and I tremble and grow pale
for I am dying of such love
for I am dying of such love
A-po-lonia.
When she looks she thinks she is dreaming.
It is not uncommon, in the desert, to see things that are not there. More than one foolhardy stranger surely has wasted to death in the sand trudging toward a city that does not exist. O herself has watched from the walls as people follow paths that are not there. (She can never decide whether to laugh or feel guilty, that she wouldn’t run down to help. But the desert takes what it wants, like any good god, and even O is not brave enough to interfere with its plans.) Plenty die in the Mors, or nearly, but she—she is a desert girl, born and raised, and should not be liable to this kind of weakness.
And yet when she looks, she thinks she is dreaming.
Under the silver-gauzy surface of the oasis the crabs are moving all as one. They make a funny painting, warped somewhat by the moving water, but not enough that they aren’t… funny. She’s never seen anything like it. Their scuttling legs send clouds of soft sand up from the bottom of the pool, obscuring whatever it is that has become their burden. O watches with wide, wide eyes; they are not supposed to be pack animals. Even she knows that much, knobby-kneed little girl that she is. The sun is slanting just right. She can see the path they’re taking,
And it leads right to her.
At her feet the sand shifts slowly to stone. Water laps a soft tongue over the age-smoothed rocks and up to her ankles, cool, bright, clear, and O’s head drops to skim its surface as the crabs come closer, still spewing geysers of sand under the oasis’ surface. “Hello,” she says softly, unsure if they can understand her (but either way, wouldn’t it be rude not to say good morning?).
Eventually they stop, and hoist something onto the place where the shore meets the rocks, and scuttle away like so many scared ants. And the thing says her name, A-po-lonia, and she realizes she has never really seen magic, not until this.
It is too beautiful to look at but sideways, too bright to turn her eyes on; but she can’t not look, can’t not see that it matches her in all the ways an enchantment might look at its predecessor—carved from swoops of Solterran steel, the handle inlaid with sky-and-sun eyes. Yet more importantly, it knows her name. (Or thinks it does.) In each swift, sharp line the axe sings of godly craftsmanship, and she is entranced by all the ways it might promise to hurt someone. The killing teeth. The dark-carved suns.
Her little body trembles, half fear and half knowing.
With a slippery telekinetic grasp, she eases it from the water and shakes it off; it fits her perfectly, nimble and of a comforting weight, and as the metal winks dry in the sun she swears she can see its eyes opening and closing.
A-po-lonia, it says again, and she smiles dark, and says “My name is O.”
