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?
@
these violent delights have violent ends
