Dragoncrest Cliffs vouch for the poems out of my mouth

for @Sobeille! <3

okay. chani took a breath. she wanted to leave.
coming to accept that had been hard. it had taken weeks.
but thinking it concretely now let her feel less tense, a welcome sensation. it wasn't wrong to want to leave. she just didn't know what to do and had no desire to waste her time on little things.
chani wanted to move and to shake.
now that she wanted to leave, she tried to think of where to go. flicking a pebble into the warm water off siren's bay, chani rolled to her back in the white sands and thought of eresta. a classic already. everyone was there. lots to do. but not new.
redtail rise. pearl was there. mulherin was there (handsome). she wouldn't be far from sapphique. also not new.
a loud sigh revealed chani's frustration.

she’d made her way home, troubled by what she’d seen in the mainland.

a long sigh broke through the canopy, a welcome distraction from sobeille’s fraught thoughts. chani; laid on her back and deep in her own mind.

what you be t’inkin’, sobeille declared more than asked, though the upward lilt at the end of her sentence communicated an interest in whatever shadows had chani by the throat.

in many ways sobeille felt far older than chani, as if fel years separated them. there was a confidence in her cousin that chani had yet to gain; she covered her own anxieties with a girlish arrogance.
"i be t'inkin'," and she tried not to let her resolve waver. "i want to leave sapphique. see more. but not only see. i want to do some'tin'. for us."
her brow narrowed.
"do sometin' for our grandmot'ers too."

it would have never occurred to sobeille that the longing that burned at her breast singed chani’s too. her eyes lit in knowledge of a shared kinship deeper then blood.

you be feelin’ it too, den. sobeille acknowledged, waving with a paw the gesture of closing walls.

only sobeille did not want to leave sapphique. she wanted to take it and put it under the iron forge of her steel resolve; shape it and shape it again until it resembled a blade so keen it cut the world it sat in.

i be t’inkin’ our grandmot’ers would want deire daughters to ensure deire future. their legacy’s future. the weight of her statement rested heavy in the air. sobeille turned to chani softly. where would you like to go?

this too woke in chani, leapt in her, spoke from where it had dreamed a pit into her very heart. riveted to sobeille, she shook her head, then stopped. "i want to stay beside de sea," she said with a firmness she had not felt before. "de sea is in us. it be in me an' you. we cannot leave. not like suzu," chani added with a bitterness she did not realize she had been carrying. why suzu had left remained a mystery, but it had felt wrong to her younger sister then and now.
"i want to be close enough to help if our mot'ers need us," she ventured further, glancing to sobeille to assess now. should they remain at hand or reforge themselves far away? "i want to — build somet'in. sometin' like dis but —" but.

but better. sobeille finished chani’s trailing thought, feeling the kindred energy of their nascent idea thrum the pulse strings of her heart. 

her mind turned to suzu. she frowned. she did not understand - but perhaps it was because like them she recognized sapphique was only half of a whole. the rest had to be unearthed and fashioned, extracted into the startling, gilded monument it could be. 

i been learnin’ bout de pirates an’ sirens our grandmes ran wit’. sobeille shared after a thoughtful pause. sapphique is too sof’. if we make somet’in’, i want it to be standin’ de test of time.

she came to sit aside the prone chani, her eyes roving to the shadowed patch of earth below the cliff’s reach. what about de sound?

better?
they were diverging, chani and sobeille; one had seen the walls of cultures raised far from here, and one though the seacliffs to be the entire world. this had stood the test of time! what did her cousin mean?
but as almost-women born to a lineage which ran as fierce as the sea, she sensed that she could be vulnerable in what she did not know with sobeille.
pirates. sirens. too soft.
"de soun' already be ours," she said, then paused abruptly again. yes. it was theirs. "de soun'." but;
"what do you be seein' for ankyra?" chani asked, almost worried to know, but her fascination was out of her hands now.

sobeille sensed departure. the tender strings that pulled them close had been shaken loose. she reconsidered, taking a long time to build a response, piling each word carefully like a brick laid upon clay.  

it be close enough no advancing’ enemy can isolate our forces. sobeille had dreams of battles, of a rusalkan-era dystopia revisiting them. she had dreams of fortesses, of enduring empires, of foundational legacies so strong that six generations from now her bones would stand upon the mantle of her predecessors, a revered artefact of a horrible but cunning age. 

an’ separate enough we each maintain our own hierarchy. i be learnin’ that we lost some of de ways of our ancestors. some of dem were pirates, an’ some of dem sirens dat established empires around deire claim. dis would be our legacy. we can establish sister packs who each owe dere livelihood to sapphique; an’ we can send de boys borne of sapphique’s daughters to dis pack, an’ shape dem to be de servants of our future, as our ancestors intended it to be. no more trustin’ outsiders. no more forgiveness for de men dat leave.

but it doesn’t ‘ave to stop at de sound. we could seize de islands, or de coast — de sound is simply one part of our long and endless reach.

men that leave. and there it was,  a truth half seen but not recognized, not for chani. her memories and knowledge of men was widely positive, punctuated by the sapphiquean trait of superiority.
the more she thought on what sobeille said, the more it spread out in appealing danger before chani.
but she truly could not conceive that men deserved such a fate. 
and yet perhaps she knew.
she thought of mulherin, draped in tightening kelp, dragged on the sand. it was a thought which scared chani, for he had done nothing to deserve it.
but what was deserving?
she continued to stare at sobeille. "how — what do we be needin' to do to ... start?" she asked faintly, her heart pounding in her veins.

sobeille could sense their course had parted, and she had not yet righted it. she was so convinced her belief was factual, that she could not take a step back and see how these words alienated chani.

she softened. mebbe we start by goin' down de coast, see what places you like. a conciliatory offering for her polarizing beliefs.  sobeille's heart was invested in ankyra -- there was something about that place that made her feel her bones belonged there -- but she also understood that it was only a vessel. her power -- and chani's power -- could be channeled out of any port.

a brightening came, a nod. "let's go to de soun' firs'," she declared, standing happily to her paws. despite the fact that she didn't truly understand where sobeille was coming from, it would be good to take the first literal steps toward the goals she had realized.
a glance in the direction of her mother's den, then where her aunt mireille roamed; chani looked silently toward her cousin, wondering if they should seek the blessing of the older women before or after they'd gone.

sobeille rose to her feet. she’d always been an act first, ask permissions later type; as chani’s gaze flickered to the housing sites of their relatives, sobeille nudged her gently. we be adults now, she reminded, already turning towards the rocky cliffs that descended down to the shore.

you be ready?

chani felt chastised. not put upon, not tormented, not even scolded. but sobeille shouldn't have had to remind her of what she already knew.
"i be ready."
with that in mind, with her head held in a confidence possessed by the women who had raised her, chani turned and trotted off alongside her cousin, pulse racing as they embarked on what she hoped to be something quite life-changing.

<3

sobeille was too busy planning their route to notice yet again she’d accidentally thorned at chani. she carved a path between the dark wood, the two of them trotting down the slope that marked sapphique’s southwestern boundary. the sound was just below, its shore glistening.

sobeille nudged chani gently, feeling the pair had just taken the first step that marked their entry into a wonderfully grand new chapter.