THE HEART IS STRONG,
AS IF NEVER SORROWED;
“Ha,” O says, and a laugh twinges in her voice. “Yeah, the rain is the weird part.” She snorts, and a little bit of it is derision, but most of it is humor; there’s more strangeness to be found, she’s sure, in the birds with their jewel-eyes and whistling leaves than in any amount of rain. Though it can’t help. If it were sunny, she could see a little better, not be so damn-soaking wet, not find it so woefully hard to run if the situation calls for it. If it were sunny she wouldn’t be stuck up to her ankles in mud. Wouldn’t feel her teeth chattering as the chill of the water soaks into her bones. (But that’s okay, she tells herself, it’s all okay; there’s nothing to run from. Nothing to run from.)
(Nothing to run from.)
They tend to be fascinated by things that are new and unusual, even if they are frightening. He’s right abut that, even O knows—she’s had her fair share of stares follow her in the rare moments her third eye peeks out, or when they realize that the girl with the axe on her hip is a child yet, a small one at that. Younger even than she looks. She could be considered unusual and frightening, but that has never really bothered her—it’s a power, isn’t it, to make people extra-careful around you? She wouldn’t have gotten this far if people took her at face value—if they saw her as just a kid and not a force to be reckoned with.
He’s not from here, the stranger says, and O is not surprised. She looks him up and down with pure, cool curiosity. The tufts of feathers on his ankles and the virile green of his markings are both traits she’s never seen in Novus before—never even heard of, if she’s remembering right. “Fun stuff, right. Weird stuff too.” She grins, and it pulls her dark lips into a smile like a shining crescent moon. Something like mischief is bright in her multi-colored eyes.
She raises her chin then, toward the sky, and closes her lashes against the continual falling of the rain; but it’s lightened up a bit, and now it feels like a kiss on her sooty skin. Then she cracks her gaze open and looks back at Coy. “Well!” chirps O with unusual enthusiasm, “Shall we?” and shakes some of the water from her suddenly curly hair. She raises her eyebrows in something like a dare, then turns and starts at a bouncy trot deeper into the forest, overturning patches of wet leaves and dirt as she slinks through the undergrowth with her tail snapping behind her.
