Ankyra Sound everybody want to talk too much

the footpath to the sound was so familiar now that it took hardly an hour’s work before sobeille and @Chani were at the base of ankyra’s tumbling cliff.

sobeille looked upwards, where the spire of sapphique loomed; always peering down, always ever present.

she looked to the beach, where low tide revealed the stacks of solira.

what thoughts bounded in chani’s brain?

they had wanted to strike out, these cousins of saltwater. but they had not even left far from the cliffs and she felt as if her heart had been torn.
it occurred to chani that sapphique too, was theirs. why should they give it up?
why not — take it?
her pensive eyes turned to sobeille. 
"ki jan ou santi ou lè ou kanpe isit la?"

sobeille stilled as the wind rifled her fur. her cousin stood alongside her, two hearts cleaved from the same clay.

how did she feel? she tried to grasp it, but it was like attempting to catch the frolicsome wind.

after some thought, sobeille answered. like mebbe i stood here before, in a past life. what about you?

"like it be too close an' too far at de same time." she studied her cousin. "harder den i realized to be away from sapphique. harder now to t'ink about goin' back."
her mother hadn't spoken in a long time. the seacliffs without her music hurt chani in a way she was not able to articulate.

too close and too far at once. sobeille peered back at the cliff, who cast its long shadow over the darkened sand of the sound. it stood as permanent reminder, the tallest bastion to sapphique’s endless reach.

to sobeille, it was just another territory nestled under sapphique’s arm. like glintwater, or bluepeace — naturalized to their claim as water was.

we can keep goin’ den. see what else you like. she pointed to the hole in the sound’s cliff face where the grotto sat, and whispered to chani in a sotto voice about the witch that had stolen her tooth.

then she motioned to the stacks of solira, and in a much braver voice, told her of tilden— the seal that had met her several times in that expanse of blue, and even seemed to demonstrate a species of canid intelligence.

she showed chani where she’d found the great boneflower, where astera had pulled the moonstone from the ground — various haunts and hideaways where a lonely girl had played by herself. she showed her the tall sequoias so large they seemed older and bigger yet than the cliffs — trees teeming with old forest spirits. she wondered if chani would see the magic of this world, or if it would look dark and alien through the lens of a girl who mourned for home.

for chani, it was a marvel. it was a time to be silent and awestruck. this talk of witches and teeth! seals who spoke. boneflower. moonstone.
the language of the ageless trees.
chani saw now its true sacredness, how their own stories had melded with the curling fronds and the spray of surf beyond.
how it was indeed theirs.
she sank down and lay fawnlike in the briny moss, capturing rays of sunlight over herself, warming through and through until she had enough energy to say, "let's say we meet a man, you an' me, while we out toge'ter." her eyes had gone half-lidded, her voice thoughtful. "what do we be doin' to him?"
hypothetical?

sobeille did not normally speak so much, so when they were done and chani slipped into a bed of moss, she was grateful for the silence. 

for a time she listened as the wind wove its spell-like whisper through the leaves; the trees hummed with vibrant life alongside them. 

then chani spoke again, and the question was so peculiar to sobeille that for a moment she simply turned its edges over in her mind. 

she’d never really thought of this. her eyes, curious in their introspection, roved to where chani sat gilded in a pool of light. what you be wantin’ to do to ‘im?

when sobeille did not immediately answer, chani felt at once as if she had asked the wrong question. and when her cousin did speak, it was to turn the high-powered lens of scrutiny back over the girl in the sun.
again she felt that sensation, as if she was so much younger than the ageless eyes which watched her now. "i — you talk like you t'ink men be — less. like we be better. obviously," she added, "but — dis place we be wantin' to build. where will dey fit into it. nowhere?"
back swung the metal arm of the microscope.

truthfully, sobeille was so entrenched in the idea that men were beneath her that she’d never spared them much thought at all. as the needle moved, sobeille was forced to challenge her perception — if only because now she was in the peculiar position of needing to defend it.

having grown up in sapphique, the assurance in their gender being superior was inalienable. sobeille found herself examining every small core belief that had laid the brick of her foundation, and the fieldstone skeleton of her future home.

well.. she shifted, looking past chani now. dey be useful for one t’ing. so we keep some around. mebbe dey ‘ave their own rendezvous. their usefulness to sobeille came down to their ability to insure the female line; but something about exercising their usefulness filled sobeille with revulsion. but dere would be no male leaders. her gaze swept to chani to read her reaction.

useful for one thing.
it flamed chani's face to ashes, and she glanced quickly away. sobeille was so wordly — was there more she knew about that than she said here?
no — no, not when her cousin seemed to hate them so much.
she toyed with a tuft of seagrass. "some rights. no leaders. yes. but i mean —" she wet her lips. "sobeille. do we capture him?" is that how such a place was begun?

so enmeshed in her own thoughts, she missed the heavy handed shadow of doubt that flickered over chani’s face. sobeille was a bull — headstrong, reckless, and at times stupid — it would have done her some good to hear opposition voiced. at the very least it might slow the burgeoning progress of hate that flamed her heart. she straddled a line now that could go either direction; benevolent leader or unyielding tyrant — and the line was veering dangerously towards the latter.

mebbe. she considered what a captive would be like; no, she was not certain she wished for a masculine presence to be resentful. it would be better to find an etienne or a cayetano — a wolf with uses, but not many questions. mebbe we find one dat ‘as nowhere else to go. one dat owes us a debt.

a debt. chani did not understand transaction; truth be told, nothing bad had ever happened to her. everything awful which had thus taken place had only brushed chani. it was only adjacent, like the silence of her mother.
that bittered her heart more than she knew.
contemplation, and then: "have you ever t'ought of just — becomin' leaders? in sapphique? tellin' dem we ready." did val need to stay?
she rose up from the moss. "have you ever heard anyone talk about de moors? far off. a name like ... rusana? or some'tin'."

the way i guffawed at 'does val need to stay?'

though chani did not know it, she inspired the birth of a seedling thought in sobeille. she took that fragile thought and encased it immediately in tender cover.

but what about maman and tante? she aired, her inquisitive gaze resting on chani as she rose from the bed of softmoss. sobeille did not want a coup. if love existed in her heart, an approximation of it was devoted towards her maman and tante. it would be unthinkable. she wondered if chani meant simply alongside them -- but then, in sobeille's eye that was too many cooks souring the broth.

better to have one or two leaders, to ensure the ruthless pursuit of their vision. no, what's at dese moors?

shes uncharitable SMFH but i love himm <333

chani thought of the songs her mother no longer sang, the ones which had been lost. she knew the others; perhaps she might sing them in such a flat and open space. "not sure," she said with thoughtful haziness, and then sharpened. "we should find out, sobeille."
this land was theirs, with their jewels and their ghosts. but if the grandmothers of sapphique had once bunked elsewhere, was it not too their genealogy to explore? "but — let us be sleepin' here tonight, to dream what may come to us."

rusana— whatever that was — intrigued the girl. she wondered what the moors were like; how dark the peat moss was under the water’s surface, and how many souls buried beneath that oppressive place.

okay, she breathed, gaze flicking to the grotto. she would not sleep there tonight. svalinn showed me dis fallen tree once over there. she gestured towards the sequoia. we can bunk dere tonight, if you’d like.

last for me <3

"i be likin' dat," chani yawned, taken with the idea of sleep now that they had come.
slumber came easily. dreams as well; Sogbo whispered as visions took chani, and her mind's eye was surrendered to the images that sobeille had conjured: a land where women held what they wanted from men and offered no more.