She smells of the ocean, of salt and brine and so much sun she might be made molten by it, silver and flowing like liquid ore. There are curls in her mane where the pale hair is always in some ever-changing phase of half damp and half dry, perpetually windswept and far too wild to ever tame. It dances across her dappled neck and falls over a pair of eyes brighter than any gem, bluer than any single shade of mountain sky. They are large on her delicate face, wide and round and almost doll-like as she turns that luminous gaze back out towards the ocean again.
This place is home, this little rock cove carved from a land made and unmade by too many gods, too many higher powers always craving more and creating change and flexing magic made hungry from disuse. She hopes she will be able to keep this spot safe from that. Keep it safe and hers and perfectly secluded.
She spares a glance towards where the grass grows tall and tangled against the rock barrier, too soaked in salt for her to ever want to eat, but perfect for concealing a pale gray seal skin. It is tempting sometimes to move it underwater, to find a submerged cave and tuck it into a crevice of stone, but she worries the tide will grow greedy and take it from her. The sea is like that, strong and selfish and so good at taking.
With a grace reminiscent of the sea herself, Alleria moves down the shore to slip into the waiting waves. She disappears up to her knees, then her chest, and when the cold water touches her throat she exhales the air from her lungs that would otherwise keep her buoyant. Much like her seal form, the selkie can sustain for hours off the oxygen in her blood and muscle as she travels the shallows beneath the waves.
It is the easiest way for her to come and go and still keep her cove secret, keep her sealskin hidden away from those with malintent. The cove is shaped like a wide horseshoe butted up to the sea, inaccessible but by sky or water, and no more or less interesting than any of the other local coves she is sure. There is little shelter from the sun, and only minimally from the wind, but it is not herself she means to keep safe.
Not directly, at least.
When she emerges again she miles down a different beach. She pauses on the shore as the water runs from her in glittering rivulets, turning to gaze up and down the beach for anything remarkable. But everyone in this place is remarkable, and she finds herself constantly enchanted by the oddities of a place so infused with color and magic that the oddities are those who go without either. Like her, to the unclever. She shakes herself, loosing sand and water and bits of damp seaweed from her hair as those curls reappear in the drying tangles that settle against her neck.
There is something ethereally beautiful despite her plainness, something perfectly, unnameably right. It is in the shade of her skin as pale as pewter, in the silvered white of the mane coiling against her neck. It is in the darker points and darker dapples, and the too-large shape of those beautiful aquamarine eyes that might hold the blue of every sky trapped inside them. It is the smile on her lips, so soft and warm, and the sunshine in her quiet laughter.
It is everything and nothing.
This place is home, this little rock cove carved from a land made and unmade by too many gods, too many higher powers always craving more and creating change and flexing magic made hungry from disuse. She hopes she will be able to keep this spot safe from that. Keep it safe and hers and perfectly secluded.
She spares a glance towards where the grass grows tall and tangled against the rock barrier, too soaked in salt for her to ever want to eat, but perfect for concealing a pale gray seal skin. It is tempting sometimes to move it underwater, to find a submerged cave and tuck it into a crevice of stone, but she worries the tide will grow greedy and take it from her. The sea is like that, strong and selfish and so good at taking.
With a grace reminiscent of the sea herself, Alleria moves down the shore to slip into the waiting waves. She disappears up to her knees, then her chest, and when the cold water touches her throat she exhales the air from her lungs that would otherwise keep her buoyant. Much like her seal form, the selkie can sustain for hours off the oxygen in her blood and muscle as she travels the shallows beneath the waves.
It is the easiest way for her to come and go and still keep her cove secret, keep her sealskin hidden away from those with malintent. The cove is shaped like a wide horseshoe butted up to the sea, inaccessible but by sky or water, and no more or less interesting than any of the other local coves she is sure. There is little shelter from the sun, and only minimally from the wind, but it is not herself she means to keep safe.
Not directly, at least.
When she emerges again she miles down a different beach. She pauses on the shore as the water runs from her in glittering rivulets, turning to gaze up and down the beach for anything remarkable. But everyone in this place is remarkable, and she finds herself constantly enchanted by the oddities of a place so infused with color and magic that the oddities are those who go without either. Like her, to the unclever. She shakes herself, loosing sand and water and bits of damp seaweed from her hair as those curls reappear in the drying tangles that settle against her neck.
There is something ethereally beautiful despite her plainness, something perfectly, unnameably right. It is in the shade of her skin as pale as pewter, in the silvered white of the mane coiling against her neck. It is in the darker points and darker dapples, and the too-large shape of those beautiful aquamarine eyes that might hold the blue of every sky trapped inside them. It is the smile on her lips, so soft and warm, and the sunshine in her quiet laughter.
It is everything and nothing.
alleria
pull me back to shore, i'll never reach my place