![](http://i.imgur.com/fMuRrio.jpg")
-- WILD CHILD
Apr 18, 2013 23:59:48 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2013 23:59:48 GMT -6
she remembered the stories they told her when she was little about the ocean. matthias had so loved to speak of the deep blue sea, it was always as though every sentence was formulated to somehow draw the topic into mind and then, once it was done, he never stopped. she thought once it ought to make her mother jealous, the way he was so passionately prone to wax rhapsodic; yet gianna not once turned a blind eye or cold shoulder against her husband, for she knew what little frivolous rineke did not, still didn't, and possibly never would: the ocean was beautiful. and men - men craved beauty, another notion that she could not comprehend, no matter how terribly she strained to wrap her mind around a concept that otherwise had seemed so simple. her father said the sea was beautiful; it was his most favorite place in the world, the seaside. so what else then was comprised of the kind of beauty he needed to be happy (so naive, so naive)? her mother was bound by skin and by bone, and the tiny vessels in between. she was not composed of moon-lulling tides or colored blue; in fact, she was the afternoon in sepia and had dark eyes, and rineke liked to think she smelled like the color red when the sun pooled over her skin, and cinnamon. she was nothing like the ocean, but gianna could say with the confidence of a woman in full bloom: "he loves me and that is all that matters." truly, it was, for they were a pleasant pair together; though they rarely laughed or smiled, rineke supposed beauty was all they needed to be in love. and, for the longest time, she believed as well that, to find love herself, she would need to love the ocean too.
luckily she grew out of such suppositions. rineke abhorred the ocean. she had seen it once as the sun sank below the horizon while peering through the cross-hatches of the trees; there was nothing there but an abyss, an oblivion that tasted raw on her tongue and drew a cold, cold shiver down her spine. she shrank away in despair, for which she was relentlessly teased and taunted by adrijan, her escort; "never follow the river," he chanted until it became one with her soul. she thought as she grew that the rivers then were as wide and swallowing as the sea, and so stowed herself within the shadows of the tree roots and slithered between sunbeams, never going near the creeks or streams, only stilled bodies that were as enclosed as she was. that was then, however, and this was now: rineke had stumbled upon the Voldea accidentally and, in consequence, was rooted where she stood, her mouth slightly agape. her expression was quite rabbit-eyed just as her heart blustered under the same degree, the prey animal instinct in her flustered by the sight, the sound -- and it wasn't even moving that fast! "I can't believe I'm here," she crooned, almost wailing, "now where do I go?" rineke could not cross it; its width was too grand for her slight stature to successfully leap. she did not know how to swim. if she traveled downstream, she knew where it would empty and the very idea of traveling to the ocean was forbidden and forsaken; but if she traveled upstream?
"oh! what am I to do!"
a small hoof stamped the ground. rineke craved her fox hole, she yearned for the close-knit trees, the heaviness, and that sinking sensation as the forest climbed around your thighs and then your shoulders. instead, she was stuck in the midst of nowhere next to a river she wanted nothing to do with, the midday sun bearing down on her back, and a pale, ghost of a wind plucking lazily at the strands of her abundant and very curly, very red hair. a wind that whistled gently a tune in her ear, but that she ignored; and, due to inexperience, continued to ignore, and so she did not sense the stranger coming or feel him watching. she was lost within herself, and the dreams of a place that she could not and, stubbornly, would not return to.
post placement: autumn, year 1.
for hud and armand.
