[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.