"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
She can almost taste them. The school of mackerel had begun to flee at the first sight of her slender body cutting through the water and now they are engaged in the century-old chase of predator versus prey. They say always run faster than the slowest in the group, a phrase that remains true for the striped fish as each attempts to outswim the other. Despite their best efforts, Rivuline is closing in. Where the school tries to elude her (a quick dodge between two rocks, winding between the silky fins of the rays, leaping up toward the surface of the ocean) she finds a way to make up the difference (pumping her water-wings to swim above the rocks, dropping lower to avoid the rays, pushing her own body toward the surface).
The rush of the chase pumps adrenaline in her vessels and narrows the amber of her eyes into a bloodthirsty gaze.
The fleeing prey collectively make a poor choice, choosing to head toward Taiga’s shore where the water is shallower, and Rivuline’s mouth stretches into a toothy grin. A small portion of the shoreline caves inland, forming a chute that appears safe from below the water but merely ends in a small pool of mingling freshwater and seawater. Rivuline knows the school of mackerel is heading toward a dead-end and she will be the closed door to their escape. While they flee inward, she emerges from the water. The chute is both narrow and shallow, reaching only to her knees, but Rivuline pursues her meal with the same passion as she had underwater.
When they realize they are trapped, some of the fish begin to fling themselves upward, as if a death upon land might be preferred to her toothy mouth. Rivuline catches two of the mackerel with ease and flings them upon the embankment with a quick twitch of her head. Three more soon follow, but as the turquoise steps deeper into the pool, there is an opening for the mackerel to escape back toward the ocean. She lets them flee, only after snapping four more from their population.
Satisfied, Rivuline steps out of the pool and onto the mossy bank. The water is set just within the treeline and a soft tickling sound comes from a nimble creek of freshwater pouring into the pool. Summertime sunlight falls through the redwoods, dappling the ground in shades of deep green and emerald. The majority of her catch is still now and Rivuline’s pale nostrils quiver with anticipation at the smell radiating off their scales.
She eats them like a savage, with the primal hunger of a shark-driven feeding frenzy. Rivuline had spent a few days exploring the edges of Taiga furthest from the ocean and her return to the more familiar pieces of the forest had left her starved and ready to hunt. She eats all nine silver-bodied fish, a heavy sigh of contentment passing through her bloodstained mouth at the end of her feast.
“You didn’t even leave any scraps for me to beg off you,” Celina says, hopping nimbly down the embankment to land opposite Rivuline. Her pale nose flares curiously, but the turquoise mare has eaten every bit of the mackerel that still flavor the air. Celina’s belly gives an audible rumble, but she ignores it for the time being, preferring instead to converse with Rivuline.
She’d seen some of the hunt from her high perch, the way that the tobiano creature had streaked through the water with incredible speed, the sharp turns and dives she’d taken to drive the fish into their death trap. It was impressive, and Celina admires the fin along Rivuline’s topline with renewed respect. Still odd-looking out of the water, the filly thinks, but clearly useful while submerged. Rivuline had told them that she lived in the ocean, and Celina now fully understands how. Some part of her own nature is tied to the sea, but she has never had the urge to swim beneath the ways. Celina is content to lure in the fish with her blinking fireflies and to sunbathe in the rocky shallows.
Having recently shown Aeolus that the fish of Taiga were tastier than those of his tropical home, Celina is curious how they compare to wherever it is in the western ocean that Rivuline had lived before.
“How’s the hunting here?” She asks, assuming that the other woman will know to what she refers.
celina i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
The thrill of her hunting and the feast that followed it still jumps in her blood. When her amber gaze lands on Celina, there is a moment where she has the sharpness of a predator in the depths of her eyes. Rivuline knows this is her friend — in the same way that she is friends with larger sharks and seals and blue marlin — and the thought softens her face. “You have teeth too,” she answers bluntly, though there’s a faint smile in the corner of her mouth. She can smell the flavor of predatory instinct in Celina’s blood, even if the girl is slightly-less savage than she.
The turquoise tobiano allows her dorsal fin to fold against her spine, remembering how Celina’s eyes had strayed to it during their first meeting. Rivuline has never felt self-conscious about it. The creatures of the ocean had never minded it, perhaps because they were decorated with their own assortment of fins and colors. On land, the fin doesn’t carry as much benefit, except for a time on her last exploration of Taiga. A black-and-white creature, bumbling and toothy, had threatened her with a mean glare and a low rumble. Whether on land or in water, Rivuline can sense the game of intimidation. She had flared her fin and snapped her teeth in the creature’s direction and it had moved on, unwilling to deal with the weapons she had to offer.
“The fish look less flashy, but taste better,” Rivuline admits. While the western ocean provided fish in too many colors to count, Taiga’s ocean had fish built for colder temperatures with pale monochromatic colors. Her tongue moves over her lips once, catching some of the remains of fish-blood on her slim face. “Do you swim, Celina?” She can’t imagine another way to hunt from the water unless she crouched near the water and waited for the flash of scales below the surface. It seemed like it would be an exhausting ordeal, with a severe lacking in the adrenaline that Rivuline clings to during her hunts. The seafoam mare walks closer to Celina and her tall, lithe body moves as though she might still be floating in the waves.
