Lila Zutshi (amnestia) wrote in deities_dot_com, @ 2008-10-05 22:00:00 |
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Current music: | Thom Yorke - Black Swan |
Of Tricks and Tricksters [tag: Loki]
Lethe didn't so much return as reemerge.
A lot of gods, she knew, liked appearing and disappearing in swirls of light or sparkles - coruscating announcements of their presence and reminders of their departure.
Lethe was a little more low key.
It could have been a slink, though Lethe didn't try to be slinky. It was just something that happened - when your primary form was liquid, there was something about it you just couldn't shake - no matter how long you stayed in corpus.
And she hadn't been in corpus in a while.
It was easier as fluid - everything was. Not like concept, where awareness operated so differently. As a living body of water - without a body to distract her - there was nothing but action; nothing but movement and function. Maybe she tasted the memories of her King - maybe she didn't. It was all the same in the river - no cognizance, if she didn't want it; no decisions, no quandaries. Just... being.
It was perfect.
She couldn't have said what pushed her out of that idyllic state. It might have been a dream, but she didn't usually dream as a river; it might have been a nightmare, but Phobetor tended to avoid her, so that wasn't likely. Was it one of her parents? A sibling?
It was too soon to parse out those associations. But something had pulled at her, pierced the bubble of her blissful ignorance, and now, she pulled herself up and out.
And so, Lethe poured up from the water of the Mississippi, onto where the it met the shore of Meraux, Louisiana. She pooled there, dark grey-blue water not being absorbed by the ground. Instead, she settled there a for a moment - almost hovering, as if deciding what to do - as if remembering something.
Then, suddenly, and with great speed, the water rose, increasing in volume, taking form. Lengthening, curving, the silhouette of a long-lost shape emerged, and as luminous pale skin wrapped around flesh and bone, a gasp interrupted the night breeze. There it was - air, and with it, awareness. There was still something uncollected about her - her eyes were lit with almost-madness, her hair wild as any current as clothes wrapped around her in layers (it seemed to take them a moment to decide before they settled into boots, jeans, and a ghost-blue tank top - it was warm here, she mused). Knowledge and memory were saturating her corporeal consciousness. Directions weren't necessary - her coltish, long-unused legs took her to just the place.
There was a bar nearby, and the bar was a place where people went to forget. But it was late, very late, and soon enough, they'd be shooing the patrons home, and there'd be one who hadn't known what that had meant for three years and change.
There wasn't anything left, now - just an overgrown lot full of debris close enough to touch the river, with the lights of the bar close enough down the block to see, the noise close enough to hear.
At first, she was motionless, her jaw so tight her teeth might have shattered as she remembered everything they'd done. Everything she'd let happen.
With a long, steadying breath, Lethe looked out onto the river, and wondered if coming out had been the best idea.