For @Bonnie

While she floats in an endless sea, and ocean of painful memories here there is very little she can do to resist the pull of the shore. Sometimes, even though it is like twisting a knife into her old wounds, she cannot keep away. Cannot abandon the edge of the world where endless watery blue meets the sand. Cannot avoid being a ghost who haunts the tomb by the sounding sea. It calls to her and it's siren's melody is not one she can resist for long. So the swamp hag becomes a sea witch and dances across the shore, wraithlike. Both a part of the natural landscape of the shore, perfectly suited, but oh so strange and out of place in the same breath. This is where she once lived, who she once was. It is not who she is now. Nor likely would be again.

At least here the beach is not one of pebbles and gold, hemmed in by crumbling sea cliffs. It is black, like she oft pretends her heart is. The days warmth lingers here, heating the sands in the growing twilight. The woman stops and settles upon a dune, gazes waterward. Silhouetted by the last streaks of day leaving glimmering color on the horizon. Watching the waves roll in, their music a lullaby and grating cacophony in the same breath. ""

image/code by saph

Along the black sands of the beach moved a pale form, dipped and flecked in the same inky tones as the ground she hobbled across.

Bonnie was determined to explore this new and strange land, regardless of if she was supposed to be doing dumb boring stuff like staying still or resting her broken leg. How did they even know it was broken? She could still walk! Broken meant not working, and her walking was just fine, just a little stiff.

The crude splint fashioned to her back leg made each step into a strsnge dance of hop and swing, mixed of course with a complimentary glass of pain but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been before the pale lion made her eat some kind of herb to make it go away. The pain wasn't entirely gone, but she had pushed through enough to make it a ways from the cave and onto a black beach. Something she hadn't seen before!

There were some familiar things to be found, however.

Little spouts of water would squirt up from the sand occasionally, telling her that there was treasure below. Bonnie wasted no time zeroing in on one of the streams and using her forepaws to dig down until she hit shell. Angling her teeth around the clam, she pulled it from the sand and gave it a few punishing shakes before yet another thing caught her attention. A stranger, resting on a mound of sand and staring out into the water. Was she looking for monsters?

With the clam in her grasp, Bonnie hobbled closer with eyes squinted in suspicion.

@Luideag

Stock | Manip by Taboo | Coding by Werge

Movement, at first treated like shadows of night devouring the last glimmers of day, ignored. Then as the movement came closer, did not shift like fleeting umber, one ocean green eye shifts. Looking towards the source of motion with idle curiosity which sharpens as she realizes what she is looking at. It is a child, a clam its prize in its jaws, limp drawing it closer still.

For a long moment another babe is overlayed, and then juxtaposed upon the strange girl. One with matching eyes to the woman whose head shifts and looks upon the babe. Memory born image melting away as she turns towards the child. Spying the injury that has her hobbling, the suspicion in her gaze.

Smart kid. For Luideag is not as kind as she once was. Not that any harm would come to such a child. There is a real spark of warmth blooming in her gaze, but still, she is wary, suspicious, distrustful herself. Dangerous if provoked, and worried about the pride scent clinging to the babe's pelt. What if someone came to gather the child and then the swamp hag herself? If she were smart, she would push the child away. Send her back to the hollows she called home so that the sea witch could return to haunting the bog. Yet, she cannot turn away, like the face of the moon, unchanging despite its transit across the heavens. Children were her weakness, the one thing she could not harden against. And an injured girl? She was a gonner before she had even focused upon the child. She once was a healer, before everything. Now she wielded her remedies as poisons, but, it was a simple matter to change one thing to take harm to heal.

For a child she would take that mantle and wear it despite pain. And thus, the woman opened her jaws and allowed words to spill out. "Little bairn what did you do to yerself?" she asks softly, concern flaring in the eyes warmed by the girls presence. A sunlit sea which one could float safely in, warm and clear.

image/code by saph

@Bonnie

Trotting, (or trotting as best she could) up to the stranger, Bonnie tilted her head and looking over her shoulder herself. There was a back, white fur with little black speckles, a nubby little tail that she wiggled. Nope, nothing weird here.

"I gah a cwam?" She turned her attention back to the lioness, speaking through the mouthful of mollusk before setting the thing down at the lioness's paws. "Can you help me open it?"

Technically, yes she could open it herself and knew how. But...there was no harm in seeing if she could get a stronger pair of claws to pry open the shell! Her mom always said that she had to start doing it herself but still the child would find ways to dupe her into doing the work. She still hadn't come out of the sea though, so maybe she could get this stranger to do it instead.

@Luideag

Stock | Manip by Taboo | Coding by Werge

The child looked at herself in response to her question, apparently ignoring her query. The woman knew that tactic, ignoring the problem. Knew it well, but let it go for the moment. Later she would press, once the girl was more comfortable with her. For now, it could be set aside for the quest to open the clam.

She ponders the girl for a long moment before nodding. "Aye lass" she agrees. However she does not reach for the shell and pry it open with claws. That was a grand way to break ones nails. And while she was aware the child likely knew how to open it herself(for she was old enough) she could not resist helping the babe. Green eyes look around, spotting a weathered patch of basalt up the beach. "Follow me with yer clam." she asks, turning from her perch, slowly making her way up the sand so the girl could keep up with her injury. Stopping beside the stone, she looks back at the girl. Wondering if her interest was piqued by their little journey up the beach.

image/code by saph

@Bonnie