safe from the rising tide Posted on July 26, 2022 at 05:39:45 AM by charybdis
safe from the world outside
"Aye, dat it is." The disembodied voice carries through the air, and moments later, a stark, thin figure slinks from between the dense jungle that encroached upon the jagged cliff edge. Charybdis drifts nearer, coming to a halt beside the stranger, herself a lithe creature, whose ebony and ivory hide is something secretly entrancing to the half blind mare. But she turns her attention outwards, stretching forward as if hungry to take in the dizzying drop only paces away from her hooves.
"And wit’ such soaring heights, dat make you feel like you stand on top of de world..." The odd mare trails off, her voice a little breathless - this is the power her Ridge holds over her; she is awed by this dark-hearted island to which she is irrevocably bound. "It’s a long way to fall." There was something dark creeping into her voice, not exactly threatening, more like a warning, as though Charybdis knew what it was to fall.
She turns, then, slow and deliberate, to fix both eyes upon the younger mare’s form. Her nares flare as she inhales sharply, catching something on the salt-and-jungle air that caused a glint to flicker in the depths of her seeing eye. "You smell of Paradise and loneliness," Charybdis murmurs, and she tilts her head, before reaching to usher the interloper away from the edge. In time, she may come to view this mare as valuable in her own right - for the handful of souls that still remained within her borders that Charybdis had sworn to protect were ever distant from their Keeper, though whether this was entirely by their design or by hers, the saltsinger had yet to decide. Truth was, she was likely the loneliest soul to roam Atlantis, and she has grown weary.
Would it not serve as an interesting test, to try and win the favour of this stranger, to entice her to stay, and to wait and see if harm would befall her, as it had all those whom Charybdis had sought to keep close in the past. And, in the meantime, the wild-hearted white mare with her mantle of red would be as loyal to this one as she was to those she called her own. After all, if her perception of things was correct, this unknown black and white mare could very well need someone exactly like Charybdis. The softness and sympathy in her tone when she speaks again is very much real.