The Sentinels i will never let your people go

"@Emaleth, attend me and listen." the druid stood upon a rock that jutted from the earth, uncovered from where it had been hidden in the now-lost grasses. he faced toward the sea and was quiet for a moment. the time had come to impart all that he had learned over his time with the witch-clan to is daughters, and if he was to be punished for assuming the role of a witch when he was not, let it be in the afterlife.

by day, he would teach emaleth, and by night, deirdre. and so the sun was high overhead when he looked back to the dark little sorceress, and smiled. "are you listening?"

Her ears went flat in shame, her posture one of submission— it had been thus since her return, for whether she had faced a scolding and no matter what for, guilt wracked her growing body. She had followed her father to the stone as obediently as ever, and with each step a small amount of her eagerness to learn did return. When he finally turned to smile upon her, the sun warming her dark fur, her white teeth shone in a reciprocated grin, "Yes, father."

she answered, and so he settled himself upon the jut of stone, and faced the sea. "i will teach you now a chant to roil the waters and wash sea-creatures upon the shore -- do it from a distance, lest you drown in the ocean's anger."

"eilimint uisce
ag rith saor in aisce
srutháin agus aibhneacha
lochanna agus farraigí
ligean thy chumhacht ag obair an chuid eile
mo hintinn dhéanamh léiriú."

it was a simple enough chant -- lasher repeated it three times and then looked to emaleth. "what is the purpose of this spell?"

She mouthed the words silently as her father spoke them, stumbling over the pronunciation-- not fully understanding the meaning behind each individual word-- but little Emaleth was determined to commit it to memory. If her father deigned this worthy of a lesson, the child knew it to be important. She was not prepared for his question, and her small brows knit together; "To wash the sea's creatures upon the shore," Emaleth repeated, but knew that answer to be too easy. "For us to eat."

"yes," he murmured, turning to look out toward the sun-warmed breakers. "for we must eat and we must bring food back to donnelaith." for a moment he was silent, and then his eyes traveled back to emaleth with a quiet fondness. "if you could call anything from the sea, what would you call, dear one? anything at all?"

There was something deeper in this lesson, but young Emaleth could not place it. She listened to her father, but even as she did, her mismatched eyes fell over the set of his features. They said as much as his tone and his silence, and the child cataloged it all to store in the recesses of her mind; for future deciphering. There was a certain melancholy to the man that was her father, one that she shared but did not know it.

They had not spoken deeply of the spell that had gone awry, for it pained the studious witch to have gotten something so wrong. And so she worked to make up for it, her hunger for learning and attention to detail only deepening. She remained silent to ponder his next question, visualizing each sea creature she knew in turn, gaze moving to watch the breakers as they met the shore.

After a time, she answered softly, "A selkie."

Emaleth returned her mismatched gaze to him sharply, perhaps realizing a mistake. "Not to eat," she clarified, for he had said there were no restrictions to the wish. "but to see their beauty, and learn of their magicks and their true ways." He had told her of their legends, of course, but there were untold stories she wished to learn-- the stories told by the selkies themselves.

she was perceptive, precociously so, and he felt the weight of her knowing eyes upon him. holding them for a long series of moments, lasher gave a barely perceptible nod. yes, yes there is more, he let slip quietly into his gaze.

her words surprised him, but only for a moment. "a selkie," lasher repeated. it was an answer, though not the one he had accepted, and he was delighted. "what would you ask of it?" taltos inquired, their talk of herd-bringing magicks forgotten for now.

"I would ask to learn of their culture beneath the waves," she responded softly, testing the word she had learned from Constantine weeks earlier. Emaleth knew that ungulates travelled in herds, and rabbits lived in warrens— that there was a structure to all life and living things. Patterns were everywhere, even when it came to the sea. But what happened in its depths were a mystery to all wolves, and the dark witch was hungry for secrets and understanding. "They would tell me of the life in the ocean, and I would tell them of the life on land."

try as he might, lasher knew very little of the land beneath the ocean. and emaleth, she wished to know these things. taltos would not lie. "it is not known to me, the world of the selkies, but for you i shall learn. and for the rest of it, for the beasts that lie within, we shall visit the seawitch at the grotto, caiaphas."

he nudged her then, kissing softly the dark ears in a kind of contented silence. though he knew not whas she asked, for emaleth he would seek out the answer, if even it took many lengths of time. his children would know all there was to know of the world, understand it in its entirety.