Time had peeled away from Hydra’s mind as she looked up through the lake’s glassy surface. Years, hours, minutes, seconds… aren’t they just abstract constructs anyway? A diorama of the seasons wheeled through her mind, punctuated by sunrises and sunsets and playing out on the silvery screen above her. The ripples from her cannonball quickly smoothed over, erasing her and becoming a blank slate. Her black hooves scarcely grazed the pebbled bottom as she gave her body permission to go limp and simply be.
Her haunches stung before the cool lake soothed the searing lines, and only then did she realize that both had received unwelcome tears from the ambitious feline in the pass. The tendrils from her mane and tail slowly snaked their way to the top, a tumble of cream and ebony flotsam. Loose, free, relaxed - they were the physical embodiment of a finally quieted mind.
She closed her eyes just before the red stallion appeared on the bank. Water pressed against her eyes and she focused on the sensation of tightness beneath her lids, allowing herself to live in the now. The pressure flooded into her ears, fitting snugly. Comforting. It reminded her of the white noise inside of the conches back on the shores of Seasna. She let her mind wander to the strange gate she had passed, it’s odd towers far from inviting. This was the direction her aimless ship had been guided, and what did she have to lose? Thus, she had pressed onward.
The compression in her chest had been patient. It was coming time to concede to the fact that although she had been born near in the sea, she could not visit long. Lazily her lids opened, catching sight of a blazing figure on the shore the moment before she resurfaced, his color piercing even through the refraction beneath the water.
I happen to like cats, he spoke without grandeur as she blinked the Vitreus from her eyes. She remained submerged, her head sitting like a crocodile’s above the calm water, only far less menacing in the morning light.
”I didn’t explicitly say I disliked them… but I would have to say I’m more of a dog kinda gal,” she spoke with a wry smile. The puma wasn’t the main target of her cursing, this she knew. “Birds are pretty cool too…” A stirring moved the water against her fetlocks. It was a harmless fish and nothing more, but it reminded her of her roots. “And sharks, of course.” She felt its tail tickle her leg before it moseyed off into the depths.
“Are you from here? De… Denocte?” she asked Raymond directly, testing the name of the land she had been searching for. The water played on the amber flecks in her quizzical eyes as she assessed the proud stranger before her, noticing but not lingering on his bladed tail.
@Raymond
