[P] the vine & the rain & the light

[Apolonia]

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -

Gods don’t have fathers. This does not matter. Apolonia’s own father is a ghost, a half-formed thought in the back of her head. He is a slice of night that does not belong in her desert and does not cross her mind, except past midnight when O sometimes leaves her tower to watch the white stars, stupid and curious, drowning in the dark sand.

Anyway.

Gods do not have fathers, but sometimes when O  wanders the court she hears Solterrans whisper about Acton, saying his name like it is a curse. (Bexley says it in the same way, most of the time.) When she catches her reflection in windows or puddles she sees only her mother, long-legged, evil, aureate and shining blue. Except that Bexley, gods blessed forever, does not have that strange, searing third eye marbled in the middle of her forehead, and that makes her wonder, as much as she tries not to, whether Acton has one too.

Anyway.

The desert is bitingly cold this late at night. Overhead, stars sing against the dim sky. A breeze shifts individual grains of sand to tumble over and over each  other. In the blue darkness Apolonia’s skin is more gold than yellow, a dull, sooty kind of metal, and the blackness of her hair makes her mostly invisible, so that the only thing that stands out against the velvet sand are the high white socks on her legs and the searing brightness of her eyes. In the soft silver light she stands perfectly still, head tilted the moon, and almost she could be a wolf, but for the sleekness of her body.

 

[Acton]

 
It had been a long time since he’d walked the sands of the desert at night.

Too long - long enough that the stars saw fit to play tricks on him, and as he went he forgot the slight ache in his knee (little more than a ghost, now, when the weather got too cold) and the current state of all the Courts and the fact that he was a father and still so, so adrift.

Instead it was a warm night coming from the bonfires, leaving Reichenbach and Raum and a few other Crows, off to make mischief of his own. Instead it was the night he’d stumbled on a stranger with pale hair and a wicked tongue who made him sick with want and hate and intrigue. Instead it was the newborn day he’d walked Bexley to the corner of her kingdom, only tonight he just kept on walking, not turning back as he had that day, swearing to himself till dawn.

So he was in the mood for ghosts when he saw her, and there was a split second where he thought it was Bexley, and stopped dead with his tracks trailing away in the sand behind him.

She had the same build, the same stockings right up above her knees, prim as a girl’s. The same swath of white on her face. Almost he called out - hey, Goldlocks - but he swallowed it just in time, and instead only stared.

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been just days old. Caligo’s tits, he was as worthless as a father as he was a Crow, lately - but it scared him, looking at her, seeing strange little pieces of himself. Scared him, too, to remember that first look at her (how beautiful she’d been, how perfect), then the blinking, slow-opening eye in the middle of her forehead…

His had always been a superstitious people. That eye did not bode well, not that he ever gave voice to those fears. He swallowed them, and he did still, thick and bitter as poison.  

“Dangerous out here alone, isn’t it?” he said finally, his voice carrying smooth over the cold sand. Acton found his feet again and drew near, enough to catch the scent of her, the glint of her eyes, the way the stars gleamed blue on the black of her mane. “At least that’s what you Solterrans are always saying.”

Almost it did feel dangerous, though it never had before - and yet he couldn’t tear his eyes from her. He wanted to drink her up, little Apolonia, his daughter. What a wonder it was, what a marvel, the best trick he would ever produce.

A miracle, even. So why did he feel so uneasy when her eyes caught him, searing?



@Apolonia

these violent delights have violent ends

[Apolonia]

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -

She did not think much about him except when she had to. And some part of her simply always had to. 

Apolonia is too young to know not to pick at a scab, too foolish, too disillusioned, and so her brain is still a roadmap through the Land of Enchantment, desert-dry and open-air and overwhelmingly beautiful even for the way it cracks open at the slightest touch.Too natural to know better. 

In the silver light of the moon, she is a statue. Long-legged, svelte, marble and soot. Her dark hair shines a bright blue under the starshine and almost it matches the rocky glimmer of the hurl bat pinned against her hip, sharp-edged and infinite.

She cannot know how he looks at her - like she is a long forgotten god, a walking omen. Bizarre and beautiful. But almost she catches a glimpse of it as he appears on the black sand and looks at her, a curiosity, a watchfulness in those amber eyes that makes her almost self-conscious, a feeling that crosses her once in a blue crescent moon. Her heart picks up speed in her chest. 

Is this love? A strange warbling sound plays over the dunes. A flute, a clarinet, a new life - no, no, no. O inhales deeply and trembles. Almost.

Only if you’re a stranger, she answers, and grins at him, and it’s strangely both real and warm even in the cool darkness of the night. 

She wants to be loved. Is there any greater desire for a daughter?

 

[Acton]

 
Oh, but Acton did love her. That was exactly what he was afraid of.

Something in him loosened at the sound of her words; he hadn’t realized he’d been braced for a different answer until he was relieved to hear the one she gave. “Lucky me, then,” he said in response, and grinned his crooked, carefree grin. Any ghosts fled in the moment Acton crossed to her, scrubbed clean by the coarse desert wind.

