[private] heaven is on fire; aeolus

[Celina]

Trust your instincts, her father says. The memory of his laughter, of the proud gleam in his blue-and-green eyes when she’d snapped at an intruder in the woods, was all the encouragement she needed. Mother has told her to quiet them, to bite down on the desire to stalk and hunt and swallow. Practice control, Mother had lectured. Lose control, laughed her Father when she had told him. The quiet rumble of her growl was muffled by the waves, but it quiets immediately when she finally puts a name to the face in front of her. “Aeolus!” she crows excitedly, and leaps forward through the shallow water until she stands on the drier beach a few feet from him. “I didn’t recognize you! You got so tall!” Celina has as well, but she still has to look up, just a bit, to meet his golden eyes. They’re both taller, older, and the soft fuzziness of his foal coat that she remembers has shed out into something far sleeker. It highlights the pattern of his spots, which Celina inspects admiringly for a moment before answering him. “So I grew these over the winter,” the white filly begins, raising one foreleg as high as she can manage. The soft glitter of white scales is impossible to miss, even in the starlight, and she adds a few fireflies to make sure they’re seen. She’d shown her father the scales that line her throat as well (more obvious, more eye level), but the quiet murmur of instinct tells her not to reveal her throat to anyone and she listen. “And then my Dad took me hunting when he came home and told me that it’s not natural for me to eat like a prey animal.” Celina’s tone is dismissive; Dad has told her that prey animals are weak, unlike himself, unlike Celina. “I live here,” Celina adds proudly, “These are my fishing grounds. I like fish the best. Do you?” Is he a prey animal, she wonders? He does not feel like one, not like Mom and Elio and Poppy do. The golden champion used to feel like one, but of late he has begun to smell like the pumas and the wolves and her father – like a fellow predator. Celina smiles a toothy smile, and tilts her head. celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type

@[Aeolus]