little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
She decides that it would feel silly, to tell him thank you again so soon after the first time - Elif isn’t sure she’s been paid so so many compliments in such rapid succession in her life. The ragtag band of children she had grown up with weren’t the kind to flatter one another, and the only others to pay her much mind were her parents and their tangled tree of cousins, who mostly told her things like Stop that, you’ll get dirty and Really, Elif, why would you say something so rude?
For a moment she wonders if all non-Solterrans were this friendly and kind, and if she’d been missing out her whole life - and more than that, if all the adults had been just lying about Day Court being superior in all ways except, perhaps, availability of water.
Oh, but that must be nonsense.
Better to decide it is the influence of the pool, the effect of the water they drank. Is it making her softer, she wonders, more approachable? Certainly she feels the urge to compliment him in turn, sitting on her tongue like the remembered taste of a rare spice.
Normally Elif is not the distractible sort, but she is glad for the movement of the little fox.
He is a strange cousin to the ones she knows from the desert, who are much smaller and sandy-colored and have huge ears like bats. This one is red as the flaming tails of the birds that still linger around the pool, only the light from the water turns his fur to bronze. She wonders if he is as shy as the ones she knows, and what he eats, and if he thinks the water has been put here by a god, too. It is a good thing the conversation moves on as it does - wondering about a fox’s gods could lead to a whole host of uncomfortable questions.
But they are each forgotten before they have had a chance to unfold when he speaks again, and Elif looks at him with real surprise in her green eyes. “Which borders?” she asks, wary again. Not wanting to leave Solterra is a much different feeling than not being able to. “Why are they closed?” (Of course, she has the same thought as he does, as the sun presses warm on her wings - there were no borders at all to their kind.)
It is so easy to answer him, then, even if not in the right order. “Of course you can.” She smiles, and it looks both easy and conspiratory. She hadn’t had a destination in mind until he asked; now she looks again at the pool, and lays her ears back and then forward again, considering. “I was thinking about seeing if Solis is on his mountain…” Her voice is hushed, half in reverence and half in dare - for that is of course what it is, now.
Because if He had left this pool (and of course he had, water warm and lazy as a bath and as golden as the dunes at daybreak), then He could be anywhere, even where they looked for him. And the thought makes her thrill as much as the idea of testing her speed against this complimentary stranger’s.
@Mateo idk what this is other than different but I hope it's ok <3
