10-23-2025, 05:14 PM
sirin;
“If you want to be whole again,” he says, his voice at once like a beginning and an end, “just swim to me.”
Just swim. She wills her feet to move towards the water, its surface suddenly stilled. Swim. It could be so easy. It could take no time at all to get to the puppeteer, to get back to the wholeness she had before. For surely he will grant her that - her wholeness, skin and hair and all - when she climbs onto that far riverbank?
Having been swallowed by the earth and defleshed must have been penance enough for whatever sins she has committed.
Right?
Sirin makes that first step towards the silvery, unnatural river and then the next ones are easier after that. It is strange, though, as the water pools around her ankles. She feels it distantly through her bones, like there is a pocket of air between her and the water, softening the sensation. It could be frigid water or it could be scalding, and she’s not sure she would be able to tell much either way.
The skeleton slips further into the water. As it slips over her like satin, she decides that she prefers the water sliding over her bones more than the air. There is buoyancy in the unmoving current that helps her feel less alien. Almost like she is more whole again, the water taking up the space that her organs filled before. The clicking of bones is even muffled underwater. She doesn’t mind as the river reaches higher the further in she wades. This will be easy, Sirin even thinks with a lipless smirk.
And then the distant riverbank pulls away.
Or it seems to, their dark god now a speck on the horizon. Farther away, perhaps, but still with the same halo of power pulsing like lightning around him.
Sirin’s bony appendages begin to kick more frantically, unable to override her own instincts. But it is no use, she has moved too far forward and the slope of the silt has disappeared from under her. Only open water stirs under her panic, and she begins to sink down -
Down to the bottom where she passes streaks of jewel-bright fish and streamers of viridian aquatic grasses as she goes. She tries to scream - and maybe succeeds - thinking it is the end. It will not be an earthen grave, but a watery one that is marked for her. It is more fitting, at least. All of her wickedness has been played out by the water. The little girl she had tricked into bringing her home. The men she had teased and deceived into keeping her at their side to give her all the attention she needed. The River worked for her and now, it seems, she will feed it back with her very bones.
Sirin lands at the bottom after her slow freefall and finds she is as alive as she had been while facing down the stallion across the water. Alive is relative, of course. She tries a step, finds success, and keeps going. Alive becomes more so as she goes. Impossible, but the feeling is there all the same. The bottom of the river is a wonder, a whole other world through the aquatic portal she traveled through. But she has ‘eyes’ only for what is happening to her body.
The riverbed begins to reshape her, throwing a curtain of mud over her skeletal form and then revealing its work slowly. Driftwood knits along her back, fusing with her spine before it begins to reflesh. Oysters climb her legs, opening and clinging like barnacles. Cattails fall like hair over her reforming neck and swish against her hocks. Raw carnelian, amethyst, and quartz fuses around her feet, fills her eye-sockets, peppers her skin. She is a creature of the depths, resembling what has always lived inside.
Appropriately, she does not rise.
She sinks, again.
This time, there is little inclination to save herself. Sirin’s instincts have fled her, it seems, in favor of quiet acceptance. Whatever comes next cannot be worse than being exposed for who you truly are, she thinks. What is left to take? And no sooner than she thinks it, a sharp burn blossoms under her cheek. Where a lover might press a kiss, or an unsuspecting stranger taken by her wiles. Forever marked as a monster. His monster. For all the world to see.
Just swim. She wills her feet to move towards the water, its surface suddenly stilled. Swim. It could be so easy. It could take no time at all to get to the puppeteer, to get back to the wholeness she had before. For surely he will grant her that - her wholeness, skin and hair and all - when she climbs onto that far riverbank?
Having been swallowed by the earth and defleshed must have been penance enough for whatever sins she has committed.
Right?
Sirin makes that first step towards the silvery, unnatural river and then the next ones are easier after that. It is strange, though, as the water pools around her ankles. She feels it distantly through her bones, like there is a pocket of air between her and the water, softening the sensation. It could be frigid water or it could be scalding, and she’s not sure she would be able to tell much either way.
The skeleton slips further into the water. As it slips over her like satin, she decides that she prefers the water sliding over her bones more than the air. There is buoyancy in the unmoving current that helps her feel less alien. Almost like she is more whole again, the water taking up the space that her organs filled before. The clicking of bones is even muffled underwater. She doesn’t mind as the river reaches higher the further in she wades. This will be easy, Sirin even thinks with a lipless smirk.
And then the distant riverbank pulls away.
Or it seems to, their dark god now a speck on the horizon. Farther away, perhaps, but still with the same halo of power pulsing like lightning around him.
Sirin’s bony appendages begin to kick more frantically, unable to override her own instincts. But it is no use, she has moved too far forward and the slope of the silt has disappeared from under her. Only open water stirs under her panic, and she begins to sink down -
Down to the bottom where she passes streaks of jewel-bright fish and streamers of viridian aquatic grasses as she goes. She tries to scream - and maybe succeeds - thinking it is the end. It will not be an earthen grave, but a watery one that is marked for her. It is more fitting, at least. All of her wickedness has been played out by the water. The little girl she had tricked into bringing her home. The men she had teased and deceived into keeping her at their side to give her all the attention she needed. The River worked for her and now, it seems, she will feed it back with her very bones.
Sirin lands at the bottom after her slow freefall and finds she is as alive as she had been while facing down the stallion across the water. Alive is relative, of course. She tries a step, finds success, and keeps going. Alive becomes more so as she goes. Impossible, but the feeling is there all the same. The bottom of the river is a wonder, a whole other world through the aquatic portal she traveled through. But she has ‘eyes’ only for what is happening to her body.
The riverbed begins to reshape her, throwing a curtain of mud over her skeletal form and then revealing its work slowly. Driftwood knits along her back, fusing with her spine before it begins to reflesh. Oysters climb her legs, opening and clinging like barnacles. Cattails fall like hair over her reforming neck and swish against her hocks. Raw carnelian, amethyst, and quartz fuses around her feet, fills her eye-sockets, peppers her skin. She is a creature of the depths, resembling what has always lived inside.
Appropriately, she does not rise.
She sinks, again.
This time, there is little inclination to save herself. Sirin’s instincts have fled her, it seems, in favor of quiet acceptance. Whatever comes next cannot be worse than being exposed for who you truly are, she thinks. What is left to take? And no sooner than she thinks it, a sharp burn blossoms under her cheek. Where a lover might press a kiss, or an unsuspecting stranger taken by her wiles. Forever marked as a monster. His monster. For all the world to see.
Please give her Jewel Touched and scramble wings and horn - thank you!