[private] for the call of the running tide

[Oceane]

for the call of the running tide

The predatory curve of his lips and the way it widens at her helplessness. His hot breath against her muscled neck. The island heat that radiates from the sun and the sand. The commands that ring in the depths of her mind.

Answer me.

Together, entwined, each of these things strikes a memory in Oceane. One that she hadn't cared to linger on for quite a few years that causes her heart to palpitate and her mouth to grow dry. Just like that, she is standing in the desert sands of Nau-Aib and she is trapped once again. Her wings itch to extend and carry her into the sky, but the sapphire and moonstone stallion still binds her with his invisible ropes.

Heart pounding faster still, Oceane's cingulate cortex reminds her aggressively that she has not heeded the kelpie's command; it drags her from her unwelcome reverie and forces her to spit words from her mouth that will fulfill her company's scrutiny: "To explore," she says through grated teeth. A half truth, but one that sates her mind's compulsion to give the stallion the information he wants.

To tell him, while bound by his spell and at the mercy of his predation, that she'd come here to seek out the kelpies of lore would make her seem laughably naive.

Oceane feels the slackening of her shackles and revels in it by shifting her weight and unfurling her opal wings just enough to stretch the joints and feel the freedom, paying no mind to the way she bumps the painted kelpie in the process until his warm muzzle presses again to her striped crest.

She freezes again, but this time in fear. "Perhaps... you have something new you'd like to tell her. She strikes me as one who grows bored in perpetuity." The words are forced and gruff with scared uncertainty; they're followed closely by a cold chill as the stallion chuckles in her ear. "She is living inland. I could bring you to her." A simple offer that neither confirms or denies his question, one rooted in self-preservation and a desire to keep Isobell safe.

She clears her throat, turning her opalescent head for a better look at the grinning kelpie before finding her voice again, almost desperate to keep him speaking. "What is your name?"

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@[Ivar] | speech