((Yay, I'm glad you think it's grand! Heh, too bad I can't reply to all of Nexus's other comments. Oh well~ He'll get more of Sekhet's comments anyways. And I do like him a lot~ He just seems soo different from his character catalog description.))
She spent the next day hunting, swimming in the swift currents of the ocean, going as far to the depths as she would allow herself, letting the colder currents embrace her. After a few meals and sleeping in the rocks between the coral, letting the fish swim around the vortexes she created, she felt better. Good. Energized.
Part of her mind refused to acknowledge the affairs of last night. That strange being... Nexus, was his name. The fact that she even still remembered his name was homage to the fact that "ignoring" the situation wasn't doing her much good. It didn't help that he was a being who had kissed her, and probably... wanted more. Oh, did she not want to think about that. It still made her stomach churn.
And yet, all of this served to ignite the pang of loneliness that she tried so hard to forget. The longing to be with her own kind, to have company, to converse in her language again... To go home. Some days, the pain was not so bad. Other days, she could feel it in every fiber of her being. Exiled. The word was just as good as any death sentence. The pain of living without having a place to call home. Tainted by her name.
"Sekhet Neptune," she said to herself as the sun grew long. "Sekhet Neptune." Reaffirming her identity. The only thing she had left. Her name and her trident. A physical and a mental object. Two things that no one could take away from her. If they did... she was nothing. And she would rather die than be nothing.
Orange rays scattered on the broken surface, reminding Sekhet that her time was ticking away, seconds passing as she swam. She couldn't venture away and forget this curse. It was forcing her toward the land, drawing her to the homes of the humans, those that she was forced to be among in minutes.
But she knew how to prepare. As the sun sank, Sekhet went to the shallow waters of the beach, a place concealed in darkness. She swam up the embankment until her belly scrapped sand, her dorsal and tail fin exposed to the night breeze.
The sun was agonizingly slow tonight, and as it sank, she offered one prayer, begging for forgiveness, to the waters of the Tuor ocean. But tonight, as with all the nights before, her prayer was not to be answered.
Her body seized, and something began leaking out of her gills. Pinkish, and translucent. Immediately her clawed hands went to the membrane, pulling at it as it started to fill her gills, closing them, expanding like a bubble, tracing itself around her form. The instinct to fight this was great, to stop this thing from closing her gills, suffocating her. But she forced her hands down, even as she was choking on the very thing that was supposed to give her life. Fighting always made it worse. It made the transformation more painful, it lengthened it. So she became still as the membrane encased her, choked her from the inside out, as it began to press on her tail, making every muscle spasm and seize. It shrank, conforming to every small scrap of skin, encasing her in its strange softness. And then, it began.
Her mouth wrenched open in a silent scream as teeth shrank into her gumline, cutting deep, and the rest fell from her mouth, which she spluttered out before she had a chance to swallow. They drifted, pressed against her neck by the membrane, dangerously close to her jugular. Her back arched and sized, her hands curling as the nails retreated, sinking into her fingers, drawing blood. The webbing shriveled and detached from her fingers, leaving them raw and scarred. Once again her spine twisted, contorting her body as the dorsal fin melted into her back, the skin rippling as it became one with the skin, the cartilage disappearing all together. Perhaps the most painful was the tail. It seized and thrashed, contorting in unnatural ways, and something strained and pulled at the skin. Suddenly she arched, eyes wide in pain as with an unnatural tearing sound, legs ripped away from her tail, coated in a thin layer of blood. Her tail became limp as the skin wound over itself, repairing, and the membrane seized and took a hold of her, forcing her knees up to her chin, coiling that useless tail around her. For a second, she was still. And then, she started struggling, until the waves brought her ashore, a transformed mermaid in a translucent cocoon.
She was still gasping for breath, choking as the membrane was in her sinuses, restricting her movement. Her human, stubby nails scratched uselessly, lips with teeth barely sharp snapping at the membrane stuck to her throat. She tore at it, snapped at it, and finally, she broke the stuff in her mouth. Her eyes bulged as she took in a breath, and twisting her back, the sharp grains of sand made the membrane tear in other places. Like an embryo emerging from a womb, Sekhet was released from the membrane onto the beach, gasping for breath. Waves lapped at her feet, taking blood and skin and teeth away with them as they retreated, but after only a few seconds, she had to pull her feet toward her, away from the ocean that now hurt her.
For a while, all Sekhet could do was lay on the beach, breathing with the lungs that had formed inside of her chest, her tail draped around her naked legs. Gods, the curse. Nothing could torture her like this.
