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+---- Thread: [open] come and kiss me, salt water (/showthread.php?tid=31361)
come and kiss me, salt water - Orieta - 07-09-2023
In the beginning, she had only dared show her head above the water. Only her head, wide-eyed and curious, and only just high enough to see the shoreline.
The first time she saw something move, she ducked beneath the water. She did the same many times after that, and finally, after days of watching, stayed above.
A heron waded down the beach, long-legged and determined to catch a meal.
Orieta had seen a heron before, though never one alive. Herons did not come alive to the bottom of the sea where the nereids live. But it had not been a dangerous thing, something terrifying and monstrous like her mother had hinted live on land. It had just been a bird.
So the next time she saw something strange moving along the shoreline, she stayed above the water to see that as well. And so it continued, and the days turned into weeks, then months.
Orieta watches the horses that come to the river, watches them from the safety of the delta waters. Her head no longer sits just above the water, but is instead arched atop her dark neck, fully visible from the shore by any who looked.
They rarely looked though, so rarely that she sometimes even forgot to sink down when they did. Why hide, she thinks as she makes eye contact with yet another stranger on the shore, why hide? They could not pursue her, not into the sea.