s a b a l .
Sabal wished that the reemergence of the sun would have burned away all the problems. But, as expected, things weren’t that simple. She’d been out of sorts ever since she’d come back from the mountain. While Sabal was in no way, shape, or form a perfectionist – failure had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She’d spent longer than she’d ever freely admit moping somewhere near the bottom of the lake before her own sense of how pathetic that was drew her back to the surface world. But the fact that the sun was back didn’t really make her feel completely better.
Oh and there was the whole ghost thing. Thankfully, it seemed that the restoration of the sun had given her at least the appearance of being corporeal. But she was still…not…quite right. She couldn’t touch anything. Couldn’t feel anything. She was still uncontrollably intangible and the very physical reminder of what had happened on the mountain was, well, not contributing to the already polluted headspace she had going on upstairs. There were nightmares too. But she hadn’t been asleep long enough tonight for the nightmares to take hold.
Because something very unnatural and out of place was splashing around in the shallows and making a tambourine out of the surface of the lake. She was both surprised and not at all surprised when she saw who it was. It was definitely Maze but she had some new fancy swim accessories so clearly she’d been successful in her quest. It caused a burst of pride to swell in her chest for her friend, but a flicker of shame ignited somewhere deeper at the visceral reminder of her own failure.
Sabal broke the surface near her friend – a cool blue glow in contrast to Maze’s fiery orange. “Oh my God, Mazikeen, now that the sun is back some people sleep when it’s dark!! Do you know how far sound travels in the water? Like…really far.” She said, in exasperation, but she was glad to see her friend – and something about seeing Maze so unabashedly happy made it impossible to stay angry. So she didn’t stop the smile from crawling across her lips.
“Secondly. congratulations on getting your shifting back. Seriously. That’s fab. Is this your weird ass way of telling me you want a swimming lesson now? Can we please do it in the morning?” However, Sabal is curious about Maze’s new abilities in this clearly superior form of shifting. But she imagined that she’d need some lessons to master the new shapes. And she most definitely would teach Maze what she needed to know about the underwater world – lest her friend be caught off guard. There were other kelpies in Beqanna, and not all had her docile-ish nature.
“And thirdly, are you like…accessorizing now?” Sabal asked, finally realizing that aside from the very hard to miss fins…Maze was also sporting some very fancy looking horns that are definitely new.
can’t stop staring at those ocean eyes. |