He pressed his muzzle to her girl-slim shoulder, inhaled the scent of her, sun and spice and something warm-sharp that reminded him of Bexley. For a moment he closed his eyes and pictured her small, wobbling on thin legs, her hair like wisps of cloud. No illusion could be so perfect.

When he opened them his citrine gaze found the weapon tucked to her hip, its gleaming edges marking it the brightest thing in the desert tonight. What other token might a girl keep there? A shawl, a basket of lovely, tender things?

But not their daughter. Acton is both proud and a little ashamed, and the two mix poorly, mingled wine and gall. The buckskin did not know how he ought to feel, never having had a parent himself, but somehow from every angle he looked at it he didn’t measure up.

Maybe it had something to do with why he didn’t think much on it. Why he tried not to look north, tried not to think of the sun full and hot on his skin, or a girl that made him spark like flint.  

“What are you up to out here, anyway?” he said, and his voice echoed out across the cool and waiting sands, as if to reiterate his question - for there was nothing, nothing, nothing but trouble in the dark expanse of the desert.

Not that Acton knew a thing about that. Not that he was surprised to find his daughter out in the middle of it, either.



@Apolonia

these violent delights have violent ends

[Apolonia]

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -

She thinks she might understand why her mother fell in love with him, at the moment that she sees his smile: gleaming in the crooked night, it is the kind of bright, carefree grin that makes the urge to smile back completely irresistible, and for that moment Apolonia is a child and noting more, doting over her father in the cool desert, under the stars.

It is without a thought that she leans into his touch, comforted by the ease of letting someone else hold her weight. It is not a comfort she lets herself feel often. And if she notices the way his amber eyes linger on the hurlbat at her hip, pretty only in the contrast it makes against the gold of her skin, she does not mention it: if he’s expecting an apology, or an excuse (and it seems he might be) that is not a gift O is willing to give him.

His voice is a song in the wind, over the cool sand. O shifts to find a better foothold in the dunes. Just wandering, she drawls. Couldn’t sleep. It’s not uncommon for her, this kind of wandering. Her mother lives all in day, her father all in night, and Apolonia straddles the thin, dusky line halving her heart with not so much grace - startling awake in the middle of the night or at the crack of dawn, trying to find some way to compromise. And what are you doing here? You’re farther from home than I am - 

She smiles a sheepish kind of smile, wavering, almost. Like she’s not sure she wants to admit that their homes are not the same. 

 

[Acton]

 
It had been a cold night (even though the snow was gone, nothing but a strange memory that might have been a dream) but it wasn’t anymore, not with them pressed together, father-and-daughter, a pair. That felt right, too, though it did make him wonder how it might have been, if they all lived together. Made him wonder what all he was missing out on, choosing instead to make his life in the crooked back alleys of the Night Court capital.

(Though in all honesty it was probably for the best - he and Bexley could still be flint and tinder and if they were together too long they would burn everything down around them. And Solterra - all of Novus, really - was so weary of ashes.)

Just wandering, she says. Couldn’t sleep. And Acton grinned then, too, though he pressed that smile into her dark cloud of mane (so like his own!), because he knew exactly how that felt. It was easy, with their shoulders pressing together and their edges all silver beneath the moon, to forget the strangeness of her, that third eye in which the buckskin could only see Fate.

Maybe she hadn’t inherited his childhood superstitions.

She turned the question on him and he shrugged a boy’s shrug, careless and laughing both. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought the Mors might make a pretty place to watch the sun rise.”

Once, the only reason he would have been in Solterra was to spy, to plan, to bring again that blood-rush like bright fire in his veins. Now there were no enemies here. Now when he savored the way the wind tasted at night, moaning off the dunes, scrubbing clean the stars, there was no undercurrent of loathing with it.

What he didn’t say was that all of Novus was home, these days.

But he came close enough, when he whuffed a warm breath into the curve of her golden neck and said, “I used to think I would have made a good Solterran.” A laugh, soft and low, as he remembered first meeting Seraphina in the canyons, years ago. Oh, he’d felt like a new forge then, ready to destroy, ready to rebuild. “But your drink isn’t strong enough, and your merchants have no sense of humor at all.”


@Apolonia

these violent delights have violent ends

[Apolonia]

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -

She tries not to imagine too much what life might be like if her family were the kind she had been born expecting, if they all lived together, if they all loved together. She tries not to imagine it because it’s awkward and painful and as ill-fitting as anything can be on a girl made more of saw-toothed edges than anything soft or warm. But something about this - the gentle sky overhead, and the heat that wracks her body, worse still at the spot where their shoulders connect - makes the not-imagining somehow impossible.

It does, she says. Solterra really is the best place for a sunset, Bexley has told her, not that O would know any way otherwise. But she believes it - the way the sky lights up in the morning and turns everything to screaming red and yellow and bright, luminous pink, the wild gold of her own skin - she can’t imagine anything more beautiful than that, and the tiny threads of clouds drifting their way across the sky. Cool wind breaks open her reverie. Her heart aches a little extra in her chest.

