Margrett walked after the arena. Just sort of...walked. She found herself at a small cliff, near a waterfall. It was a little windy, and it blew behind her, whipping her hair and cape about. She stood in the waterfall, looking over the short falls, up to her shins in cold water, and not moving. Just thinking.
Beneath the falls, there was a large basin. Not large enough to constitute a lake, but certainly large enough to keep a tree in. As such, a log did protrude from the water's surface, and several turtles had perched themselves there to warm themselves in the sun.
Something stirred beneath the surface of the waves, something large enough to be considered 'predator' to most animals. A tentacle slowly reached out and snatched one of the turtles, picking it up and gently taking it beneath the surface. This happened over several minutes, each turtle being gently submerged, never to surface again. Then a bird perched itself on the log, and once again the tentacle reached up and tried to drag it down.
The bird was very unwilling to be touched by a tentacle.
It screeched, trying to fly off, but the tentacle grabbed it, straining to pull it under against the bird's furious flapping of feathered wings. Finally, the bird was dragged under, and the surface of the water regained it's glassy, smooth, calm texture... but the log was still there.
Margrett barely noticed until the bird. Then she snapped out of it and watched in mild horror as the bird was dragged underneath the water by a tentacle from nowhere. She blinked, staring at the water for a minute, then tried to find a way down to the basin to investigate out of curiosity.
There were vines crawling down the sides of the small cliff, and they had grown in such abundance that they could easily be scaled by all but the heaviest creatures. The surface of the water beneath, however, was beginning to be populated by the feathers of the now-dead bird. Soon, the shoreline gained a light sprinkling of clean feathers.
She climbed down the vines, jumping to the ground, and walked cautiously up to the water. She picked up a rock and threw it into the pool experimentally.
The rock broke the glassy surface of the water with a small 'plip', with ripples slowly radiating from the point of impact. Several seconds passed, and then an empty turtle shell was ejected from underneath the water, at no insignificant rate, toward Margrett's head.
Something moved beneath the surface of the water toward Margrett, stopping just before the shallows. Slowly Cel's head breached the water's height, looking up at the shade with mild confusion.
"...You look different from under there. How have you been?"
She didn't rise out of the water any further than her chin, but didn't seem to have any trouble maintaining her position in the water.
Margrett sat on the edge of the water, crosslegged, leaning forward with her arms on her thighs.
A vampire just called me a whore and implied my father raped me as a child, bringing up repressed memories I've buried for years in order to stay sane. She put her hat back on.
Cel slid through the water toward Marg, until she could rest her head on her hands in the shallows. It became very apparent that she was not wearing her cloak (and, by association, nothing else). She picked up a feather, examining it thoughtfully.
"Nothing of note... Save for a particular celestial exile. My sympathies for your circumstances, but you seem strong enough to ascend beyond such things... as I'm sure you already have."
Celephai didn't even twitch from her position as the question was given. Of course, she chose not to answer the question, and instead directed a statement toward the thought that was not an interrogative.
"You'd be surprised how often the ground opens up and swallows people whole. What matter is how much soil and rock you're willing to dig through to get back out of it. Nothing is guaranteed to anyone, not even tomorrow."
Cel tossed a smaller turtle shell off to the side.
"...Speaking of, no one told me turtles were so tasty. Is this true of all hard-shelled creatures?"
Cel lay on her belly in the shallows, head propped up on her elbows. She swept a tentacle back and forth through the water gently, as if enjoying the sensation of moving water over her skin.
"I can, if you're really interested. He was down here against the orders of his kin, and sought to visit an old battlefield for his kind. It was there that one of his superiors showed up and promptly... relieved him of his higher post. For fun, I beat the superior to a fine pulp..."
Cel did not openly show any sign of satisfaction as she described the situation in a matter-of-fact way.
I knew an angel once. Remarkably similar story.. She looked at the water, and at Celephai. She was pretty, in a...weird otherwordly way. She wondered what Gray had seen in her.
What are you doing here, just eating the wildlife?