your heart, it's like a drum
the chase has just begun
She might have been offended if she knew they imagined her lice-ridden. Or she might have been amused. It’s hard to say with a creature whose emotions can be as fickle as the undertow. But of course, in the sea, any parasites she might have would be the same ones crawling along his flesh. These deep currents are a great equalizer of such things.
As it is, when she realizes she is not alone, it is not potential parasites she is thinking of.
Her first instinct is to strike, but she reins it in, going against all that is natural to her in favor of logic. If the static crackle in the water were not enough, her rising curiosity would be. She would learn little about this new place if she tried to devour everything first.
She sees the glowing ochre hue of his aura first, pulsing his disdain into the water around him. It is almost a living entity, foul in the clarity of the salt water. There is no sunny tinge of fear, only the vibrating superiority.
A grin cracks her too-wide mouth at that. Nothing is safe underwater that believes themselves to be. Such belief leads to complacency, and complacency leads to death. She would know. She has been the death of many who fell into that trap.
Golden eyes bright in the sharp angles of her elongated face, Waverly watches the creature with a mixture of wariness and fascination. His shape is similar to hers while somehow also being utterly alien. Finally, after staring at him for an eerily long moment, she speaks, her voice a hiss through the jagged confines of her teeth. “What are you?”
She isn’t certain he would understand her, isn’t certain he would know the words that trip thickly across a tongue unaccustomed to speech, but still she tries. She wants to know whether this thing is predator or prey.
Waverly
@Noceur