summer is past, and we are not saved
It is a testament to how much O cares for her not-girlfriend that she is even here.
Dusk and Dawn have always made her the most uncomfortable. Solterra is home: arid, lethal, sun-blasted hell, but home in its own way. To her its toxicity is almost pleasant. If O can survive in Solterra on her own, she can survive anywhere; plus the desert’s rough terrain, and all its proverbial teeth, protect her from the advances of the weak.
And Denocte—Denocte has its own positives. The city has always made her a little uncomfortable. The crowded streets, the bonfires, the lights are all too much to withstand daily, and each time she visits O can’t help wondering, with a little pang of disappointment in her stomach, how her father was ever happy here. A smaller part of her wonders at more minuscule, sentimental questions. Which bars he haunted. What corners he and the Crows picked pockets on. If Denocte sets her on edge, then at least it is an edge tempered by nostalgia.
Dusk and Dawn are the empty space in between. None of the comfort of Solterra, none of the tweeny romanticism of Denocte. And O feels that almost-dark space—that absence of meaning—especially keenly as she looks upon Nicnevin on the grey beach, and feels the wind tousle her dark hair into salt-rough knots, and shivers as the cold, damp, hoary fog presses in on every side.
Without Andi, this place feels deadly. And O finds herself worried that she's worried in the first place.
But her soul picks up light and speed when she sees the girl’s reaction at the mention of a forest. Her mismatched eyes grow wide with excitement; her ears prick forward. When she says really? her voice is eager, sweet and so bright it’s almost childish. O’s mouth splits into a quick grin. Her heart doesn’t race, per se, but it also doesn’t sit quite as heavily in her chest. The stranger’s earnestness is charming, maybe heart-warming. A sign that the world doesn’t look so colorless to everyone else.
"Nothing bad will happen," she assures, responding to the question about the ocean first; if she has some suspicions about whether or not Nic's already tasted the sea, then it's invisible, lost in the cool lines of her face. "It just doesn't taste good. You might feel sick if you had, you know, a lot of it—but otherwise it's not so dangerous."
O pauses for a beat. She tries to hold her stance straight and even, but the wind and the damp fog send her into a short, unobtrusive fit of shivers. Overhead and to the left, the warm yellow light of the bonfires taunts her; she swears she can smell their smoke and feel their heat from all the way down here, and as she gazes up at them a small part of her wonders if someone is waiting for her on that clifftop.
It makes her feel—
"Yes," the Solterran says abruptly. She smiles again. This time its curve is a little lopsided. "I'll show you. But it's a bit of a walk; we should go back to the festival and warm up, first."
She turns and starts to trudge back toward the narrow, salt-slick steps. And then, after a second of thought, calls back over her shoulder—"My name is O, by the way."
She rarely turns her back on strangers, even to walk away. But this time worry does not even cross her mind.
