O had been surprised to find the owl waiting for her. Novus, of late, was surprisingly calm, and anyway she did not usually have a barrage of callers nor held a position that invited such correspondence. When it swooped down to find her, she had flinched, thinking: this must be meant for someone else.
But it had not even given her a chance to protest, only dropped the scroll at her feet and soared away into the hot blue sky. When she picked it up, the letter unfurled to reveal ink scrawled across a paper imprinted with flower petals and bits of herbs, the writing an eager, sophisticated slant; it smelled the way she remembered Dusk court smelling, like saltwater and rose perfume. For a moment, even knowing that she was standing in the desert and blinking the grit out of her eyes, O had been transported to that night in the hallway of flickering lights stuck between two green-eyed girls, and knew whose signature would be on the bottom of the scroll even before she read it. Anandi.
And she had said, too—yours. O’s stomach had turned, a loose knot of rock shifting just between her hips in a way that made her feel dizzy even without moving, and the heat of her skin became overwhelming even as the sun went down, down, down.
At dusk. Near the sea.
It’s so her that O can’t help grinning. What else could she expect of Andi but to do what she does best—to orchestrate this meeting like it’s an inside joke, just like that first one on the island, saltwater pulling at their feet, hair ruffled by the breeze and made golden-red by the setting sun?
She passes through the row of bonfires without comment, watching with a squint as sheafs of paper turn to charcoal, then rise up to meet the clouds in puffs of dark smoke. The crowds are pressed in like children vying for a look at some obscure bug. Today the wind off the ocean is cold; O, dressed down as always in nothing of an outfit except her dark hair twisted back in braids, has to suppress a shiver as she descends. The sky is still mostly blue, just beginning to find its sunset color in pale swatches of orange and purple, and when her hooves meet the gray sand it is cold, cold, cold.
She steps onto the beach and lets the fires burn away behind her like so many bad omens.
Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger
corrupts absolutely,
or almost.
Anandi shivers. Maybe it’s because of the chill autumn breeze on her ocean-damp skin, but more likely it’s because she’s seized by anticipation. The next few hours are so very full of possibilities: Apolonia would arrive soon, and the night would thicken, and who knows what would follow? It could be innocent, it could be insidious. The strangest part was that she did not know which she wanted more.
The emissary watches the pied girl descend to the beach, braids thick black, gleaming like silk rope in the ripening sunset. A moment later she steps forward. “Apolonia.” She approaches from the cliffs, not the water-- had her guest expected otherwise?-- head tilted in warm appraisal as she looks down. “When we’re apart I always forget quite how beautiful you are.” A small part of her thinks I could get used to this. This sweetness. It could be like this all the time.
She takes that small part of herself and she strangles it.
(And anyway, on second thought, there is something decidedly not-sweet about the way she says beautiful.)
“Come, let's walk.” Anandi waits for Apolonia to ascend the cliff then leads the way down the coast, taking a wide berth around the crowded bonfires. There was never not a struggle within the kelpie (hunger and affection, desire and responsibility, morality and instinct-- the list goes on) but tonight there is something particularly pensive behind her lovely green eyes. Silent forces are at play, wrestling beneath the placid grey of her skin. Finally, she breaks the quiet between them. “I’ve been thinking… I realized I don’t even know that much about you. Tell me something about your family.” It is spoken like a command, but her tone is light, her gaze gently inquisitive. It is (somewhat) clearly a request, easily denied without being taken personally-- at least, not very personally.
Subtlety is an inherent strength of hers, but she is still learning what it is to be gentle. The two are far more different than they seem.
O is not thinking of whether the kelpie will approach from the cliffs or the sea. She is more preoccupied with the anticipation of whether she will approach at all, and the nagging thought of it makes her whole body ache with paranoia.
So when Andi does appear, it sends a jolt running through her like lightning, half pleasure and half relief. Apolonia—her head snaps toward the sound of the emissary’s voice, and when they lock eyes, O still picking her way down the cliffs, she can’t help the wide, breathless grin that spills over her mouth. (She snaps her mouth closed a millisecond later, but the damage must have already been done. In front of anyone else, it would be embarrassing; but for some reason she does not feel flustered by showing her pleasure so easily, or at the very least, doesn’t care how enthusiastic it might look.)
