Gilded Bay I can make you scared

as she lingered between the pound of the surf, the pale vision in the water turned to face her: caiaphas felt jostled by those wintergreen eyes - which were at once both familiar and new.

the water-nymph strode confidently in her direction, parting from the sea in frothy rivulets. caiphas had half-expected some greeting in the coarse tongue she had been born with -- and instead, was met with the velvety prose of her deceased sisters.

her gaze became sharp, thorny -- as far as she had known, she had been the last to survive -- and none too easily, either. theirs had been a violent and bloody chapter in caiaphas' life, closed all too soon.

it had been years since she had spoken the tongue of their mother, and mistrustful of her skill in that long-slumbering dialect, caiaphas faltered: "how?"