overdosed on confidence
I don’t really give a shit about spring. I’m just happy we’re one step closer to summer.
The sun is out today, and I am splayed like a cat over the warm cobblestones of our rooftop deck. Below me, our courtyard is bustling quietly with the movement of servants watering the snake plants, grinding spices, or pouring tea; the streets just beyond our gates are filled with the muffled ruckus of merchants and their customers, who bicker like children over the price of this or that exotic fruit. I am happily silent, laid out in an easy arc. The sky is only barely dusted by clouds.
When I close my eyes against the light, they don’t go black. In fact, I can still see. But instead of the natural world, it is Solis’ best painting, a kaleidoscope of washed out green and crimson and purple whose swirls and sudden divisions I watch with undivided concentration.
The sun is melting and melting and melting me. I am falling into an uncannily good mood. Someone is playing the harp downstairs, an old, old song my mother taught us all as a lullaby. The awkward pacing of the player tells me it’s probably Adonai, slowly—so slowly—relearning his strings. It is a lonely, plaintive sound, one note playedI want to smile, but I cannot. Even I am not so cruel.
For once I feel at home. For once I am pleased not to hear myself talk, distracted instead by the slow simmer of my dark skin and the gentle humming of the snakes against my ears; distracted by the way the sun brushes over my cheek, plays tricks on my vision; distracted by the sound of the bell clinking.
The bell.
I sit up abruptly, so fast my head goes briefly swimming-dark. My heart rushes forth. The bell only rings when the gates are opened: it’s a noise I have trained myself to recognize.
Our House is situated right at the edge of the capitol, where we can see—especially from my vantage point—everyone who passes in and out of the city of Solterra, keeping the census up to date, stocking the city’s market stalls. I wish I wouldn’t leave the good sunspot open for one of my siblings to take, but my curiosity is stronger than my laziness; I shake the kinks and curls out of my snakes and roll to my feet to peer over the edge of the deck.
Past the courtyard, past our own iron-wrought gates, there is movement as the guards let some stranger into the main street. And I recognize him, but I have no idea which name to use. For a moment I freeze. I am only a little bit afraid of heights.
“Warden,” I call out from above, though I know I will not look, to him, like an angel.
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