Home again, and it felt like years since she'd been absent, instead of the single season it had been. Quiet growth had sprung up along her way, a world awoken by the new warmth the spring sun had heralded. The sea mare was weary. Her return trip had been a relaxed thing, no trouble had crossed her path, and yet she knew she missed the island she had come from.
It was a relief to dive once more into the clear blue waters on the western edge of the continent. These were waters she knew, and to swim freely again felt like the best release she could think of. She had learned so much traveling over land, first of which being that there was no place like the sea.
The swim across the channel separating the mainland from Ischia took longer than it might have. This was mainly due to the pearl woman allowing the currents to pull her wherever that liked for a while, simply drifting just below the surface. Her mane and tail undulated with the seaweed and kelp, a shimmering counterpoint to the ripples of light crisscrossing her back.
She couldn't stay submerged forever though. There were things to do before she could rest and sleep and elsewise recuperate from the trip. So the sea released her onto the strip of sand lingering despite the high tide, and she let the saltwater dripping from her mark her trail inland.
The sand above him is nearing uncomfortably warm, but Terin is quite reluctant to move. He always is, of course; sleeping is not something he readily abandons. Instead he flicks his overlong tail irritably. It's uncovered, he can tell - the sun is too hot on his scales - and he grunts petulantly from where he lies buried in the sand before finally admitting to himself that it is time to wake up.
The sapphire blue creature rises from beneath the sand of the beach, ridding himself of the sand with a few rough shakes. He'd fallen asleep near the shore at high tide, and the shifting waves and billowing sand had covered him as the water receded. It is how he always sleeps, and yet he is eternally surly that the water pulls back and the sun makes him too warm. He blinks up at the sun now, muttering under his breath, and settles back onto his haunches.
Grumbling to himself about the inconvenience of the sun and the tide, Terin nearly misses the set of tracks ahead of him. Tilting his scaled head, he follows them from the shoreline to the edge of the jungle and then back again. Whoever it was had passed by quite recently, possibly just in time to miss the irritable flicking of a finned tail followed by a dragon emerging from the sand. Or perhaps they hadn't missed it at all, and are instead trying to avoid him.
Well, he can't have that.
So he follows the hoofprints off the beach, forgetting his vendetta against the too warm sun as he slips beneath the shadows of the palms. Moving on limbs that were meant mostly for the water means he is not especially swift, but it seems that the creature he is pursuing is not moving especially quickly, and he soon catches sight of a pale shape on the path ahead.
"Hey." He calls, stopping his pursuit now that he's laid eyes on the unfamiliar mare. He doesn't know her, but he also knows better than to show too much interest in prey marked by his father to risk catching up to her too soon. "Where're you going?"
On all fours, Terin knows his head is barely higher than the shoulder of most horses, and so he rises now onto his hindlegs, where he can look down at them more comfortably. "Who are you?" He adds, tilting his crested head curiously as his dark eyes catch on a matching crest worn by the mare ahead of him.
@[Aquaria]
ooc: his dragon form looks kinda like this in my head, and he is youngish so still kinda small!
Aquaria jumped as an unfamiliar voice broke through the water draining from her ears. But she knew that not every horse on the isle was known to her yet, so she paused to turn and face the one hailing her. And shrieked.
Not much, but it was certainly too loud to pass off as anything other than a scream. Then he spoke again, and while his teeth were quite apparently sharp, his voice was pleasant enough. If he was bothering to speak with her, eating her wasn't likely high on his to do list. "Uh... Hi," She started, voice still weak. Her feet shuffled in the hot sand as she took in the reptilian creature on the beach with her.
She had to swallow back her fear as he reared back, but it seemed he only wanted to see her better. Sitting on his muscled haunches, the serpentine being assessed her with the same interest she gave him.
"I'm looking for my sister." She answered, growing braver now that it seemed less likely she would have her throat torn out any time soon. "I'm Aquaria, Adria's sister. Who and what are you?" This fellow had fins much like her own, and a build designed to flow underwater.
She could see just from a glance that he would be a lightning bolt beneath the waves. Perhaps she should be glad to have run across him while on land. His aquatic appearance was as far as his resemblance to herself as it went. All else was scales and wings and sharp edged teeth, a predator from any angle. It would be beyond stupid to lay her guard down while in his presence.
@[Terin]
A shriek is not unexpected when meeting strangers, and Terin does nothing more than blink and tilt his head when Aquaria fulfills his expectations. She smells tense, but not overwhelmingly fearful. Brave, he decides, or just very good at hiding her emotions. Both are admirable, he's been told, and so he smiles in a friendly manner.
This means, of course, that he bares several rows of shark-sharp teeth at her. He doesn't move beyond that though, save to sweep the thick line of his scaled tail nearer to his hind feet as a third point of balance. Standing like this is as natural as walking on four feet or swimming, and for Terin the movement is much the same as a horse settling back in relaxation.
Looking for her sister, she says, and Terin glances over her shoulder with one golden eyes as though said sibling might be farther ahead in the jungle. But no, they are alone, and he turns his attention back to the purple-eyed mare. She looks fragile, but not in the way that land dwellers often do. She is also pretty. Pretty in the way that Mother is pretty, he thinks - unnaturally so - and the realization of what she is settles just as she asks who he is.