When he says he might make a good Solterran, O knocks her cheek against his shoulder and grins, wolfish, wild. It’s real humor that makes her bare her teeth like an animal. Ha! she says, and throws her head back in an extensive mockery of laughter. You, Solterran. Again with the imagining, but this time she recognizes how stupid the whole thing is. Acton, Solterran, or Bexley in Denocte. The idea is bizarre. And, honestly, sort of fucked.

She blinks hard, clears the thought from her brain. That’s funny.

It’s not. It’s only perfect, and unattainable. She leans her weight deeper against Acton and inhales, slow and calm, and tries to bite her tongue against the urge to ask please, please stay - 

 

[Acton]

 
There was something familiar in her laugh, brief and bold like a crow taking flight, sunlight through the cracks in its wings. Acton wanted to ask why the idea was so funny to her (curiosity for how her mind worked, and how she saw him), but instead he contented himself with the way she leaned against him, the soft exhale of their breaths mingled together.

Were these the moments he had been missing? The buckskin knew, when he returned to the Night Court, that there would always be a part of him wishing for this.

“Maybe it is,” he allowed, and did not add and so is the idea of you in Denocte. There was no reason he could see for the thought; it wasn’t like he was standing with her in the blazing heat of day, after all. The night was a shroud above them, the sky a ribbon of stars, like a trail you might follow if you had half a mind -

And that is the point Acton figured he’d been hanging around Isra too long. He gave a snort and felt a little more himself, and then he bumped his muzzle against his daughter’s cheek and stepped away. When he did the cold that took the place where she had been pressed up against him felt almost unwelcome, like waking up from a dream. Or a drunkard having their head ducked in a barrel.

“Alright then,” he said, and his grin was still a little sly when he turned it on her, but it was also full-happy. There was nothing of a knife in it at all, though the starlight still glinted of her hurl bat. “Take me somewhere to watch the dawn from - gods know the dunes all look the same to me. Lucky thing I ran into you.”

He realized then that it did feel lucky. Like something he ought to be grateful for — and so he was.



@Apolonia <3

these violent delights have violent ends

[Apolonia]

I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -

O had always assumed, even as the littlest child, that Solterra would protect her. Something about the easy way her skin fit against the sand or how effortless she found it to wander the markets even without a map, or, most likely, the way the court watched her mother as they passed through the streets - reverent or fearful, it did not matter which. As long as they looked at her like that, she would be safe. The desert itself would watch over her. She could not be touched in the sanctity of her own home.

Why, then, does she feel so exposed here, and so cold, and so utterly vulnerable?

Maybe it’s the chill of the wind, maybe it’s the way the light doesn’t fall on her like it should. Either way when her father steps away, Apolonia shivers, and the spasm goes all the way down to her heart and constricts it so tight she has to brace her shoulders not to fall over. It hurts much more than it should, and she knows this, and it does not make it hurt less. Breathe. The space forged between them shines with a bright coldness she can’t ignore. At Acton’s feet the sand looks a little more silver, a little more precious.

But she smiles when he does, anyway, because how could she not? And what purpose would it serve? And what use would she get of wasting the last night they might have together in weeks, seasons, years? For all O’s rage, something in her is old. It begs for understanding; it does not allow for pettiness. Yeah, she says, lucky, and grins so wide that she looks like a real child again, bright-eyed and mischievous. (Of course she gets that from him.)

With a gentle bump of her shoulder to his, she turns and starts to make her way toward the coastline, ignoring the bite of cold at her skin.

 

 

[Acton]

 
Acton had always put too much faith in luck.

It was the same part of his blood and his history that gave him a sailor’s fear of superstition. Three was always a good sign, he liked his birds and candles and cups in threes, but when he shuffled his deck and the first thing he drew was a Queen of Spades he knew the evening would be bad. Probably it had something to do with his need for an excuse when things went wrong; that way nothing was ever truly his fault.

All that to say, maybe it was luck that saw them meet. Certainly he was glad the night had taken this turn, despite his first wash of unease, despite the way when he caught her out of his peripheral vision she was still a stranger, an entity he couldn’t quite understand.

What he could understand was her smile, and the look in her eyes (not that third one, blessedly hidden by her forelock, for the moment, and not watching whatever part of him couldn’t stand to be seen), and the press of her against him. The wind couldn’t shiver between them and her grin matched his like a mirror and when she stepped away Acton followed her at once.

And they could have left it like that, quiet under the moonlight, both grinning with their skins of flame and soot —

But Acton has always had to have the last word. “Lead on then, daughter mine,” he said, and it was full and warm as sunlight in his mouth, heavy as gold, a feeling that could swallow the world. It was the closest he’d likely ever come to I love you. “Show me the sunrise.”



@Apolonia <3

these violent delights have violent ends