Halt, who goes there?
The words come like lightning. Their sudden arrival is as loud as thunder ricocheting off the cliffside rocks. Sereia pauses. She sways, her land legs not yet used to her weight. The sea beckons her back to it. It whispers of danger and pushes itself up the beach toward her. With salt and foam fingers it reaches out for her, lapping at her heels. But Sereia does not heed to the ocean’s beckoning. Its warning is already lost as she turns her gaze toward the woman who steps out from the shade of the cliffside.
The woman is as angular as Sereia is. Their bodies have known too little food of late. Yet for one there was no choice and for the other… too much?
Covetously Sereia lets her gaze slide gently down one of the stranger’s wings before it peels away like the tide retreating from her feet. Her body still drips with the ocean. Droplets fall like tears and as the woman steps closer and Sereia retreats, a trail of dark sand marks where she has been.
“I am just visiting.” Sereia breathes as she turns her cheek away, letting the sunlight fall away and shade crawl up to where the corners of her smile reach too far. “My sister lives within Terrastella. I have come to see her.” Her every step is newborn, ginger, as if her slender limbs are too long. There is something akin to a fawn in the way the kelpie moves, the way she watches the other woman, wary.
“My name is Sereia.” She peers toward the path up from the beach. It is an escape, a chance to flee. For every step the woman takes toward her, Sereia continues her retreat. The smell of the stranger’s blood, the song of her heart pounding in her chest. It is intoxicating. The breeze does not help as it sweeps along the beach, brushing past the woman, carrying to Sereia every scent upon her skin, sea-salt and cedar and that wild musk of vitality. The girl trembles, as if in the wind. But truly, her ribs are rattling with the effort of keeping a kelpie at bay.
“It was nice to meet you. But I had better hurry, my sister will be waiting.” And gingerly she moves to step around the other woman. The sunlight pours down upon the path, beckoning her like salvation.
@
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