"You're a nereid." he replies, his soft voice not unlike the splash of waves against the sand. She does not look aggressive or especially violent, as he had always assumed they would. Father keeps them away from Wihwin, their northeastern island, and Terin has always imagined them as monstrous things, even though mother told tales of them being lovely enough to lure him away.
"I'm Rinn," he tells her, "Short for Terin. I'm a dragon," Pteron adds, "Or at least that is what my parents think I must be." Knowing that she must be a nereid, the blue creature knows he should be wary, but he is nearer to the water then she, and is quite sure that he could outdistance her once there - if he needs to.
@[Aquaria]
His smile is broad and toothy, very toothy. But the more she looks, the more comfortable she becomes with it. After all, how different was this beast's smile from her own father's? Hod had his own set of pointed predator teeth, capable of harsh damage even if they were fitted into his kindly face. It was perhaps the same with this one. She exhaled sharply, determined to give him a chance.
Her own tail swept about in subconscious mimicry of the dragon's motion, the tips of her golden caudul fin swishing through the sand in lazy patterns. His next statement made her blink in curious surprise before a smile of her own softened the caution from her face. "Yeah, I am actually. Good guess!" She beamed up at him.
Quickly, her hesitation was melting away, too easily. Really, she needed to learn how to hold back when surrounded by unknowns, it was a habit bound to bring her sorrow some day. Hopefully this was not that day. It would be an awful mar on such a beautiful afternoon.
As she grew bolder though, the blue scaled creature seemed to do the opposite. His voice was as soft as the lapping of waves, and he looked at her as though he expected her to grow a second head any moment now. Ah, well, it couldn't be a bad thing for him to believe her capable of protecting herself. She was, after all, even if aggression wasn't a primary force in her nature.
The little sea mare giggled lightly as the dragon introduced himself, thinking that surely she'd misheard him. "Terin, really? I happen to love that name. It suits you, I think." She squinted at him, head tilting from side to side as another thought struck her. "Are you always a dragon? I thought they all lived in the west. And they aren't always dragons, they have horse shapes too."
She stepped slowly closer, nose prodding toward the scaled skin that covered this new Terin. It was at once similar and separate from her own glittering covering. Her scales were rounded, smooth and pearl bright. His looked sharp and held a deeper color than her own. Almost like sharkskin. She felt that she would slice herself if she brushed against him the wrong way.
@[Terin]
The pale mare seems delighted that he has identified her correctly. This, along with her cheery demeanor and unexpected appearance, casts doubt on the tales he has been raised on. Though he is fully grown - three springs this past season - he is still hesitant to distrust his family, and instead settles on the explanation that this bright female might instead be some sort of aberration. Perhaps the others of her kind are the ones to be wary of.
Surely someone dangerous wouldn't tell him that they liked his name, or that it suited him. He has never considered its suitability; it is simply what Mother had called him when he'd pipped from his egg.
He does his best to remain still as she looks at him, curious despite himself at what she might see. This is the first time Rinn has met someone outside of his family and his father's herd, after all. Is he always a dragon? She asks, and Rinn nods.
"Of course. Horses are weak." He says this as though he tells her that the sun rises in the east; it is a known fact, one he has never questioned. But then he had never questioned the danger of nereids either, and here is one that is seemingly harmless. Harmless until she stretches her head curiously toward him, anyway.
"No." he says, as though the clawed foot that rests ever so lightly against the bridge of her own is not enough. His tone is not harsh though - only firm - and he tucks his foreleg once more against his chest. He cannot explain to her his reluctance toward physical proximity or the reasoning behind it, but he does not want to leave their conversation here, and instead picks up her comment about the geographic placement of dragons.
"My mother comes from there," accompanies a gesture west with his spiked head, toward the mainland. "Her people are dragons, but she lives here, with my father." Now he gestures north, toward their island.
@[Aquaria]
She is quickly getting used to the strange appearance of her new acquaintance, falling into the rhythm of their conversation as easily as she might with any more traditionally shaped companion. She's enjoying herself, she realizes, only to scoff at the sea dragon's derisive comment.
"There's more than one kind of strong, you know. Maybe it's weak of you to be afraid of being a horse, did you ever think of that?" She asked, her low pitched lilt making the rebuke a pretty thing. Her violet eyes danced with deep sea light as she examined him, only to cross slightly as a gentle pressure introduced itself to her nose.
Guiltily, she steped back a pace, skin blushing pink around her mouth and nares. Ah. That was a boundary, then. Her ears tipped backward as she glanced upward to his face. He didn't seem angry, really, but she still felt bad for intruding. "Er, sorry. Didn't mean to get in your bubble. I won't do it again." She assured, planting her hooves firmly in the sand a couple feet away from the scaled creature. She really was getting too old for curiosity to rule her like it did.
Her embarrassment was quickly tucked away, however, as Rinn grasped a new topic to move onto. It certainly explained a bit, if his mother wasn't native to the island scape. But the environment has certainly had its influence on the mother's child, as was clearly evidenced before her.
