The clouds overhead drift slowly, as unhurried as the kelpie below them. Bouyed by the warm tropical waters, the piebald creature drifts in the shallows of the white-sand beaches. With Jhene and Carwyn off to Tephra and Deiti bathing in her pond he has little to occupy him. His hunger is sated (a squid had ventured up from the depths for the last time and he’d enjoyed the crush of it’s keratinous beak between his teeth) and so he does what most apex due with their time: he sleeps.
It is a taste in the water that rouses him, tickling against his tongue in a way that is almost familiar. Ivar’s golden eyes blink open instantly, and he spins beneath the water to face the current that has brought him the smell of a not-quite-stranger. He cannot identify it and it grows no stronger (such is the fickleness of the sea) and so he stands. On four hooves, the water reaches just to his withers, and the kelpie shakes the tangle of sodden blue mane from his eyes. With flicking ears and darting eyes, he scans the nearby sea and shoreline until he finds them.
A cluster of black and white, blowing manes and sharp eyes that he recognizes even if half of them are strangers. Somewhere – obscured by the mass of bodies that look like her (like them) is his Isobell.
He rises from the sea like some mythical leviathan, the saltwater streaming down his jewel-toned scales as he crosses the beach and moves toward them with a single-minded purpose. He can feel her, even at this distance, and he shoulders past the younger horses without a care, determined to find her. Though it has been nearly four years since she had left him, Ivar is unbothered by the passing of time. She’d taken their son and their children (he vaguely realizes this must be them, the twins grown tall and strong), but such is the way of women with wild hearts. She had been unbridled even before he’d turned her; it came as no surprise that she remained as independent with the song of the sea in her veins. A disappointment, perhaps, for a kelpie stallion who wants to keep his possessions nearby, but her refusal to do as she was told has always been part of her allure.
“It took you long enough to come home,” he tells her, and only now does he look at the others around them. That is surely Lothbrok, no longer a gawky colt but a man grown. And their twins – Crashe and Kalliope – as fine a pair of kelpies as he might have ever hoped to sire. The other girl is a stranger, but she shares a resemblance to Isobell that Ivar suspects must be a relation. Not a daughter, he decides as he grants her a brilliant smile, but perhaps a sister. Were they purple as most of his conquests have been of late, he might have suspected both.
“But…” He pauses, rolling his shoulders in a magnanimous shrug, “Welcome to Ischia. It’s mine.” His last kingdom had been a landlocked realm too far from the sea. This place though, is surely where he belongs.
@[Isobell]
<3
It is a taste in the water that rouses him, tickling against his tongue in a way that is almost familiar. Ivar’s golden eyes blink open instantly, and he spins beneath the water to face the current that has brought him the smell of a not-quite-stranger. He cannot identify it and it grows no stronger (such is the fickleness of the sea) and so he stands. On four hooves, the water reaches just to his withers, and the kelpie shakes the tangle of sodden blue mane from his eyes. With flicking ears and darting eyes, he scans the nearby sea and shoreline until he finds them.
A cluster of black and white, blowing manes and sharp eyes that he recognizes even if half of them are strangers. Somewhere – obscured by the mass of bodies that look like her (like them) is his Isobell.
He rises from the sea like some mythical leviathan, the saltwater streaming down his jewel-toned scales as he crosses the beach and moves toward them with a single-minded purpose. He can feel her, even at this distance, and he shoulders past the younger horses without a care, determined to find her. Though it has been nearly four years since she had left him, Ivar is unbothered by the passing of time. She’d taken their son and their children (he vaguely realizes this must be them, the twins grown tall and strong), but such is the way of women with wild hearts. She had been unbridled even before he’d turned her; it came as no surprise that she remained as independent with the song of the sea in her veins. A disappointment, perhaps, for a kelpie stallion who wants to keep his possessions nearby, but her refusal to do as she was told has always been part of her allure.
“It took you long enough to come home,” he tells her, and only now does he look at the others around them. That is surely Lothbrok, no longer a gawky colt but a man grown. And their twins – Crashe and Kalliope – as fine a pair of kelpies as he might have ever hoped to sire. The other girl is a stranger, but she shares a resemblance to Isobell that Ivar suspects must be a relation. Not a daughter, he decides as he grants her a brilliant smile, but perhaps a sister. Were they purple as most of his conquests have been of late, he might have suspected both.
“But…” He pauses, rolling his shoulders in a magnanimous shrug, “Welcome to Ischia. It’s mine.” His last kingdom had been a landlocked realm too far from the sea. This place though, is surely where he belongs.
@[Isobell]
<3