[P] GODHOOD & GIRLHOOD

[Apolonia]

EVENING CAME ON LIKE A BIG RED WING -

O is not as impressed as she should be, maybe. The tent fills with swirling dragons and the choking smell of incense and those wan flickers of red light and sure, her heart picks up speed in her chest, and sure, she watches with an attention so rapt it’s predatory, but - but - she could make these things herself. Little creatures out of smoke, the glass-warped impression of a life. She does it often. Turns a river to an ocean, turns a greeting to an omen. What really impresses her is the dexterity with which the seer shuffles and turns over her cards and the stability of her voice when she says nothing.

Apolonia is not sure she has ever been that kind of knowledgeable, not sure she could stop her voice from wavering if she were holding someone else’s fate in her hands the way this woman does.

It’s over too fast. She does not even remember walking out, does not realize she’s moved at all until she’s standing outside of the tent and the cool, bright air hits her like a gunshot. It smells like jasmine, it stings like burning. All at once her consciousness crashes back into her body with the force of a meteorite. Overhead the sky sparkles with stars, and O feels her heart in throat, thrashing like a caught animal, and if she trembles, the darkness hides it well.

Eik appears like a ghost.

He is marble and cloud-stuff, light against the dimness of Denocte; almost something like relief fills her chest at the sight of him, like she’s come home. It is a wave of letting-go that crashes at her ribs with too much force, the world warping itself to fit the image of someone she recognizes intimately. They know each other too well for not knowing each other at all. All Apolonia’s life she’s seen him at gatherings, wandering the court, speaking in hushed tones, and if she were more superstitious she might count the way his voice sometimes rang in her head when she was a child as doubtlessly true, utterly meaningful. But she isn’t, so she doesn’t.

Eik, she says, and grins, and it is a pure thing, more childlike than almost anything else about her. I did. But who knows if they’re true? O shrugs then, shedding incense and candlelight and mystery as easily as a coat. 

What would you ask?