"She must love him a lot, to live so far away from her kin. Do you ever get to visit her folk?" Her own experiences with love were rather limited. There was her family, of course, mother and father, sister and brother. But she was learning that there was more to it since coming ashore.
The gold-white girl loved her family more than anything, even if they all tended to wander. No matter where they went, each of them could go confident in their family's bond. The bond wasn't always related to blood either. Adria had adopted the purple Eva alongside her natural born children, and Aquaria knew that other families often came to be in such unexpected ways.
And there were the abstract flutterings in her own belly that she still wasn't certain of, when she thought of those she'd met with kind eyes and sweet words. Those she realized were nothing to based a future on, but they did make her wonder. Mamman and Da were so in love, even after all these years. What magic did it take to find that kind of love?
@[Terin]
The question she asks is so outlandish that Terin never considers that she might be serious. "I'm not afraid of being a horse," he says with a bemused chuckle "But I don't see any appeal at all." What about that tall, lanky shape could possibly be better than his dragon form? They are not especially flexible, their skin is so easily torn, and they are horrendous swimmers. None of those are things are at all desirable, and Terin is still shaking his scaled head as Aquaria backs up. Her apology is met with a still golden gaze, but it seems the blue dragon is content to put it behind them, and he perks up notably as she Inquires further about his Mother.
"I've never left Ischia." Terin tells her truthfully. "My mother says her ancestral home has been lost. My father says dry land is not worth seeing. " The young creature has never chafed against the borders of the world he knows. There is a world out there, he knows, but he does not think it can compare to home. Exploration is all well and good for the stories that come back, but Terin had never felt wanderlust himself.
Just like he knows he does not want to be a horse, he knows that he does not want to leave Ischia.
"But yeah, I guess she loves him a lot." It feels true as he says it. The three of are not together especially often, but on those rare occasions Terin often excuses himself early, not eager to witness their public displays of affection. He often wonders why he is the youngest of his siblings; it's not as if his parents aren't giving it every effort. Maybe next year, he tinks and realizes that he's been quiet for a moment too long.
"Do you have any siblings?" He blurts out. "I mean, other than Adria?"
@[Aquaria]
Aquaria didn't mind being a horse. When she shifted, she held onto her native form, only made it more adapted to the water. Her elegant legs, the sleek arch of her neck, how each piece of her fit together. The little sea mare wouldn't change a thing. It was, however, very unusual to meet anyone who didn't also like the way she looked.
It wasn't vanity, at least not completely. She was confident in her appearance, yes, but that would be true even without the added glamour her gifts bestowed. As it was, she was beautiful in the way magic made her, and had gotten used to others looking at her with appreciation. Terin didn't seem to agree, and it was a disconcerting realization.
The white-gold mare sat back, listening as he expanded on her questions, finding that her initial fear of the large dragon to be unfounded. He was... not as interesting as she imagined a dragon would be. Fun to look at, certainly, but he seemed to show no curiosity, no wonder at the world they lived in or even about himself. She made a few noncommittal noises as he spoke, finding her mind drifting.
When they drift into silence, she doesn't mind. It's pleasant enough standing there in the sun, letting the warmth penetrate her scales and relax the muscles bunched along her neck. A gentle stretch pulls the tightness along, revealing a tenseness she hadn't realized she'd been carrying. A sigh traveled from the bottom of her lungs to stir the sand at her feet.
Her eyes had been heavy lidded when Terin broke the silence again. Had she really been drifting off with a near stranger standing by? Another wave of hot embarrassment washed through her, making her skin prickle uncomfortably.
"Oh... Yes, I'm the youngest of three. Adria's the eldest. We have a brother, Tyr, but we don't see him as much," Her voice took on a note of regret at this. "He didn't inherit the water gifts like 'Ria and me, so he wanders the lands and visits the island sometimes." She shrugged, a little sad. Her family had drifted so far apart, even if they all still cared about each other deeply. She had stayed with their parents far longer than the elder siblings, and now came to realize how fortunate she'd been. It was lonely out here.
@[Terin]
Though he had noticed Aquaria's beauty, it had been in the same distant, detached sort of way that he knows his mother and sisters are pretty. The lines of their faces and figures are inexplicably better than those of the rest of the mares in Ischia, but the enthrallment their perfection elicits does not extend to the aquatic dragon. At least not as she stands in front of him in the open air, a pretty mare with a finned mane, but no more delightful than an especially fragrant hibiscus.
He is not bothered when she startles at his question, nor that she must have been dozing off for him to have done so. Terin is often lost in his own thoughts, and offers her a toothy smile, though it fades at the regret and sadness she expresses as she speaks of her missing sibling. Rather than ask more about him and risk souring the conversation further than he already had, he instead repeats:
"Water gifts?" Terin's abilities lie in his physical appearance, and the idea that the Nerieds might be more than just very pretty horses with fin manes is intriguing. Perhaps there is more to them than Terin had first thought. "What water gifts do you have?"
@[Aquaria]
|
