Blackwater Islands with no defenses but your defenses

they'd made it to this place of ancestral origin. ava had hoped for some profound feeling when she crested the last wave to the beach - but instead, all she felt was exhaustion.

her siblings would be nearby. ava took the moment to rest against the swash line. her mind drifted to back home in rivenwood - wondering how mama was doing, and if she too felt this strange twist like a fang lodged in her heart.

Hi, sorry I suck, but you're the best <3

Anathema, too, found herself... disappointed, perhaps? No, she felt —

bereft.

In the quiet of her thoughts she blamed many things: @Hierophant's reticence, Accipitra's gloom, the weather, their grief, the trail of broken homes at their backs. The absence of every mother they'd ever known. Their missing @Saint. But she knew the truth, didn't she?

Black waters in their veins.

She brought her sister a fish, her furs sodden and all in a tangle. Eat, her somber gaze implored. I can't lose you, too.

u do not suck!! activity ebbs and flows. ur signature is gorgeous btw!! <3

ava's listless thoughts ended their disorganized travel when anathema's shadow broke over her body. she limply moved her sodden tail, eyes climbing to the dark face of her sister haloed by high afternoon sun. a gleaming fish hung in her jaws. ava accepted this gift readily.

she ate, crunching through bone and scale. she pushed half of it back to her sister, licking her chops in an appreciative gesture. her gaze was equally imploring: your turn.

Ana obliged as her sister had, staring forlornly out at the waters for a few moments as she ate. Her thoughts felt abuzz; unfocused. Eventually one drifted to the surface, then another, tossed about on tumultuous waves but finally clear to her.

I don't know if we should stay.

Where else would we go? Her eyes turned toward the islands now, studying. They hadn't yet explored all of them. Anathema hardly saw the point. Yet she thought now of the words her brother had spoken to her of this place, their heritage.

He doesn't love this place - Hierophant. I don't know if I do, either. But he said... he said that this is where we were born. Where our mother left us - our first mother, before - before Heda.

And no one knows why she left us. And I don't know if I want to know why, or if I want to stay here - I just don't know.

All I know is that it started here.

so much to unpack between the gristle of words and tough sinew of embedded memories too set in their ways to be pried loose. 

ava listened as anathema unspooled her thoughts in scattered ribbons of context. ava’s own thoughts on the matter cast to the wind, where maybe one day her history would be one and the same with this place; her story as much the story of this rock-crashed beach. 

she closed her eyes; who could know if they were to stay? that was for an order much higher than her own to decide.