i see everything;
that is my curse
that is my curse
Apolonia is waking up from a strange, strange dream.
As soon as she opens her eyes, it starts to crumble from her grasp. The shifting parts are all vague as clouds, and they slip from her even as she comes awake—heaving a sharp breath, scrambling to remember, her heart pounding in her mouth. A chill clutches her spine from her jaw to her hips. Every heartbeat drags her closer to her feet.
In that strange dream, the sun had moved again. The waves had crashed, the sands had shifted; she had been standing in the middle of the island, and it had warped around her into a cocoon, swirling into so many spirals like the golden ratio, all centered on the place she stood still as a statue. The wind had roared past her, ruffling her hair against her cheeks and legs. All around her the isle was eerily empty. She tried to move, but couldn’t—her legs were locked in the sand as it moved higher and higher like a wave, up against her ankles, then her knees—there was nothing she could do about the wind as it pulled her forelock away from her face and let her third eye into the sun for the first time in weeks.
No matter how much she blinked, in the dream, her eye couldn’t quite get used to the light; it hurt to look through, but for some reason she couldn’t close it, no matter how hard she tried; the longer she looked the worse it was, until the brightness became pain, and the pain became unbearable.
Then she woke up.
The inside of her head goes black-then-white, flashing back and forth in quick succession, and O surges to her feet so sharply she almost slips in the sand.
The sun is not where she left it.
It’s shifted. Slightly, but more than it’s moved in days upon days, and O shudders as she looks up at it, unnerved to the roots of her teeth. Her whole body runs cold. And that’s even before she finally (numbly) moves forward and finds the hoof prints in the sand, moving under the weight of someone or something invisible. She blinks. Hard. But the trail is still there when her eyes flash open again, and O—of all people—is not the person to disregard an omen.
She takes after the ghostly hoofsteps at a rapid canter, and does not stop to think about who might be running ahead of or behind her.
O is one of the first to show up in the clearing, which both surprises and delights her; she lets out a delicious little huff of satisfaction as she draws to a stop just inside the treeline, though not quite close enough to be visible to those who have already arrived. They’re strangers, and she’s careful to look them over thoroughly. Noting their strengths and weaknesses and their varied builds. Noting their hesitation, the way they wait like sitting ducks for the thing to come to them. (Except for the one piece of gold, who looks like he’s starting to think about maybe possibly stepping forward; he reminds her of her dad, for whatever god-forsaken reason, and O grinds her teeth as she looks.)
Her whole body trembles with excitement. The relic, diamond-sharp and diamond-pretty, has sunk a fishhook into her chest and won’t stop pulling—every second she watches makes her hungrier and hungrier. Still no one has moved. Her left shoulder is starting to twitch. Salt burns at the corners of her mouth. Under her forelock, her third eye is coming awake, blinking open against the weight of weeks closed, shedding dirt and tears from the row of thick eyelashes, darting rapidly and almost frantically back and forth as it tries to gain sight through the curtain of her hair. Calm down. The hurlbat sings against her hip. Calm down.
In all this time, the bravest of them has only moved a step, and O’s carnivore heart is snarling louder and louder in search of adrenaline. She braids her forelock back into her mane, and with a noise like breathing the third eye blinks all the way open, wide and sharp and white.
“Lord,” she mumbles to herself, half prayer and half dare, eyes turning up—“All good things come to those who take them.”
With the axe twirling like an inferno at her side, she trots toward the relic, and the eye shines out of her forehead pretty as an offering.
O is choosing to stay!
STAFF EDIT***
@Apoloniahas rolled a 2! She has been awarded +150 signos.
