[Quest] it is a perfect weapon,

[Random Events]

  what the water hides in dark and sand 

The oasis has not much changed in its thousands of years. The moon does not rule it; there are no tides to eat and recede from the banks. Maybe the spring-fed waterfall now cuts a little deeper into the rock. But some of the same trees are still growing as they have for centuries, and the same migrations of animals make their way here, to drink from the sapphire waters and rest in the shade of the wide-leafed trees and dream, perhaps, of what life might be like if all the world were as kind, as rich, as giving as the oasis. 

All that is to say, there is no telling how long the hurl-bat has waited beneath the crystalline waters of the lake. The fish there have known about it for a long time, and avoided its sharp prongs, though they gleam bright enough to draw them close when the moonlight strikes them in the water. The weapon has never rusted, and will never rust. It is as beautiful as the day it was forged (and how it wishes it could remember that day! But Tuchulcha had not been Awake yet. The enchantment came later, and there was a story).

The axe knows it is waiting, though it isn’t sure for whom. Every time a shadow on the edge of the water glances over the surface it thrills in excitement and sends the crabs scuttling. There is a woman who lives in the oasis, and the weapon has (many times!) wanted to call out to her. To ask for a story, or some way to pass the time. 

But it knows one thing with the same sureness it knows how to cut and scream in the air and taste the iron of blood: not yet. Not yet. So it sleeps, it waits. 

Until. 

One day the sun slants just right and it knows that She is coming. That today it will be held, and its many-carved suns will gleam again the light of the Solterran day, and its eyes will wink brighter and more colorful than the dull and plain white stars. Today it will not be alone. 

Help me, it sweetly asks the crabs, and they do (glad to be part of something so strange and different, though you couldn’t tell by their grumbling). Little by little, bit by bit (Faster! It thinks, We’ll miss her!) they pull and push and carry and drag the axe to the edge of the shore, where they are glad to leave it where the water licks up timidly over rock and sand. Thank you, thinks the weapon, and goodbye! 

It hums a little, to itself, eager. Too eager (some would say) for such a killing thing, but then, what good is a sullen blade? 

And then there is the small vibration of feet. A child’s feet, a girl’s. And the axe knows she will look down at the gleaming thing in the water (so bright, so beautiful, all sharp peaks and swooping curls! Never was a thing made with such love or such skill. Ask anyone.). 

It can’t resist. It speaks, for the first time in longer than can be counted, and its voice is not garbled and silenced by the water. 

“A-po-lonia.” 

---

@Apolonia might notice the crabs of the oasis acting strangely far before she notices what it is they are carrying in between their many claws. Will she notice the way the sun hits the weapon first, or will she notice the way the wood seems to be smiling. Or maybe she will only hear her name spoken against the sand. Surely it wasn't the wind howling her name...

Thread requirements: 1 reply, 500 words. Please tag the RE account in your reply.
How to tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk!
Once you respond, you may post to claim the quest EXP

This quest was written by the lovely @griffin

Enjoy!

[Apolonia]

and I tremble and grow pale
for I am dying of such love

A-po-lonia. 

When she looks she thinks she is dreaming.

It is not uncommon, in the desert, to see things that are not there. More than one foolhardy stranger surely has wasted to death in the sand trudging toward a city that does not exist. O herself has watched from the walls as people follow paths that are not there.  (She can never decide whether to laugh or feel guilty, that she wouldn’t run down to help. But the desert takes what it wants, like any good god, and even O is not brave enough to interfere with its plans.) Plenty die in the Mors, or nearly, but she—she is a desert girl, born and raised, and should not be liable to this kind of weakness. 

And yet when she looks, she thinks she is dreaming. 

Under the silver-gauzy surface of the oasis the crabs are moving all as one. They make a funny painting, warped somewhat by the moving water, but not enough that they aren’t… funny. She’s never seen anything like it. Their scuttling legs send clouds of soft sand up from the bottom of the pool, obscuring whatever it is that has become their burden. O watches with wide, wide eyes; they are not supposed to be pack animals. Even she knows that much, knobby-kneed little girl that she is. The sun is slanting just right. She can see the path they’re taking,

And it leads right to her.

At her feet the sand shifts slowly to stone. Water laps a soft tongue over the age-smoothed rocks and up to her ankles, cool, bright, clear, and O’s head drops to skim its surface as the crabs come closer, still spewing geysers of sand under the oasis’ surface. “Hello,” she says softly, unsure if they can understand her (but either way, wouldn’t it be rude not to say good morning?). 

Eventually they stop, and hoist something onto the place where the shore meets the rocks, and scuttle away like so many scared ants. And the thing says her name, A-po-lonia, and she realizes she has never really seen magic, not until this.

It is too beautiful to look at but sideways, too bright to turn her eyes on; but she can’t not look, can’t not see that it matches her in all the ways an enchantment might look at its predecessor—carved from swoops of Solterran steel, the handle inlaid with sky-and-sun eyes. Yet more importantly, it knows her name. (Or thinks it does.) In each swift, sharp line the axe sings of godly craftsmanship, and she is entranced by all the ways it might promise to hurt someone. The killing teeth. The dark-carved suns.

Her little body trembles, half fear and half knowing. 

With a slippery telekinetic grasp, she eases it from the water and shakes it off; it fits her perfectly, nimble and of a comforting weight, and as the metal winks dry in the sun she swears she can see its eyes opening and closing.  

A-po-lonia, it says again, and she smiles dark, and says “My name is O.”

“Speaking.”

credits