Post by Lexx on Nov 27, 2017 0:43:12 GMT -5
After her adventure hunting at high tide, Naiad steered clear of the ocean. Salome was wrong, she thought wryly, as she stared at the churning, steel-gray surf. I wouldn’t swim away, because I am no match for the things that call the ocean their home. The ocean tumbled and crashed and sighed in her blood, and yet she was still, frustratingly, just a wolf. She was not a finned sea creature, sleek and designed for living in the sea; she was not swift in the water, and the salt and sand stung her eyes. She breathed air, and were she ever crushed in the jaws of a shark, she would bleed. She thought, sometimes, that the ocean’s hold on her suggested something more about who she was, and where she had come from. She longed for her mother’s stories about the moon and the sea and the gods in the sky to hold some kernel of truth, like a pearl clamped tight within an oyster shell. Perhaps Chaos had known that this was how Naiad felt; and thus she had given Naiad a trial designed to remind her of how fleetingly, fragilely mortal she was. The reprimand stung, and continued to sting, every time Naiad looked out to sea and felt too afraid to sink back into its cold embrace. Suddenly, she started. A sleek, gray fin had broken the waves, and then vanished again, swallowed by the storm-wild ocean. With her heart hammering against her ribs, Naiad watched another fin rise into view, carried by a sleek, dark-gray body; another one bobbed up behind the first, and then another appeared as those two rolled back below the surf. They were not sharks, as Naiad had feared. Instead, she realized with growing wonder, that these were dolphins. She couldn’t help herself—she had to get closer. Naiad had never seen a dolphin before, but her mother had described them as lovely, intelligent creatures, that swam together in packs like wolves. They were not dangerous, not like sharks, and they never came close enough to shore to interact with the wolves that lived near the Silverfish sea. But, Naiad thought with growing excitement, she could swim out to them now, because she could hold her breath nearly as long as she imagined they could, and this was a task laid out for her by Chaos, bloodless and kind. It almost felt as though the goddess had sensed her discontentment, and had sent her these dolphins to urge her back out to sea. She stood in the surf, feeling how its undercurrents pulled fiercely at her paws, knowing that the water was still a feral beast, not to be trusted. Even so, she stepped out further, until she was submerged to her chest, her eyes still on the pod of dolphins frolicking in the shallows of the channel. The water pulled hungrily at her, but she held firm, and eventually, it quieted. She took in a sharp, full breath, and let her head duck beneath the surface. Naiad swam out as fast as she could, but it was not an easy swim, for the water fought her at every turn. She had to keep her head above water as she went, so that she could keep her eyes on the dolphins. Ocean water sprayed her eyes and threatened to go up her nose, but she held her breath, unbothered. Her chest had not even begun to tighten in warning by the time she had made her way out to the center of the channel, but she still let out her air and took in another generous breath. The dolphins, rather than fleeing from the stranger in their midst, circled her in fascination. She watched them back, with a glittering feeling of joy in her chest. One of them was swimming in an odd way; it didn’t seem to be moving as freely as the others. As Naiad watched it, she realized there was a calf in the water behind it—no, behind her, for she was a mother—and that the creature was keeping herself as a physical barrier between Naiad and her young. Air, mixed with water droplets, sprayed from the dark hole in its head with a sharp punch of sound, and Naiad jumped a little from where she tread water, surprised. There was a strange trilling, chuckling sound from one of the dolphins beside her. She thought it almost sounded like laughter, and smiled in spite of herself, feeling foolish. The dolphin that had laughed swam forward, nosing her very gently with his long snout. He was a very large, elegant creature, with a notch in his dorsal fin, and gouge-like scars along one side of his smooth body. She kept still, and he chattered to the others. A couple chattered back, and came forward to inspect Naiad themselves. The holes in their heads continued to emit sharp bursts of air, and she realized they were blowing the air out of their bodies, and gulping in fresh air to fill their lungs. They were breathing, just like her. “You’re just lovely,” she told the nearest dolphin, the mother, and though she did not answer Naiad, the clever look in her dark eyes suggested it was not an inability to speak that kept her from replying, but instead a language barrier. She rolled neatly to the side, and finally allowed her baby to swim forward and investigate the wolf that floated amongst them. Had Naiad not been holding her breath, she would have gasped. He was so much littler than the others, and the corners of his long mouth almost seemed upturned in a perpetual smile. His eyes were closer to his tiny snout than the other dolphins, which made him look incredibly, unbearably cute. Slowly, slowly, aware of all the dolphins’ clever eyes on her, Naiad gently stretched out her own muzzle to him. He rose, tapping the end of her nose, and like that, the air of distrust around her faded. The dolphins all swam in close, laughing, trilling, squealing. She took in a fresh breath and swam with them, out of the channel and down into the open sea. She had never known such approachable, curious, friendly creatures. They swam with incredible grace, making her feel heavy and waterlogged in comparison. A couple hunted leisurely; it seemed more like a game to abruptly twist around and flash through the water after a fish, rather than an action fueled by hunger. One noticed the way she watched them, and brought her a little, glittering fish. It released its limp, twitching body into the sea, and Naiad darted forth to catch it in her own jaws, deeply touched by its offering. The baby swam in circles around her, occasionally nipping at her tail; and when she turned, he would surge off. Eventually, she realized he wanted to play, and spent a few lovely minutes trying, and failing, to catch him in their game of tag. The large, scarred dolphin chuckled at her slowness. They would surface every now and again for air, and Naiad would follow them to do the same. Every time they started off, toward the vast sea away from Sharktooth and the mainland, Naiad would hesitate long enough that they would pause, and circle back, as if asking why she wouldn’t come. Looking into the scarred dolphin’s eyes, she wondered how she could explain that, as much as she desperately wished she could follow, she had found something on Sharktooth that she could not leave. “I’m sorry,” she told him, and meant it. “I have someone waiting for me, back at home.” The dolphin blew out a sharp breath, looking at her evenly. She touched her nose to the end of his snout, and then did the same for the mother dolphin, the dolphin that had offered her the fish, and lastly, to the baby. “Goodbye,” she said softly, to the group gathered around her. “I’d love to see you again someday.” The scarred dolphin let out another volley of strange sounds, so complex it sounded like language. They swam her back to shore, as close as they dared, and watched her go. When at last she stood on the beach and turned her face back toward the sea, the pod changed course, and bobbed amongst the waves until their fins vanished from view. "speaking" table by lexx |
