I CAN SEE THE FUTURE, IT'S A REAL DARK PLACE -
![[Image: apolonia_by_erasvita_dcmlqry_by_beccazw-dcnhnsj.png]](https://orig00.deviantart.net/4a1e/f/2018/265/e/7/apolonia_by_erasvita_dcmlqry_by_beccazw-dcnhnsj.png)
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 -
