docholligay:

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA YESSSSSSSSS

Haruka liked to run, and didn’t really mind whereever it happened to take her. It was common enough, the other centaurs in the village had noted, to see a golden streak running carelessly across the fields toward the forests and the deep lagoons at the edge of the island.

Mostly they were right, that her head was all in the clouds and she never really knew where she was going, and did not notice the passing of time until nightfall, much to her parent’s chagrin.

BUt today, they were wrong. Today, Haruka knew exactly where she was going.

The village had spoken often of the mermaids who lived in the sea and relaxed in the deep lagoons. They were sorceresses, almost, and they would lead a centaur to their death if you weren’t careful, with their long, flowing hair and and their big eyes full of the sea, their voices sparkling like the sunlight on the water.

Haruka knew all of this, and it seemed good sense–they were only one half the same and who knew what kind of thoughts fish got up to–but she could not stop herself from returning to the girl in the water. The girl with the long teal hair, who moved like the wheat in the wind, wavering gracefully.

She plucked a small bouquet of the dark red flowers at the edge of the plain, and walked into the darkness of the swamplike forest near the ocean.

She picked her way through the darkness slowly. You had to be careful out here, a girl could break her leg over the large roots, and you’d be lucky if anyone ever found you. Centaurs died that way, she’d heard.

But the clearing with the little lagoon was there, just as she’d remembered, just as she’d prayed, and she stepped into the sunlight toward it.

“Michiru?” She called toward the water, unsure of how a mermaid would be able to hear her under it. “It’s Haruka. The centaur. The blonde one.”

She surfaced, brushing aside the water like a silken curtain. “Do you think I entertain so many, that I might forget you?”

“No, I mean,” she looked down at her little bouquet, and knelt next to the water, “I brought you flowers. They’re from the prairie, so I didn’t think you’d have seen them.”

She took them from Haruka’s hand, looking at the dappled sunlight falling on her coat, and how lovely the gold looked in the sunlight. She was lovely, this horsegirl, as they called them in the deep, but centaur, that was what they called themselves, sure as Michiru called herself a siren but was a mermaid above water.

“I have never seen their like.” She batted her eyes. “Thank you. What do you call them?”

“Lover’s lips.” Haruka blushed as she said it, but tried to brush it off. “See how they’re shaped?”

“Oh yes,” Michiru purred, “A very apt name. And the color, so very passionate.” She looked up at Haruka. “I have a gift for you, as well, I suppose. Come close, and I’ll give it to you.”

“SOmething from the sea?”

“Of the sea entirely.”

Haruka leaned in, and Michiru kissed her, the sea gliding softly against the land.