Much happens at once; a splash draws my eyes back to the water where a rainbow toned damsel strides with powerful limbs past Dog, who looks over at the passing mare with a moment of panic before surging ahead to try and keep pace once it is realized she is no threat; upon her spine is a cat, displeasure vast and writhing on its dark face as his master travels the water.

She arrives on the shore, her visage a most fine regalia of color and dripping crystalline, her voice cheerful and crisp in greeting to ladies, not just myself. A second set of vocals rises from behind me, an unknown figure unseen, and my muscles tense as I turn to glare at the invisible one.

My tail is a blue ribbon that ebbs around my ankles I swiftly twist to face the trees, ears lifted to catch the feminine words that drift from their red shores and blue eyes startled and wide. She is a hesitant thing, wingless with two black horns rising from her milky shoulders and ebony barring, a beast strange and foreign, wrong. My nostrils curve in a deep inhalation of her smell and agitation at being surprised, silent curses bleating through my thoughts that the herd land smells so strongly of others that one cannot pinpoint when they are being watched from so near a distance.

The bell chimes, deep and undulating, it rattles my soul.

”No mean,” Dog’s pitiful voice intrudes, an ear flicking down to where she stands at my side as a deep breath is sucked in and held, somehow arrived during my moment of regard given to the other mare. Through our bond, I can feel her desire to be friends (as she feels with all others), her worry that I will be unable to control my temper on this afternoon and that the poor and rather odd looking mare will be the victim of its flames. I don’t know if she means precisely that I can’t be mean or that the woman didn’t mean to give me such a start – I suppose either are valid.

The other woman is more to my liking, and so with Skýlos’ soft plea for kindness and a honed resolve and tactic to evade the pull of my cursed blood, I turn my eyes to look upon the winged warrior and her damp companion, pupiless gaze cold and curious as it probes her surface to find her muscular and strong, if not a bit brutish. The dame reminds me of my sister, Brighid, in a way, both seemingly male in their carriage but for the delicate lacing of femininity that marked them as the greater of the genders. The thought is sorrowful, perhaps it softens my eyes, my words; I miss them so deeply.

Only they can feel the way my heart aches, only they can know.

"I am no coward," I explain to her, accent thick and heady in my agitated state, its yearning to rise above the peeling of my dark heart, "and Skýlos is a shit swimmer. She has reasons to balk at the stream." Turning to spare a glance to the odd creature that stands at the tree line as Dog whines at being so insulted, my tail lashes with an audible whir through the air behind me, wings folding down against my sides to cover the blue lines of the tattoo along my haunches. I can feel it burning, alive and angry that I tolerate her kind, that I refuse its lust for her screams, her blood. She is not shackled or dead.

She should be these things.

"”I am Cealestis," I share with them both, hoping neither are too stupid to assume that the name given prior belonged to the idiot, wingless Dog with lolling pink tongue that accompanied me.


[ OOC: THE MORE THE MERRIER ~~~ sorry Ceal is a butthat. :| Its her usual mode unfortunately lol ]
@[Kirah]


C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>