She picks her way across the canyon with all the ease of a snake.
There is no part of Solterra she has not yet explored. Elatus is no exception - young as she is, O is intimate with the sand and the rocks and the tough, scrubby brush as much as she is with the inside of her mother’s tower. It is winter, but not cold. Still the sun leers over Solterra with bright teeth and a brighter stare, turning red to gold and gold to white and splicing little shards of light to sparkle in Apolonia’s gaze like so many stars. It is difficult to see against so much glare; she ducks her head and shakes her mane over her eyes to filter it more, with little avail.
No matter. A cactus wren, swathed in pale gold and deep, cool brown, goes darting past her shoulder and turns to dive down into the canyons with a little twitter of of a dare, sharp and sweet as any song.
O takes off after it.
Nimble and fearless, she leaps down the first ledge, lands with a thump, and without a moment’s pause goes tearing along the edges of the canyon, following the bird’s flight path. Now it is twirling and dipping in the air, as if to tease her; she snorts, the noise of derision cut early by her shortness of breath, and goes plunging after the wren with a renewed vigor. Her hooves crack against the striated rock. Its drumbeat matches the pounding of her heart against her chest and the blood pulsing in her ears and, oh, she is alive, running just fast enough to prove it -
She thinks of her father, and unwittingly slows.
Her heart twists in pain a little, physically tenuous for the way it wrenches her of her confidence. If only here were time to grieve - but no, her home is on fire, and her mother, too - and even as she slows to a crawl at the bottom of the canyon, swallowed now by the obelisks of the surrounding walls, what little part of her wants to cry is distracted by the snake-like figure emerging from the dark of a nearby cave. She raises her head indignantly, and though she continues toward him, it is not without a great measure of suspicion and a practiced twirl of the axe at her side.
It’s not snooping if I live here, O responds resentfully. She comes to an abrupt stop and looks him over like she would a new weapon, a piece of clothing up for sale - something that warrants careful consideration of worthiness. There is nothing special about him, she thinks, almost mournfully, but for the phosphoresce of his skin dialed into little scales.
And the way he cannot seem to recover from the sight of her eye.
Often she forgets about it. It is no more to her than a birthmark, or a freckle; beyond that, it is so often hidden by her hair that no one generally notices, but it is now that she realizes her run has split her forelock and revealed the bright curve of her eye. She cannot help but sneer at him a little, both disappointed and unsurprised at his reaction. I’m just passing through -
O glances somewhat boredly at the cave behind him, noting the trinkets, the feathers, the tiny temples of bones. Really, she says, though it is not quite a question. Her voice is even and unconcerned. It seems like you have a nice little camp set up.
Osniffs casually as she observes the contents of the cave. Feathers splintered and bleached by too much time in the sun, rattling small bones stacked in endless latices, scraps of dark, bloody skin and fur. It is… messy. That is what bothers her most. That whoever did this (and she is still not convinced it isn’t the man that stands in front of her) is a criminal of the worst kind - one that does not really care whether he is caught.
To her it is disgusting. O and her family, though brutish, are clean. She would never leave so much evidence behind.
From Tinea, he says of his necklaced teeth and feathers, and she watches him through narrowed eyes. She does not know enough about Tinea to say otherwise; it’s rare that she leaves the Day Court, much less wanders to empty Terrastella. But she’s heard enough whispered stories and read enough smudged scrolls to recognize that when he says Tinea he means Ilati, those strange swamp warlocks who beat drums in the night-jungle and thirst for blood. Or bones. Or something.
They too are the kind of murderers she hates more than the usual - if it were her, there would be no one left to tell stories about it.
Not until now, she says, and raises her gaze at him in a kind of challenge. Her slender legs are firm, and she stands stubbornly still as he walks past her, the only movement a slow turn of her head following his path as he brushes past her and tries to pull her away: she only watches, with hot, sharp eyes and pulls her shoulders back. For a moment she debates following -
But her gaze catches on the almost-frantic look in his eyes as he sweeps forward, and then her curiosity ratchets even higher.
O takes a slow step back toward the cave. She does not quite care if he follows or not, but some part of her, mischievous as it is evil, wants to know just how much she can scare him - a little girl against a psychotic man. That’s alright, she says wryly. I’ll look. You can go.
Of course he’s lying! She can smell it in his voice, the way it trembles in the fine, cool air. How his lip twitches just a little as he talks. She smiles back at him, feline and easy. O has never been a good girl but she is not a liar. There is power, always, in keeping your cards on top of the table — it shows that you have nothing to fear.
He talks too much. Far too much. It’s hard to tell whether this is his modus operandi or an unfortunate side effect of keeping whatever secret he has under perfect lock and key. Either way she is not impressed by it; O was raised around people of few words, people who relied more on power than on praying, and it’s almost grating to hear so much at once. She flicks an ear at him but manages to bite her evil tongue.
“The desert welcomes those who deserve it,” O remarks with perfect casualty as she peeks her head into the darkness of the cave. Even up close it’s hard to ascertain the origins of the feathers and the bones — between Solterran creatures there is not much of a difference in composition, built as every one of them is to withstand the heat and the wind and the sun. O herself is nearly the same, sculpted from Solterra itself. She has the light bones of the birds, the hard gold skin of the lizards, the sooty points and hair of the desert cats.
This man does not.
She lets out a series of hums looking over the contents of the cave. “You do not know her, and yet she is your queen?” A little snort erupts from her. “That seems — irregular,” and the bite in her tone is almost humor but not quite.
A crow sounds off in the distance. It is loud enough and sudden enough to shock Apolonia from her perfect focus; she startles just a little, jerking her narrow head back from the pit of the cave, and turns over her shoulder to face Only again, mismatched blue eyes meeting green. Her gaze remains on his stubbornly. Why an axe? he asks, and then she really smiles, wide and perfectly sharp, as if it is a compliment and not a question.
“It came to me,” she says, and there is nothing else to it.
