Dragoncrest Cliffs the red pearl

backdated to 9/27, shortly after the pearl ceremony! single replies are welcome as always!

it wasn’t fair that her siblings all pulled beautiful pearls, and she pulled one that looked like deer shit. the fact that maman shared her pearl color did nothing to ease sobeille’s discontent about the color; while she was proud to represent such a strong matriarchal line by unerring consistency, she just wished it wasn’t … brown.

carrying one of the surplus oysters back, sobeille decided to visit the cliff shelf where her grandmes were buried. she often found val there sentimentally adorning their graves with meadow flowers or pretty shells (the latter of which sobeille often stole), but today it was just her and the empty, lonely view.

she settled down by where erzulie’s body lay, the ground here worn down by her frequent visitation. here, the great blue vista spanned out in endless colors — the sea stretching for as long as the eye (and then the imagination) carried it.

cayetano was buried here too, and one other male sobeille struggled to remember. oh — kaertok. as she absentmindedly pushed the oyster from hand to hand, she mentally retrieved that history lesson: kaertok had been raleska’s soul bond, or some other word val had said multiple times but sobeille refused to commit to memory.

she wondered what her ancestors would make of her, of her cousins, of her maman. deep in thought, sobeille took the oyster between her teeth and cracked its mantle. sharp pain rent through her mouth, prompting her to spit out the shattered nacre with a wince. something was lodged in the roof of her mouth, sending sprouts of agony to what felt like her very brain — desperately, sobeille pawed at the intrusion, felt it dislodge, and spat it out.

there between her cupped paws lay the fragmented shell infused with her own blood. nestled between the pulp of meat and grit was something else too — something sharp, that had pierced the soft flesh of her upper palate.

sobeille tried to make sense of what she was seeing; her palate throbbed as she rubbed her cheek.

sat between the glittering fragments of iridescent shell was a red baroque pearl. its shape was like none sobeille had seen in a pearl before; it was disfigured and elongated with a tapering tip, the molluscian equivalent of a crooked fang. and the color! it was flush and raw, the forbidding color of deep carnelian that reminded sobeille of the boundless, energetic red of oxygenated blood.

the wind slipped its cold fingers through her fur as she cupped the improbable pearl in wonder, feeling a chill rend down her spine.

another memory came to her then; the crone. she’d warned against attaching your energies to false totems. she’d spoke of ensouling and the powerbond this anchored to one’s to-lang. looking at t this artefact, sobeille wondered if she had not just found the first of many powerful totems — for the oysterfang pulsed with a deep and dark energy.

around her, the roar of the sea and the hungry, tireless wandering of the wind rose to cacophonous duet. and sobeille, rocked to silence, wondered what all this meant.