Page 82 of Citrine

I have not felt this since I was in my nursery group, and I should have never felt it again. Only anger. Rage.

I try to bring those up, but they don't come. I can't control what is making her afraid, and she is infecting me with her emotion. How is that possible? She makes me question my reality.

"I have to go," she says.

I want to crush her to me and pull her down, but this emotion is in me now. Will she leave me if I pull her down into the water again? No, I will never let her.

There are different types of leaving, though. I thought I would like when she stopped speaking, but it caused this fear in me just now. There is no storm to blame.

She slips out of the water and pushes herself up on the rocks, stumbling as she does, then turns back to look at me, her eyes like dark chasms, and runs toward her cove.

I sink back into the water, various thoughts now filling my head. I'm not one for thoughts or emotions. She made me like this. She changed me, yet she's changing too. My changes are on theinside and hers, on the outside. I revile my changes, and she does too.

We are not so different after all.

I lift myself up after absorbing enough water and follow her up to the cove. Normally I can hear her from any distance, but she quietly hid herself. In the trees, I see a familiar looking fluid, one that I often use to move around on land, using my tentacles. I follow these traces of her and find that she climbed up to some of those trees, finding shelter there.

Her breathing is almost imperceptible, but it's there. I can feel her. I focus my senses a bit more and see that she's trembling up in the trees, barely making noise, which is just so strange. As I turn my back to leave her be for a while, I feel something.

My instincts scream at me, telling me something is there. My water reserves are drying out so I don't have much time on land. I'm also not faster here so whatever is coming, if it's a threat, I'll need to deal with it as silently as possible so they don't hurt the female.

I move toward the water, spreading my senses out. I suppose I should be glad that it is not going after the female but wandering at the edges of my territory.

After a quick swim to the shore, the one that surrounds the yellow female's island, I make it to the rocky shore and spot something just by the edge. Keeping my eyes on it as I remain just under the surface of the water, the thing draws closer.

It's the first time I'm seeing a living being that looks like her. It has different color head weeds is on the back of a huge orange beast with a long tail.

I look back up to the purple haired one. There is no doubt about it. That thing is also female.

Seeing her, what my yellow female said comes to mind. She wanted to see other people and live with them. She wants to be with them, talk to them and stay with them.

I know she can't survive if she doesn't have this.

The despair in her eyes makes me… uncomfortable. So unsettled, in fact, that I'm about to do something inconceivable.

I move silently in the water, drawing closer to the creatures. They're scanning the area below as well, the beast sniffing out everything in the surrounding area. The beast's rider, that female, her eyes are alert and she doesn't have tentacles in her hair like my female.

Only their builds are the same.

They draw closer and closer to where I am, like they are searching for something or someone. Could it be my female? Why do they want her? Do they want to take her away from me?

No. Never.

The thought of not having herkindhandsfrightens me. The tentacle reaching out of the water to alert them withdrawsimmediately and I growl at them, even though they can't hear me.

How dare they try to take my female from me?

My anger rises and I dive into the water, heading straight for the nest of the many teeth I had passed so many times while hunting. Since I established dominance in the water, they instinctively flee when they hear me coming. They scatter the moment they sense me near their nest, but I manage to grab a big one, dragging it up to the surface with me.

I want to throw it at them, punish them for trying to take away my female. However, they're not there when I come up. As I release the Many Teeth, I stare at the cliffs, a new emotion rising inside me.

I don't know its name, but I want it to leave my body. I know what I just did is something she won't like and I feel… something. Like I should have made a different choice and now I can't admit it to her.

I hate it, whatever this ache is called.

37

Eli

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