Standing patiently in the white sand, Andi is the same beautiful, pearlescent silver that O remembers from their last meeting. The bright orange of her head piece burns like a firework against the gray sky, and in the dancing light of the bonfires shadows play over her skin like puppets; and despite herself she can’t help wondering what stories might lie underneath those shadows, and what she might do to uncover them. Around them the cliffs are packed with bodies, but O doesn’t notice a single one of them. Her eyes are trained only on the emissary.
When we’re apart I always forget quite how beautiful you are. In a way that is violently unlike her, O's whole face scrunches up in pleasure. A blush floods the white portions of her face, and when she ducks her head to her chest for a brief moment, the three bright eyes glint with just-contained delight. "Anandi." Her voice is low and gentle; the emissary's name spoken in mixture of obvious delight at seeing her with a shy, self-conscious kind of warmth, as if O cannot quite believe Andi likes her. Perhaps she can't.
She follows in Anandi's footsteps as they take a wide path around the bonfires and the crowds that surround their flames. O is entranced. The mood of the night is magic, and in the faint, flickering light, everything looks like a fairytale. Here the strangers are towering, beautiful and magnificent; the light of the moon drips down in thin silver streams.
What beauty there is in this world, she thinks. And despite her better judgement, O cannot resist the urge to reach out and brush the soft black velvet of her mouth against Andi's hip as they walk. She even dares, for the briefest moment, to press her cheek to the emissary's shoulder; and the warmth that radiates from her, the fact that O can feel the throb of her pulse like a drumbeat through the dark, makes the Solterran's mind go instantly hazy.
"My father was murdered," she answers softly. "When I was very young; he was a Crow from Denocte, friends with the old king Reichenbach. And my mother was Regent of Solterra, for a time. She's still alive, and fine. Just... solitary. Still grieving, maybe. They didn't have the chance to give me any siblings." O's lips purse; a beat passes, of pregnant silence. "And you?"
you dangle on the leash
of your own longing;
your need grows teeth
Anandi sees the smile. She sees how quickly it snaps shut, and it sends a tickle of delight down her spine to think I did that. To think, that was for me. It feels like a gift- like an offering- and she treasures it accordingly. And then follows her egregious compliment, and the desired effect: Apolonia blooms, face scrunched with pleasure, and Anandi can’t help but grin.
Toward the bonfires they flutter, like mis-matched moths, yet they linger toward the shadows where Apolonia’s lip at the hip could be mistaken for the velvet night’s embrace, and Apolonia’s cheek might as well be her heart itself, red and warm against Anandi’s shoulder. When you are a goddess of the hunt, a pulse is so much like a prayer.
The kelpie does not visibly respond except in one way: her tail swats at her velvet-skinned companion playfully, knowingly, recognizing: hello there. I see you. I feel you.
It is only the tension, teetering towards the point of snapping, which makes Anandi break the silence with her question. But when Apolonia answers, she wonders if maybe it wasn’t better to stick to the joy of company quiet and soft and wanting.
“I’m sorry.” It’s sincere. She’s sorry for the girl with a dead father, a grieving mother, and- perhaps the most unimaginable for the emissary- a family without siblings. Sorry because every day is a struggle to keep herself from creating more dead fathers, grieving mothers, stick-thin family trees. Sorry because she knows it’s a losing battle- and one of these days, probably soon, she’s going to crack.
And who could ever love someone like that?
She takes the question, which makes her heart tremble, and she tells herself it never crossed her mind. She tells herself it doesn’t matter. This is not about love. “My family is… different. Brace yourself.” She laughs drily, because really Apolonia seems unshakable- surely capable of handling Anandi’s familial oddity. But that damn nervousness is still there, that sense of vulnerability chafing like a collar. “So. Daddy is a misogynist, but I love him anyway.” There’s complete conviction in her voice, but also the barest suggestion of sorrow- It’s difficult to love someone who on a fundamental level doesn’t respect who you are. It skews your self image. But Anandi, stubborn as all hell, put her head down and strove, again and again, for the impossible dream of his approval. (The thing about Anandi that’s important to realize: she believed approval was close enough to love)
“My mother is also my cousin. She’s alright. I don’t think she likes me very much, but...” She trails off with a shrug and an impish grin. That’s her problem, isn’t it? Anyway, the way the Minns were raised was different from how it was on the surface. Rearing a child was a communal activity- and as such the kelpies all shared a sisterly bond, even between mother and daughter. Anandi and her mom bickered like siblings, and held each other with the weary regard of two impulsive predators who never knew when the other would lash out. All in all, theirs was a very natural relationship, for a Minn.
