[P] white teeth teens are out;

[Apolonia]

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

The weapon in the air hangs between them like a promise. O watches the opal shine in the darkness and fights a smile that twists at the corners of her mouth, puts a sharp little gleam in the strange chimera of her eyes. 

She likes the way Elif looks at the hurlbat - an extension of her body - with reverence, wonder, want. It is a reflection of her own feelings of the thing, and she likes that there is someone else in the world who can love a weapon the way that she does. She is not so blind as not to notice the way Elif leans toward it like she wants to touch the sun. But, stoic as ever, never one to push too hard, O still tucks the weapon away in the next second and does not say a word of how close Elif’s lips came to the edge of it.

If it’s anyone else, who cares? O raises a brow, sort of dubious. She cannot decide if she agrees or not - if Solterra is supposed to be the only place that means something to her, if the want-to-know that she doesn’t bring up is genuine curiosity or a deep-seated petty kind of nosiness. She blows out a tunneled breath and does not notice (or pretends not to) if it brushes any inch of Elif’s skin. 

All three eyes drop to the wool at the girl’s throat. O has to wonder about the vibrancy of it, blood-shine against the dark of her skin. For a moment she thinks she tastes salt in the back of her mouth.

The breeze picks up a little speed, sends the dark of Apolonia’s hair into a soft shiny whirlpool. She blinks against the wind and the darkening Tyrian sky and the soft, bright light of the stars and the sky and her soot-dusted lips break into a clear, radiant grin, and her gaze narrows a little: Anything you want, O offers, easy as a ritual slaughter, and snaps her tail against her back legs like a whip. Have you seen the markets yet?

 She does not feel even a little self-conscious of how it might look to give herself up to Elif so freely. Doing anything else would be dishonest.

@elif