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+------ Thread: [private] won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa (/showthread.php?tid=26976)
won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa - Lumina - 05-19-2020
The sunset in front of me is beautiful. I stand on the westernmost edge of the island, my dark eyes cast upward. Beside me, I hear the quiet gasps of Raene and Delphi, and turn to look at them. My friends exclaim over the sunset and then set about looking for pretty shells, and I wonder how long it has been since they last did something like this for themselves. It seems strange to me that they are so content to spend their days and nights in such monotony. That life has never appealed to me, though as a child there was little I could do about it. I am older now though, and have begun to do things like this: taking my friends in Ivar’s herd down to play at the beach. It has always felt strange to call him father. He has never treated me like his child, so I do not think that he minds. He acts as father to some of my siblings, but I am not jealous. Delphi has told me that he is no kinder to his kelpie children than he is to those of us bound to the earth; he’s just unlikely to eat those when they displease him.
I have done my best to not be eaten, and have survived now to my third spring. This is the
The changes had started mid-winter. I kept waking and finding myself knee deep in the ocean. Sleep-walking, I assumed, though it had never troubled me before. Terrin, my brother, promised to keep an eye on me to stop it happening again, and within a few weeks the unconscious drifting toward water had stopped. Then came the odd sensation that my whole face was growing. It was like losing my foal’s teeth, except it was my whole head. With no still reflection, I could not see what had happened, and it took Angelique staring at me one night in the same stupefied manner that she stared at her parents for me to realize what had happened.
If I was right – and I am sure that I am – stepping into the ocean will reveal some final change in me.
I’d brought my two companions with me as an excuse, and the two of them splashing about in the water gives me good cover. Moving forward slowly, I move across the stand with a single-minded purpose. I stop in the wave-marked sand and wait. The water moves slowly, lapping gently at the white shore, never quite reaching me. I take another step forward. The water touches my white fetlocks, and I exclaim in surprise.
Nothing happens at all.
Nothing except my friends looking up from their play, startled. I shake my head, embarrassed, and wade farther in.
Still nothing.
I sigh and begin to wade the opposite direction from my companions. Raene has changed her colors to match Delphi’s, it seems, and the two seagreen tobianos frolic at the water’s edge. My own coat is similarly pied, though black where theirs is green and spotted sapphire blue where they are simply white. The tide is out, as it always is this time of day, and I find myself wandering farther and farther west. I know these sandbars well, having played on and around them often as a small child. Though I was no competition for my more aquatic siblings, I had always been fond of the water. I follow the highest sandbars, never more than knee-deep in the water, and eventually find myself on the dry land of Ischia.
I’d wandered without thinking, and I glance back at where the others still stand. They are lost in their exploration, as simple-minded as children after so many years of my father’s hypnosis. They will not tell tales.
I might not have transformed into a glorious kelpie upon turning three like I had hoped, but perhaps I will have my first adventure instead. Curious and eager, I give the island of Kelpie one last look (it is beautiful here, shining golden in the sunset), and head into the jungle.
@[ Tiasi]
RE: won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa - Tiasa - 06-09-2020
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This is kind of garbage but HEY it's a post!!
@[Lumina]
RE: won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa - Lumina - 07-04-2020
The black-haired girl is too lovely to not trust, and I return her smile with one of my own. Whatever soul had first learned our kind fall so easily for symmetry was a clever one, and even I – raised among perfection – have difficulty shaking off the effects of unnatural beauty. To be fair, I do not make much of an effort, having no reason to be cautious. This stranger is either a sister of mine or one of the nereids.
If she is a sister though, she is one that I have never seen before, and I find myself searching her features for anything that I recognize. The pale pink flowers twined through her dark hair are not like any of those on the mares of Kelpie, but those horns glitter like Izmir’s seaglass antlers. Her nose is silver rather than gold, and the teal of her scaled skin is not like those of any siblings I can name. I reach out to touch it, thinking nothing of the contact, and smooth my dark mouth across the surface of her shoulder.
“I wanted an adventure,” is my answer. “You won’t tell, will you?” If she is not a sister of mine, raised on Kelpie, perhaps she will not understand my question, or the worry that has drawn a shadow over my spotted face. We are not to leave, not without permission, and I have just made it quite clear that I do not have it. Ivar has been gone for weeks now, as he often is in winter, and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
“Please don’t tell,” I continue. “I just get so sick of the same view every day. And I’ll go back, I promise, I just wanted to see…something.” What those somethings might be I am not yet sure. There are dangers outside Kelpie, I have been told of them every day. Monsters haunt the empty places, ready to steal away and eat anything they find.
@[tiasa]
@[Tiasa]
RE: won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa - Tiasa - 07-27-2020
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@[Lumina]
RE: won't let it go down until we torch it ourselves; Tiasa - Lumina - 08-10-2020
If she sees the spark of anger, Lumina does not recognize it for what it is. Instead, she hears only the promise that she wont be told on, and sees only the warmth and kindness of Tiasa’s smile. It calms the worry in her breast, calms it just enough that when Tiasa speaks of an adventure, she can feel the full effect of a fresh pang of excitement.
“And adventure? Together?! But wherever would we go?!” The spotted girl is equal parts thrilled and worried. Worried not only at the chance of discovery, but of the sudden realization that the entire world might just be within her grasp for the very first time. Never before has she left the shores of kelpie. Never before has she set hoof on land that did not belong to her family .Yet now, only minutes after what had seemed a grand step, Tiasa so easily speaks of a far more daring leap.
“We couldn’t go very far,” she muses, “we would have to be back before dark, or Raene might forget she is covering for me and tell Father.” Delphi won’t forget though, and perhaps she will remind our older friend. It is not Raene’’s fault, I remind myself, a dozen years of hypnosis has fragmented her mind, as it has so many of the sweet and docile mares of my home. So to find someone else who speaks of adventure, who is so readily willing to fall into mischief with me – it is wonderful.
@[Tiasa] introduces herself, adding that she thinks they are sisters, so which Lumina responds with a happily agreeable nod. “Of course we are. I’m Lumina.”