[private] I'll be there when your reality drowns; Ehko, Locheed

[Ehko]

A foal never sees what an adult mare chooses to hide, and Ehko clearly misses what’s unspoken between the two horses sandwiching her here on the beach. Their glances at one another go entirely unheeded by the young filly, though Locheed manages to twist one of her pale ears back with interest, mostly due to the sarcasm. Ehko herself was a terrible judge of social interaction; being cut off from the mainland since birth meant there weren’t many social gatherings taking place, and so she thinks that the bay mare’s tone has everything to do with offending the washed-up seamare and nothing at all to do with reality. She feels mocked, made to feel small and stupid (as if she didn’t already know there were sea monsters) in a way that jerks her little, petulant mouth down into a comical frown.

Hmph. Ehko flicked her ear back into place as Locheed moved to cut off her escape, though she couldn’t see that for what it was, either. Not once did Ehko consider them to be the moving arms of a timepiece, simple cogs turning against one another’s perfect teeth with deadly tandem energy, winding up fate for the chiming of death’s bell toll.

Her hoof landed square into the wet sand and not a second later, Waverly’s jaw had Ehko’s neck clamped in a bloody vice. The filly squealed, a pig caught by predators, shrilly as Waverly’s rows of teeth sank into the parts of her flesh unprotected by the pearlescent scales her father had passed down in their bloodline. Ehko could register nothing but the pain, so she fought against it in the wild way a trapped creature might. Her legs flailed and beat against the earth, desperate to knock Waverly off-balance or stop her from dragging Ehko into the sea, but the resistance felt useless. The elder mare was deceptively strong and soon enough, the wine-dark sea coiled over the little filly she gripped in her mouth. It became harder and harder for Ehko to fight with so much water weighing her down, making her sluggish so that she had to pause in her wriggling just to breath.

And every time she did, Ehko gave Waverly the means to drag her further out.

The darkness hid how fearfully twisted Ehko’s face had become, and her eyes widened with that panic we all know so well — the feeling of this is it. That dreadful knowledge without the means to reverse it: a slow crash-and-burn into death. Around her weakened body, the saltwater felt like ice and burned like black tar when it poured into her lungs. She opened her mouth to scream and only choked, jerking softly while the ocean ran over her tongue, down her throat, and filled up her tiny belly. Everywhere was black, there was no up or down, she thought it funny how the pain had gone away too, and then Ehko saw the stars for the very first time in her young life. They danced across her vision and swept her up into a spinning, dizzying sort of waltz.

Drowning came quickly. Her body went limp in Waverly’s unyielding grip, and Ehko’s fight ended before it ever began.

@[Brash] big bro to the rescue? <3
@[Locheed]
@[Waverly]