#mestas

The water is whispering to her.

Sitting up, she manages to push aside her curiosity long enough to take brief stock of her surroundings. The sun-- or moon? She cannot tell-- is black, ringed in faint purple light as if eclipsed by another. Its light tinges everything with purple, and its glow is strong enough to drown out the reflection of her eyes when she looks down at her arm. The air is far warmer than the Golgar afternoon she just came from, pleasant after exposure to that chilly wind. In the distance, she sees mountains; up close, what might be trees, though they do not look to be made of wood in her eyes. And a few meters away from her winds a long river, the source of the whispers at the edge of her senses.

On further examination, it is not water. What she mistook for a trick of the light (or what little there is) is in fact truth. The liquid in the river does not flow as water would, quick and clean. No, it is instead sluggish, viscous, iridescent where it catches the twilight rays of the odd black sun above her. And still it whispers, calling to her. The words are just too faint, too out of reach for her to catch them clearly, but she does understand that it is calling, this oily substance, and in the depths of her soul she longs to answer.

Common sense and caution would advise against this, declare it folly, but death no longer frightens her. It has claimed her once, perhaps now twice, and should it come for her a third time she will simply find a new way to escape.

And so she dips her fingertips into the whispering oil, watches it glisten black against her gray skin.

Watches it sink into her skin.