I want to be where the people are // Any

[Aquaria]

It was the ocean, always. Her cradle and playground, her home and her sanctuary. Like her mother before her, she was born to explore its limitless expanses. She had walked on the surface only briefly as a foal, breathed air only experimentally until her native tides called her back.She had siblings, a mother and a father. It was all she'd needed for so long.

It was an echo of her mother, the way the sea claimed her one day, without warning. 

When at last she emerged on the almost forgotten sands of her birth place, it was like a piece of salt bleached bone had been swept ashore. Her legs felt weak as reeds as the support of her home spun away from her, leaving her gasping in the too thin air. Immediate regret settled in her belly, heavy and pinching. Why was she here? A wet cough rolled through her as she blinked away the saltwater pooled in her eyes. The dimly lit beach came slowly into focus as she remembered how to use her lungs.

Dry, crunchy sand clung to the pearl smoothness of her scales, shifting around her as she gathered her legs to stand. It was so much harder here, she felt so much heavier. And yet her limbs seemed to move with unexpected ease once she got going. Her first few steps were wobbly high kicks, surging forth with the lack of resistance. "Ohhh," she moaned under her breath, feeling the lack of motion around her. There was nothing. No rhythm, no pulse. Just dry, dull, lifeless air, and unforgiving ground beneath her mossy feet.

While the sun peeked from behind the downy cloud cover, she lit up in the glamour she'd inherited from her submarine kin. She'd been born in shades of gold, with violet eyes like her dam. As the years went by, the color rinsed from her scaled coat, from the translucent veil of her finned mane and tail, until she stood there like a sun tinged pearl. Gold and rose edged each milky crescent, except for where strands of dark mosses trailed. A pair of tiny pink starfish huddled against the skin of her neck.

From ear tips to nervous hooves, she looked all together like a fairy creature, something not quite real. That was the problem, really. She had stopped feeling real, all alone on the bottom of the sea. That, and the stories she'd heard since birth, had driven her to the land, and the alien world that had always been above her. Aquaria, the bright young thing from the sea, had returned to the shores of her birth to seek her future.