VORFREUDE | SYLPH | WC: 1,196
Eula wasn't entirely sure when the last time she'd set food on the ground was. She didn't often, preferring the tetherless life among the wind and skies, but surely she'd had to have touched the ground before. Eula reached out with one wispy foot, brushing over the top of the sand. She danced away, taking light steps on the air above the sand, glancing up and down the beach. She moved that way for a while, letting the breeze blow her down the beach and back again, feet just above the sand but never touching.
"Agh!" Eula muttered, flinging her arms up and glowering at the sand as it burst away from her in a ring, the dust clouding the air for a moment. Eula scowled and flipped herself upside down, her skirts, false as they were, staying thigh length as always. She crossed her arms and glared at the sand intently, imagining just for a moment what it could feel like on her skin. She wondered what anything would feel like on her skin. She didn't even have skin at the moment! Could she even touch things? Would she even be able to touch the earth?
"Are you alright?"
Eula gasped, vanishing entirely into the breeze for a moment, glancing back at the speaker in her bodiless form. She knew this woman —Aeolus spoke of her. Abstractly, that is, but the wind had whispered the rest of the story. He'd been complaining about the Lords Zeus and Poseidon fighting over the weather, complaining about the constant changes and the mess it was causing his plans. He'd blamed it all on a child —Poseidon's child— and even more the child's temptress mother. The woman before Eula hardly looked like a temptress, though.
"Hello?" the woman called out again, peering at the spot Eula had occupied just moments before. She waited there for a moment, and Eula focused on the repetitive crash of waves hammering the shore. "Er, if you're still here, I just wanted to see if you were alright. You looked like you had a— a dilemma, maybe. Can I help?"
Eula reformed just outside the periphery of the woman's vision, body a little more solid than translucent this time, skirt and hair blowing in her own breeze. She waited for the woman to see her. If she saw her.
"Alright—" the woman started to say as she turned, cutting off as soon as she saw Eula. "Oh! Hello, I'd thought you left. I'm Sally, what's your name?"
Sally. Her name was Sally? Aeolus' words had never carried her name, and the wind —the wind Eula could hear— had never spoken the name of Poseidon's temptress. But she'd heard the name Sally before; from the nephelai Eula wasn't really supposed to talk to, from the zduhać at night and quietly carried by whispers.
"Eula," the sylph offered like she never had before, the words loud and sure instead of the whisper the winds preferred. It felt like she was screaming it, with how loud the winds echoed it back into her ears, but she still repeated it louder when the woman —when Sally— asked.
"Eula is a beautiful name," Sally complimented warmly, eyes crinkled as she smiled back at Eula. "What's bothering you, Eula?"
"I—" she drifted closer as she thought, miming stepping even though her feet never touched anything but air. "I want to walk. To feel the— the sand. Beneath my feet. But… I don't even know if I can touch things, I've lived my whole life in— up in the sky. You know?"
"I don't know that exact experience, but there have been a lot of times where I've wanted to try something new, but have been too worried about the risks or outcomes to actually take the step to try it," Sally offered. "I can't tell you what's going to happen if you take that step and actually touch the sand, but if you don't, you might always regret not knowing. And besides, now you have someone to share your experience with!"
Eula giggled uncertainly, drifting a little closer to the ground. The winds were right about Sally. They always were— well. Not in relation to Poseidon's temptress. But that was Aeolus, not the winds themself. Not that the four winds were around much these days.
"Eula?" Sally called her name carefully.
"Oh, I'd forgotten," Eula murmured. "Things go so fast here, Sally. Humans, I mean. In the skies, there's hardly such a thing as time."
"That sounds… interesting. Do you like it?"
"I hardly know anything else," Eula admitted helplessly. "I— sometimes… We like to tell stories. Sylphs do, I mean. Sylphs and nephelai and everyone else from the air. They carry the furthest, and since we don't really… exist, beyond the winds and skies, it's really the way we experience the world. The nephelai like to talk about all the living things they come across, all the mortals who tell them their stories and all the gods who share theirs," she trailed off, purposefully blowing air out of her mouth and watching the way the sand clouded and moved with the wind.
"We don't have our own stories, really. Sylphs… I've always heard that we don't feel things quite the same," Eula made her skirts swish in the breeze, tugging at her dress and avoiding the woman's gaze. "From all the stories we did tell, though… I've always wanted to know what it feels like to live. To love, and to be, in all ways uniquely human. What wonder is there when there's an end! When things aren't eternal and unchanging, cycle after cycle after cycle! When everything can be new and fresh. Is that how it is, Sally?"
"It can be that way, Eula. There are so many people and so many things that have influenced my life in ways I never would have imagined," Sally explained. "It really does feel incredible, sometimes, and there's wonder and love and joy, and there's also exhaustion and terror and stress. Life is never one-sided in that regard, there's always ups, and there's always downs. Sometimes things get dull. I've had days where every morning I got up and had the same routine for making breakfast and going to work and working and coming back home to eat and sleep and do it all again, and I've had days full of adventure where I never knew what would happen next."
"That sounds perfect," Eula decided, wiggling her toes. She just had to reach out a little more.
"Would you like help?" Sally offered, reaching out her hand at Eula's confused expression. "I can give you a hand, if this is really what you want to do."
Eula waffled for a long moment, toes just above the sand and fingers busied with pulling at her dress. She squared her jaw, squeezed her hands into fists and took one sure step towards Sally, letting the breeze push the gap closed. She faltered again, staring down at the golden sand that glimmered in sunlight where there should have been her shadow, and reached out, wrapping suddenly solid fingers around Sally's hand. It felt real.