summer is past, and we are not saved
O wonders briefly is there is anyone watching from above.
The gods are above, to be sure, but more she is thinking of the bonfires that gleam like bright, sharp teeth on the edge of the cliffs above, and whether any one of those now-tiny festivalgoers is looking down at them, and wondering: what is this? Against the shore they would be small as flies. The hurlbat might catch the light and flash briefly like a warning fire, but that would be it. They are not notable. O blends in with the sand; Nic against the moody darkness of the sky. Away from the light of the fires, down in the deep gray of the sea and the fog, they might look like smudges in an oil painting. They might not show up on the canvas at all.
And someone with more sense might be bothered by that thought: I am alone with a stranger, and no one can reach me. But sense appears to be lacking here.
The Solterran squares her shoulders tightly. She has to raise her chin to meet Nic’s eyes—for the first time O wants to glower, that someone has the audacity to be taller than her—but she does so with the lean adult grace that has possessed her almost since birth, indifferent to the things that might make others feel inadequate. Wind soars between them, bristling O’s half-toned tail up against her legs. Height is not the most important thing. Nor the thick, curled, nail-hard horns. Neither is the fact that this girl has wings, though O does glance at them sideways with a kind of envy. Making an illusion of the sky to stand in is not the same as really soaring through it.
The stranger repeats, ocean. She is smooth and careful this time, and already her foreign voice shapes itself around the word more easily. O nods and flashes a smile to say, in her own small way: good job.
Behind this stranger, the ocean eats its way further up the shore. If I had never seen the ocean, O muses, I think I might be more careful of it. She has grown up hearing of it—albeit from a safe distance, way out in the desert—and still feels a little wary of it. In all the books, this is where the storm builds up against the horizon. In paintings it roars and crashes like lighting. And she knows that the meat-eating sea-horses, their mouth crowded full of slick, sharp teeth, are not stories or sketches but real creatures to be feared, and that the ocean is the home of cannibals.
But she does not think it would be nice to tell this girl such a thing on her first day out in the big, wide world.
“Your homeland—“ O stops as suddenly as she began. Her teeth almost click together. There are so many questions and things to say that she can’t quite decide where to start, and for a moment her eyes rest on Nic’s with a gleam of surprise as much as interest. “Your homeland sounds so—different. There are forests here, too. Yours must be much bigger, but maybe they’d make you feel at home.” She does not say I could take you, but the implication is there—in the upturn of her voice, the lack of a scowl on her sooty face.
“It’s water,” she adds after a moment. “The ocean. Saltwater, actually. Don’t drink it.” Her eyes flash in the cold gray light, and despite herself a little laugh escapes her, just light enough to maybe get lost in the wind.
Fog is coming down now, in thick cold sheets, and it twists into ghost-shapes. O shudders once as it falls against her skin.
