Something warm wells within Reef. It loosens any tension remaining in her stance, and she feels her lips crease into a smile to behold this woman. Immediately, she is transported home, to a beach buffeted by warm winds and a life lived by the predictable rhythm of the tides— to the solid side of her mother as she explained how carefully the mermaids crafted seafoam and cast it up there, on the beach, just for her.
Her ears prick at the mention of the Ridge, and when the mare turns, eyes closed, Reef steps a little closer, reaching out to see if she can find any whiff of Jabari upon the other's coat. There is only salt and a hint of seaweed, of moss-draped rocks and something wild like the wind. Her eyes flicker over the closed lids of her companion. "Yes," she replies, though well does she know the music of the world plays at a depth she can only dream of reaching. Her mother slipped into it easily enough —too easily, the herd said, often to Reef with a note of reprimand in their tones as if she were somehow to blame for her mother's fanciful nature.
But Reef would give anything, anything to have a soul so rich.
She listens to the roar of the water as it cascades down the cliff face, focusing on the sound of its plunge, blinking her eyes to clear her vision of the spray misting over them. To her it is the voice of the natural world: it has no gender, it sings no song such as the pale mare suggests— not to Reef, at least. Her ears are deaf to it in a way she has come to accept long ago: that there are others on this earth who slip between the curtain of reality with ease, dividing their time and attention between what most individuals accept as normal day-to-day, and something unimaginably fantastic on the other side.
Of a sudden, she turns, eyes intent on Charybdis. Her mother might have been this way, had she lived alone, but the herd tethered her. Reef, and the other children— they tethered her as one tethers a kite, allowing her to lift high above the world and drift freely through the skies, anchored by all that love below. "What does the water whisper, to you?" she asks in a low voice, her eyes searching the other's face and wondering, once she's asked the question, if she truly wants to know. |