[open] The blue in an ocean of grey // Any

[Aquaria]

I'll be almost to the ocean when you open your eyes

She was rubbing against the rough palm bark, groaning at the pressure on her skin but couldn't bring herself to stop. Not when She itched as though there were a thousand ants crawling beneath her scales, biting mercilessly. She itched and burned and no amount of scratching seemed to alleviate it for long. 

Moaning in discomfort, she threw herself into the sand and began to roll. The heat helped a bit, soothing the irritation for a moment. It was a brief enough solution.  Wherever the sand didn't touch continued to ache. Her head pushed through the white grains, the rubbing and rubbing until she thought she might be starting to feel just a bit better. 

White sand clung to her face, disguised the pearl flake scales falling to the shore. More sand, fewer scales, until she rose gasping and tired. She felt sick, honestly, her skin still buzzing with irritation, her head ringing with the effort of warding the pain away. 

With a longing glance, she considered the waves lapping not so far away. A few steps and she'd be able to fall into the cool water. Anxiety held her back. She couldn't sleep in the water, not anymore. She worried too much that some violent shadow would emerge from the reef and finish the job that had been begun at the end of the eclipse. There was no rest to be found beneath the waves. 

So she resigned herself to the beach, and the shade of a palm grove. Hot and sore, the seamare did her best to doze, absently rubbing her neck against the nearest trunk as she did. Sleep was a long time coming.

Aquaria

[Thresh]

Thresh had been tossed into the sea at a few days old, a ritual practice by his people. They offer their brightest newborn to the Coral Goddess so that her palette might remain ever fresh. He’d washed back in with the next tide, a sign of great fortune, but he has never forgotten the taste of saltwater in his mouth, never again enjoyed the tug of waves and his feet.

When he had chosen to leave his homeland, when he had asked the Coral Goddess for a new life, he had not thought she would be so cruel as to put him back in the ocean.

Now he struggles through the shallows, making his way toward dry land with a single-minded determination. This is surely a large continent, he thinks. So he will make his way inland, Thresh decides, he will find a desert, will make himself a home.

Instead he finds a mare, one who’d probably been sleeping before he’d come across her, and he stills. She looks...uncomfortable, though he is not sure he could say how. She looks strange too, finned and colorless, and Thresh wonders if perhaps she is ill.

Is she even really awake, he wonders? So he calls out tentatively: “Hello?”