05-18-2021, 10:38 PM
NEUNA
The third daughter is perhaps the hardest to convince, the most difficult to herd onto this ferry of light and cloud, because she does not understand. Because their father has not come to see them off and the wolf pup watches from a distance, just as thoroughly confused. (And this girl, built of love and for love, though not necessarily from love, has such a terrible capacity for heartache and she succumbs to her sadness as the four of them crowd so carefully onto their raft.) How fiercely she tries not to pout as Maurtia points out her sea monsters, though Neuna does not dare look over the side herself. She is aware, too, of Decima’s discerning gaze but cannot bring herself to smile for her sister either.
But the third daughter is the last one to step onto the sand, not a petulant child but a child who still does not quite know why she has been removed from her home. She feels as if she has been set adrift in some vast ocean, Neuna, and the feeling only compounds when a stranger approaches.
She shrinks behind her mother and sisters, the third daughter, as she studies the stranger (ringed in that halo of light as they all are because there is something wrong with the third daughter’s eyes). Decima speaks without hesitation, never once doubting herself, so self-assured that it makes Neuna’s head swim. How fierce her sisters are, she thinks! While she calls upon a thin veil of fog, willing it to twist itself around her ankles, a small comfort because it reminds her of home and their father and the shadow pup she’d had to leave behind.
She does not think the stranger will turn them away, not with how confidently Decima had said she’d seen them living here. She’s learned that if Decima says it will happen that it almost certainly will, but her stomach is fraught with nerves anyway.
But the third daughter is the last one to step onto the sand, not a petulant child but a child who still does not quite know why she has been removed from her home. She feels as if she has been set adrift in some vast ocean, Neuna, and the feeling only compounds when a stranger approaches.
She shrinks behind her mother and sisters, the third daughter, as she studies the stranger (ringed in that halo of light as they all are because there is something wrong with the third daughter’s eyes). Decima speaks without hesitation, never once doubting herself, so self-assured that it makes Neuna’s head swim. How fierce her sisters are, she thinks! While she calls upon a thin veil of fog, willing it to twist itself around her ankles, a small comfort because it reminds her of home and their father and the shadow pup she’d had to leave behind.
She does not think the stranger will turn them away, not with how confidently Decima had said she’d seen them living here. She’s learned that if Decima says it will happen that it almost certainly will, but her stomach is fraught with nerves anyway.