Finally she smiles and her voice grows warm. “And I have six sisters.” Half sisters, technically, but her peopl never used words like half when it came to family. Minn is Minn, you are or you aren’t. (Leto and Lucinda are a different story, a new complication Anandi had never learned a place for. But that’s a whole nother story.) “Four of whom have never in their lives seen dry land.”
The disappointed tone of her voice says it all. Can you imagine? Never seeing- feeling-smelling- all this? To never know the sun, the moon, the chase of hare and deer… it’s such a shame.
Anandi wants more than anything else in the world- more than power, more than violence, more than Apolonia- for her sisters to join her. That longing is exaggerated in every long line of her body, the strain of it visible in each exasperated step that seems to dig defiantly into the earth. The restlessness in her stride, it’s different from the hunger that often seizes her. It’s worse. “It’s so peaceful tonight. I shouldn’t, but I just want to ruin it, you know? Set something on fire that’s not a stupid scrap of paper.” She laughs, girlish and self-indulgent. “I'm the worst emissary ever.”
O finds herself surprised by how easy it is to stick to the shadows here. From a distance—down on the beach, even walking in from the streets of the city—they looked indomitable; as hot and bright as stars, powerful enough to burn comet-trails up into the sky. Even their smoke was intimidating. She had thought, up close, their strong, warm light would be unavoidable. That would it pour over the land and pool, like liquid gold.
But it’s not like that at all. Maybe Andi makes it easier. Her surefootedness guides O to the darkest corners of the path and keeps them there, winding gracefully through the shadows. With O’s cheek pressed to the Emissary’s shoulder—with blood and body heat between them, spread thick as an offering—she does not think she could pull away, even if she wanted to.
And whether she wants to is a different story entirely. Because it’s nice here. Here, in the warm dark. Here, with the wind whipping off the sea, blowing the smell of smoke into their faces. Here, in this place named for its spot between sunrise and nightfall, just outside the reach of those tongues of yellow flame—a little dot in space and time that feels so magical O almost wonders whether she’s making it all up, manipulating reality so fluently and desperately she’s lost track of whether or not she’s even doing it.
She’s suddenly snapped out of it by the light smack of Andi’s tail against her side. The coarse hairs sting her for just a moment, scaring out a sharp huff of breath, but then she’s plunged back into the cold water of the real universe and awake again; brightly, painfully, bodily awake.
I'm sorry, Andi says. O knows it's supposed to be a kind gesture, but somehow she can't help wincing. It's a minuscule motion. But sorry just doesn't fit Anandi correctly; it's not a word she would have ever imagined coming out of the emissary's mouth, and hearing it sets her slightly on edge, like she's walked into the wrong room or overheard a conversation she wasn't supposed to. For once she decides to be honest, and says in a low, half-laughing tone: "Somehow it's strange to hear you say that."
They walk and walk and walk. It seems like all of Terrastella has turned out to visit the bonfires. O sees children whispering worries to their parents so they can be written down; she sees lovers collaborating on notes to burn, or doing them separately while they share conspiratorial glances; she sees what she thinks is the Sovereign, tall and dark, slinking around the edges of the cliff, and grizzled old men watching their life stories burn into dove-grey ash. It's serious. And somehow sweet. All these mortals coming to terms with the shortness of their lives. All these girls and boys, pretending that a goddess watches down on them with benevolence rather than indifference. Quaint.
O wonders if Andi believes in this too. She wonders if it would matter at all.
"Your—" O's head jerks back suddenly. She gives Andi a sideways glance, all three eyes straining at their corners to read the kelpie's face for signs of a joke, but there are none; and when she realizes it, she tries to smooth her own expression as quickly as possible. "Ah. So you two have mother-daughter drama and... and almost sibling drama, with her. That sounds..." O trails off, but her voice is twisted into a faint laugh. She's trying very hard not to take it all so seriously. It's an unusual feeling, for her. "And your sisters," she adds as an afterthought. "You get along with them?"
