[P] white teeth teens are out;

[Apolonia]

AMERICA'S FAVORITE, I DO MY BEST AND THEY HATE IT -

The only thing that keeps O from losing her temper completely is the knowledge that she is not the maze’s only failure.

Three others had gone down the path with her, and all three of them, after the maze-god melted into petals and dust, had been left staring bewildered and the glossy wall of leaves and the darkness impending overhead, and all three of them had been forced to flee their dead ends in various iterations of distress. It’s hard to tell what anyone else was thinking as they stalked out of the path in silence, but O has difficulty imagining anyone else’s response is as strong as hers: a rage that builds heat in her chest until it is an infinite fireball, leaching into her brain, her bones, her blood - a frustration so potent she wants to scream, to curse, to grind her teeth until they fall away.

As she shoulders her way from the greenery she thinks about what her mother told her once. You have a temper that redefines temper. At the time it had meant nothing to her, young and angry as she was; young and angry still, but a little more conscious of it, she starts to understand.

By the time O bursts back into the prairie the night is starting to cool, and to darken. A breeze brushes little fingers over her mottled skin. She’s thankful for the way it brings her temperature down so that she’s not quite simmering against the peacefulness of the impending evening, not such a bright light against the dim green of the maze falling away behind her. Like dunking an ember in ice water, the bracing touch turns the fire in her stomach to frost instead, and her head starts to throb a little less.

When Elif draws up alongside her, Apolonia is not surprised so much as she is suspicious. She fights the urge to reach for the blade at her hip - it would be more a warning omen than a real weapon in this case - but the smell of Solterra lingering on the girl’s skin relaxes her a little, and though O regards her watchfully, through dark, slanted lashes, the look in her eyes is mild and curious. It’s O, she says. Her voice is a little brittle, a little cruel. But the bitterness is mostly swallowed by the time she responds again - No, I hit a dead end. You?

@elif