Solira: The Ocean: || to HUYANA

She sounds smart. Like my mother’s friends, the many scholars and spies whom she flaunted at her sides when she was Queen. I wonder if she knew my mother, if anyone here remembers my mother.

I don’t even remember my mother.

*

Irene’s slate-grey eyes snapped open as she heard the slosh of water, the approach of another. She did not recognize the bay mare, though it did not surprise her. Although the ocean shores remained forever unchanged (at least in the span of equine memory), its residents seemed to come and go as often as the tides, most of them never to wash up on the shores again.

”Yes,” she responds to the other mare’s musings, her voice lacking the elegance and clarity of Huyana’s. She was not meant to be a scholar, to hear her own words roll off her tongue and forever share her feelings and ideas. The air child was lucky to compose a single sentence, and so instead she often spoke in broken tongues, the languages changing between words and the grammar a twisted mess. ”Irene. I’m Irene.” Today her tongue seemed to cooperate, though she dare not stretch it far, not when it would quickly stumble on her teeth. Instead, she looked for the mare to speak further, hoping to hear more of her soothing, beautiful words.

They were like water, those words, and they seemed to be a fitting cure to her mental pain.

”You know each other? You and the ocean, you’re friendly?” she drawled, her eyes closing again as a larger swell threatened to sweep her legs from beneath her. It failed (as they always did at this distance from the shore), yet still her pupils remained hidden behind grey lids. A normal horse in her circumstances would have begun to shiver as the waves sloshed across her back and against her barrel, especially when lacking a coat. Yet Irene could not be bothered with what was normal; she only did what would be to her benefit, and in this case she sought the relief that the cool waves would bring to her heated skin.

Though she seemed to pay no attention to her newfound companion, Irene waited patiently for a response.

IRENE
Solira || Spy || Air III

There's a saltwater film on the jar of your ashes;
Slv. Alshain x Gld. Notte