She is not so dense as to miss the way Andi's body language changes at the mention of her family. In fact, she watches it closely. The emissary's body grows tense; her strides are longer, and quicker, drawn out by stress. Some of her usual grace is curbed by that sudden tightness. O wants to offer something. Some condolence. But she has never been good with words, and by the time she feels brave enough to open her mouth Andi has already changed the conversation, musing out loud that she'd like to set something on fire.
O leans in sideways and murmurs: "Like this?"
It takes a moment for her focus to gather itself. But then the world changes; the magic spills out of her. A line of insubstantial, though alarmingly real-looking, fire races from O's hooves over the dry grass at the edge of the cliffs and races, races, races forward. It pools at the crowd's feet. It pretends to swallow whole sheafs of paper. It rushes in to join the already lit bonfires and reaches into the sky as if it would like to touch the moon, harmless but realistic, and desperate.
I would set it all on real fire, if you wanted me to, O thinks. But she says nothing.
you dangle on the leash
of your own longing;
your need grows teeth
"Somehow it's strange to hear you say that."
At first the words don't register- Anandi's struck by the lovely rasp of Apolonia's voice.
(Last winter, a terrible thunderstorm rolled through. The next day she walked past trees with broken, fallen limbs. Bark lay scattered in thick, rough brown curls and the air smelled of char and ozone. Apolonia's voice is like that.)
The emissary collects herself with a flushed smile. “Well. I’m not often sorry.” She thinks Apolonia isn’t, either-- and why should either of them be? At worst, sorrow was a sickness most vile. Better to sever the limb than let the infection spread. It was, at best, a waste of time. A sentimentality, granted to the pretty pied girl with the sharp-smokey eyes and the big... axe-thing. (weapons… not really a specialty of the kelpie’s) We count all the reasons why as the petals of a flower going round and round. Or, more appropriately, the many rows of a shark’s teeth. Pluck them one by one, sing a little girl’s song: “She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me.”
Bloody teeth and torn petals; Apolonia’s cheek on her shoulder and smoke and shadows pressing close like blankets.
"That sounds..." the grey picks up with a soft laugh where the paint leaves off, “mmhmm… fun.” The words are a little tart, undeniably sarcastic but… there is a fondness there. Often it's those closest to us who are the most maddening; so it was with Anandi and her large family. The closer she allowed them, the easier it was for them to slip beneath the skin. “We get along most of the time. It’s hard, sometimes, we’re all so different… but I’d do anything for them.” She shrugs, not seeing the need to embellish the point. It was strong enough as it was, coming from the kohl-eyed emissary who on the surface didn’t seem to care about anyone at all. That was all part of the game-- it isn’t safe to be yourself here, unless you’re in the shadows or on the outskirts… or on evenings like this, hazy evenings with the sea in the air, thick as a second skin, and secrets burning up all around.
Apolonia leans in close, murmurs “like this?” just low enough Anandi must lean in to hear. She feels the words, a warm whirl of breath, on her cheek. Then, in the glow of a flame that isn’t really there, her eyes widen. O sets it all on fire. The scraggly cliff grass, the stupid piles of paper and ink. The livestock, bleating drunk and careless, crackle and burst into flame. And at the center of the closest bonfire, a pillar of heat and life reaches up to challenge the night.
It’s all so real. But no one else reacts, and when wide-eyed Anandi reaches out a foreleg to swipe it over the flames, they are not hot to the touch. “You clever girl!” And she laughs like she’s drunk; in a way she is.
Oh savage glee.
Oh wildfire love, cheeks smeared with ash, tongue thick with want.
One girl turns to the other. It was almost always like this- one of them looking, the other pretending not to notice. Anandi stops laughing and her voice is suddenly very serious.“What’s keeping you in Solterra?” Her cheeks are warm with the possibility of rejection, but she was never one to stay quiet when there was something she wanted; she pushes on. “Why don’t you stay here a while?” She gently pinches her lower lip between her teeth. Set things on fire for me. Jump off the cliffs and into the sea. Come with me to court.
In the quiet that follows she can hear her own heartbeat, and it sounds like the soft sputter and smolder of coals.
