maybe you were the ocean
With an airy hiss and the blatant flash of her fangs, he watches her rise from her coil and slither forward. There is an elegance to her, even this way, that he cannot deny and the change as she shifts is as fluid as to be expected — even still, it is something that he doesn’t anticipate ever quite getting used to. The way her body warps and bends is jarring, and it leaves his mind reeling in comparisons. The one that most often comes to light is in the shape of a dead bird he had come across once, with Wax. It’s feathers were barely attached, and they had known it was dead from a fall instantly simply from the angles of it’s extremities.
He winces at the imagery, though he is relieved to see she isn’t feeling particularly hostile today.
“The fish here aren’t quite used to being hunted by a serpent,” she says, and it is kindly enough. Wane nods along in agreement as he is used to doing where Khuma is concerned. If he were to speak candidly he might admit that he is about as used to a serpent being around as the fish are.
They had been different people in the rain; locked in an infinite baptism that had stripped them bare and washed away (before they could grow roots) the sins that make them violent now. Sometimes, he wishes he could go back to that day in the meadow. Sometimes, he wishes that he had never gone at all.
But then she bumps her nose against his chin and he remembers just how many fires she lit along the vertebrae of his spine with only her touch to start them. Then, she smiles, and even though it isn’t directed at him he remembers how she can light even the darkest corners of this cave if she only wants to.
Those parts are of her are still real, even if sometimes he has to remind himself.
“I’m still trying to decide on a name, though. Maybe you can help with that.”
The sound of her voice pulls him back from the meadow. For a moment longer he is quietly contemplative, tracing the gentle arc of their egg in its nest. “Wax,” he says decidedly then, thinking of his sister in the waves — how she could sometimes look like the sun settling down into the horizon when the light hit her just so.
“After my sister, if it’s a girl.”
He should stop there, let the silence fall between their bodies as each of them wonders what the little being encased inside that shell will be — but that wouldn’t be Wane, would it? He eyes the egg then with a growing curiosity and healthy skepticism. It isn’t the first time that he’s wondered at it’s contents. He should bite his tongue, but instead he says:
“To that note, what exactly is it? Or what will it be? Is it a horse, because I don’t know how it can possibly fit if it is — and if it isn’t, do we have to feed it fish?”
@[Khuma]