not care for floating wherever the current would take her. She wanted to choose her own fate, her own direction, and swim to it without looking back.
But before her stands the kelpie she made, the one with galaxies pulsing star-hot beneath her skin. The one with gravity, so easy to fall in to, and if Anandi is breathing she’s not aware of it at all. All she feels is the heat of her own blood, radiating into the cool winter darkness. Finally, they embrace. And in that moment it would not be a surprise at all for Anandi to find her whole body gone to steam.
Then there is a bite, and a squeal, and every ounce of self control keeps her from darting after the starlit mare who dances in the sand with a grace Anandi’s unnatural legs will never achieve. And then she speaks, voice like a knife that traces Anandi’s outline, cutting her out of the night-shadow backdrop.
A grit of the teeth, a set of the jaw. “Too long,” Anandi says, and it makes her feel weak. It makes her feel desperate for this girl, who she feels bound to closer than a sister, or a lover, or a shadow..
“Thank you for coming,” She sighs in one quick exhale of breath. How many times in her life has she said thank you and meant it? Really meant it, not just used the two words to tug at someone’s favor. "I'm sorry." Another rarity. She takes a step closer, head tilted as though to ask forgive me? Her fringe lowers demurely to her poll, and for a moment she looks down at the sandy beach, divoted by hoofprints. “Are you okay?”
She raises her sharp gaze back to the thing she made, and her heart trembles with the beauty of what she sees. A bit of fire returns to her as she thinks: “the thing I made. The beautiful thing I made.” and her expression grows lively as her pretty lips purse in a pout. “I don’t even know your name.”
