05-05-2024, 06:06 PM
In the beginning, I had only dared show my head above the water. Only my head, and only just high enough to see the shoreline.
The first time I saw something move, I ducked beneath the water. I did the same many times after that, and only after months of watching, stayed above.
A few years older now, and with the experience of life at sea and in the Dale behind me, I am not so quick to flee back to the depths. When the otter turns and scampers toward me, I’m all too aware that this is not typical otter behavior. It should make me wary except, well, it scampered, and the black eyes with which it peers up at me are large and liquid, and the whiskers and tiny twitching nose are so like its seafariing relations that I almost reach out and greet it. Without even realizing it, I have drifted closer, the soft scales of my belly sliding up against the silt of the shallows.
Sometimes yes and sometimes no, it answers, as if the fact that it answered at all was not indisputable proof it certainly was not just an otter.
It smiles, baring many pointed little teeth, and continues so politely that I remain where I’d drifted, listening to the little creature and watching with delight as it washes its little face with little paws. It’s never been a just anything, it says.
I don’t notice when the otter looks toward the far shore, glancing at the mostly-eaten trout. What else are you, I begin to ask, feeling for the first time a little strange at being just a nereid. But before the words emerge, it answers for me.
The expanding size startles me, and I stand up in the shallow water to take several steps backward, having drifted too close to back up any other way. Being so revealed to the open air is uncomfortable, and my fins twitch at my sides. I eagerly sink back to my dappled shoulders when the water is deep enough, and by the time I settle at a safe distance, the otter has finished its transformation into a stallion.
I’d thought of it as young, if only because it was so very darling, and the mostly black horse is definitely far older than I am. I know my eyes are impossibly wide, and they grow wider still as he asks about someone behind me. I spin in the water to face the south, sinking until my eyes are barely above the waterline.
I can make out a figure on the far bank, but nothing more. Still, I shake my head in a silent answer. I know very few who can walk on the land, and none of them would deign to swim in this cold lake in this season. The answer is likely little more than ripples to him, and a clump of drifting debris to the stranger across the lake. I glance back toward him, my eyes catching on his hind legs. I glance back and forth from those, to the pair in the front, seeing that they bend differently.
Doing my best to remember the angles, I rise a little higher in the water, enough that my mouth is above the water so I can answer: “I got stuck here. The rivers stopped flowing sooner than I thought they would. As soon as everything melts, I’ll be back to the sea.” Sooner, perhaps, if I can ever master the seemingly impossible task of growing a second pair of legs instead of a gloriously finned tail.
@
Kreed @ Set
The first time I saw something move, I ducked beneath the water. I did the same many times after that, and only after months of watching, stayed above.
A few years older now, and with the experience of life at sea and in the Dale behind me, I am not so quick to flee back to the depths. When the otter turns and scampers toward me, I’m all too aware that this is not typical otter behavior. It should make me wary except, well, it scampered, and the black eyes with which it peers up at me are large and liquid, and the whiskers and tiny twitching nose are so like its seafariing relations that I almost reach out and greet it. Without even realizing it, I have drifted closer, the soft scales of my belly sliding up against the silt of the shallows.
Sometimes yes and sometimes no, it answers, as if the fact that it answered at all was not indisputable proof it certainly was not just an otter.
It smiles, baring many pointed little teeth, and continues so politely that I remain where I’d drifted, listening to the little creature and watching with delight as it washes its little face with little paws. It’s never been a just anything, it says.
I don’t notice when the otter looks toward the far shore, glancing at the mostly-eaten trout. What else are you, I begin to ask, feeling for the first time a little strange at being just a nereid. But before the words emerge, it answers for me.
The expanding size startles me, and I stand up in the shallow water to take several steps backward, having drifted too close to back up any other way. Being so revealed to the open air is uncomfortable, and my fins twitch at my sides. I eagerly sink back to my dappled shoulders when the water is deep enough, and by the time I settle at a safe distance, the otter has finished its transformation into a stallion.
I’d thought of it as young, if only because it was so very darling, and the mostly black horse is definitely far older than I am. I know my eyes are impossibly wide, and they grow wider still as he asks about someone behind me. I spin in the water to face the south, sinking until my eyes are barely above the waterline.
I can make out a figure on the far bank, but nothing more. Still, I shake my head in a silent answer. I know very few who can walk on the land, and none of them would deign to swim in this cold lake in this season. The answer is likely little more than ripples to him, and a clump of drifting debris to the stranger across the lake. I glance back toward him, my eyes catching on his hind legs. I glance back and forth from those, to the pair in the front, seeing that they bend differently.
Doing my best to remember the angles, I rise a little higher in the water, enough that my mouth is above the water so I can answer: “I got stuck here. The rivers stopped flowing sooner than I thought they would. As soon as everything melts, I’ll be back to the sea.” Sooner, perhaps, if I can ever master the seemingly impossible task of growing a second pair of legs instead of a gloriously finned tail.
@
Kreed @ Set