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+---- Thread: [P] god said let there be light on the day i was born (/showthread.php?tid=5711)
god said let there be light on the day i was born - Apolonia - 10-27-2020
" KEEP MY HEART WITH MY DOGS, KEEP MY CAR IN THE YARD "
O has never cared for, or even learned much about, politics. But she knows a princess when she sees one.
The girl at the fruit stand is Hagar Ieshan. Somehow she’s smaller than O expected; in the sea of tall, lithe Solterran horses that crowd the market, she stands out in more ways than one. Lion-bright yellow eyes. A diaphanous robe, dyed a wine-dark purple. Despite her smallness, her general strangeness, the world seems to bend around her like everyone here knows enough to be afraid. Maybe it’s just the way she carries herself. (Bexley used to walk like that. That was the woman who raised her—someone who once was like Hagar, glittering with gravity, drawing people in from every direction. O presses her lips together and wonders what happened.)
The sun is high and bright today. But it’s still spring, not late enough in the year to be blisteringly hot, and the light that streams down is thin and gentle, closer to the ebbing heat of an ember than a raging bonfire. It seeps over O’s back, melts her into a stack of too-relaxed muscle kept standing only by the shoulder that she leans up against a tent pole. Around her, the world is picking up speed after a long winter with its head buried in the pillows. Vendors yell from both sides of the street; foals chase each other down the length of the market; everywhere one looks, there are coins being tossed from hand to hand, or drums being played, or some baked good being broken open, so fresh it spills steam into the air.
Will you talk to her? Tuchulcha asks, soft enough that only the two of them can hear.
O’s ear flicks back, half to catch the quiet voice, half in surprise. It’s not often the two of them decide to really be friendly. (Although, O thinks, if there is a difference between friendly and flirty, then…) Tuchulcha rarely even gets involved in social affairs; the “talking axe” aspect of its existence tends to freak people out. Somehow, though, O gets the feeling Hagar won’t be bothered by it. Or at least not as bothered as a princess should be.
Just to herself—just barely—she smirks, the sooty lip flashing up into a faint curl, then falling just as fast.
O pushes her weight out of its leaning stance. Languid, elastic, with the exaggerated confidence of a fox, she stalks toward the redhead and calls out: “Are you looking for something, princess?”
Say yes, say yes, say yes.
RE: god said let there be light on the day i was born - Hagar - 11-21-2020
T
oday, I am restless: the hood of my robe slung back over my shoulders so that it hangs, heavy, opposite the basket that I'm filling with apples. The salesperson tells me--and does so proudly, metaphorically beating his chest--that his daughter-in-law, in the south, grows them out of season.She speaks to the trees, or something like it. he says. They're always perfect and ripe when we're ready to pick them. I smile at him as fondly as I can, but don't answer. I don't care about this man, or his apples, or his daughter-in-law in the south. I am out today only because Pilate is busy, as Pilate often is, and I cannot stand to watch him look so fretful and worn when I can do nothing to stop it.
--That, and Miriam has looked for me, once or twice. Several times this month I have been painting, bowls of oranges or a vase that I fill with lilies and prop up on a stool to make more interesting, and I have felt eyes on my back. Always, when I look up, I see a brief flash of red in her window before the curtains are drawn shut. I am tired of Miriam making me ache. I am tired of Pilate making me ache, as well.
The coins clatter on the rough wood of the counter as I drop them, smiling the way my mother would have liked: soft eyes with the lower lid tucked up just slightly, mouth in a shallow, polite curve-- nothing more, and certainly nothing less. As I am turning to go, I hear it:
Are you looking for something, princess? The word, though as true as it gets, shoots straight up my spine like a spear. I think, I do not get called 'princess' nearly enough.
Apolonia is striking-- almost buttercup yellow set against the warm, pale shine of the pattern stretched over it like a web. For a moment, I fail to crawl toward any sense of decency, lost in the wood-brown curl of her hair. I smile like a cat curled around a grenade, lips pressed tight together and eyes that finally float off of her shape to the street over her shoulder. "If I am?"
I think, I definitely do not get called princess enough. I think, as I look at her axe, intricate and sharp, that I only half-believe it was her. I do not think about Isabella Foster or her fascination with weapons or her eyes like stormwind.
"I am." I search for something, anything, to answer-- though I doubt it will matter. "What would you buy with some fresh apples? I want to treat myself."
RE: god said let there be light on the day i was born - Apolonia - 12-28-2020
" KEEP MY HEART WITH MY DOGS, KEEP MY CAR IN THE YARD "
O knows restless.
She is restless. Has been since the day she was born—the moment, even, when she stretched her legs out to the ground for the first time and felt every atom in the earth shift underneath her weight. There has been no stopping. No loitering; no rest. Houses are not made for girls like her, or engagement rings, or grave plots. (The only thing that comes close to holding her down is Andi.) O is not even sure she’s caught her breath since the day, so many years ago, that finding Tuchulcha on the Oasis shore knocked the wind out of her and forced her to a standstill.
O knows restless, and she sees it in Hagar Ieshan’s topaz-yellow eyes.
She stiffens at the word—princess—and O grins, wolfishly. There is nothing dampening her self-satisfaction; she doesn’t even care to suppress the wild gleam in her eyes. (It is the bright, terrible glance of a girl who knows she has hit her mark, found the chink in the armor, pressed the buttons just right. Somewhere between calculation and death-or-glory.) Instead her ash-dark mouth curves into a sly smile, and when Hagar turns toward her, O’s gaze does not move, but remains warm and dark against the princesses’ copper skin.
And there is a moment that O feels almost like she’s traveled back in time. (This has always been a weakness. On the beach in winter, Andi could have killed her; should have, maybe. But it did not seem to matter when their eyes met, when the girl spoke, and O's cynicism is nothing next to her overgrown desire.) The world, though sunlit, seems to darken; her pulse is beginning to pick up speed; her eyes flicker all over Hagar’s face, and for a heartbeat she feels dazed, intimidated—drawn back to the days not so long ago when a chance encounter on the street was enough to knock her off-kilter.
It’s almost enough to embarrass her. But when her focus sharpens, she sees that Hagar is doing just the same thing—staring with a vacant look and a cat’s smile, her eyes a weight on O’s slender shoulders—and that, at least, soothes her sudden self-consciousness.
O smiles again. She tosses a buckeye-brown curl away from her shoulder, just-controlled enough to leave the third eye uncovered.
“Hmm.” The look of thoughtfulness that crosses her face then is genuine. She glances around the marketplace—packed shoulder to shoulder with vendors and buyers, so many necks glinting with bright gold—and purses her lips for a moment. Her eyes travel from Hagar to the markets and back coolly; it is a gaze heavy with daring and intent.
“Well,” O says finally, slyly, “You do look quite good in purple. Perhaps something to match.”