[AW] shorebird

[Nicnevin]

SHE'S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

I am not falling, exactly.

I don’t even feel like I am moving. In those strange, slow moments between one realm and the next, I feel incorporeal, and, although I have always been assured of the knowledge and skill of the priestesses, I cannot help but wonder if they have made a mistake; it feels like I have died another death, shed another skin, and become something burning-bright and golden. Like sunrays. Like the sunrays that barely make it through the thick weave of branches that seem to block out the entire sky when you walk through the forest of my homeland, and, for a brief, fanciful moment, I find myself thinking that, if I have perished, it will be wonderful to be a warm, bright sunray-

And then I am out of that comfortable brightness; it falls off my shoulders like a veil. I am standing…somewhere incomprehensible.

This world is not golden. It is not painted in brilliant shades of red-orange and pale yellow; the light is not like honey. There are no trees anywhere to be seen, only dark crags of rock, awash with scrappy, dull green grass that browns and dies near the edges. The air does not smell of sweet things and spices – instead, it smells of something utterly unfamiliar, and, as the wind whips against my face, the scent makes my nose burn. I gag, trying to make sense of it, and shake my head.

Nothing prepares me for what I see when I look up.

I have never seen the sky before. At home, the branches in the canopy grow so thick that they block out every last inch of it, though the priestesses have always insisted that it exists above them. I have always heard that it is blue, but it is grey, and it looks…rough, somehow, like there are layers to it. They resemble cotton, sometimes, and smudges at others. I’ve heard, occasionally, of something called a cloud, which brings another something, called rain, which is supposedly when water falls from the sky.

I always suspected that the travelers who told such tales were lying or exaggerating – but, as I stand on the edge of the cliff, staring up at the sky, I’m frighteningly aware that maybe they weren’t, which means that I know even less than I ever expected.

But it’s beautiful, somehow. Not as beautiful as our forest, because nothing ever is, but beautiful nevertheless.

I risk a look down from the sky, to try and find the place where it meets the horizon, and what I see sends me stumbling backwards. It can’t be possible that I’m looking at water. There is never that much water in one place, and water isn’t supposed to be that murky, steel blue color; water is the color of polished sapphires, and always so clear that you can see the bottom, and I can’t see anything at all in…whatever this is meant to be. It stretches out from horizon to horizon, undulating strangely, each bob crested by something white. Whenever a bob tumbles over itself, it makes a sound, so the water sounds like – something. I don’t know how to describe the noise; I’ve never heard anything like it before. It’s almost like wind, if wind had substance to it.

I’ve been the wind before. I know how it feels to be formless, weightless. That…liquid mass is not wind, but it is almost like it, in the way that it moves.

It is my curiosity, mostly, that draws me forward. I stretch out my wings, test the wind, and jump into the air – without the reminder of branches above, flight feels strange. Unnatural, almost, but no more overwhelming than the rest of – this. It’s almost too much, almost everything, and I don’t know where to put the way I’m feeling right now. It won’t fit in my chest.

I circle down – nice and slow – but hover a few inches off the ground where the liquid mass meets…something. It is dense and pale, and it reminds me of grain, but much, much smaller; where it touches the water, it darkens, but further back, towards the coast, it’s so pale that it’s nearly white. I extend one hoof tentatively to touch it, and it pushes down several inches, leaving a little half-moon shape when I jerk it back. It seems…solid, probably, and, even if it isn’t, I can fly. I land slowly, one hoof after another, and, although it shifts awkwardly beneath my hooves in a way that doesn’t feel at all solid, I don’t feel like I’m about to sink into it.

The liquid rushes towards me, then falls back in on itself. I don’t understand why - there were rivers, back home, and streams, and they moved, but not like this. It seems like it is getting closer, somehow; each frothy extension seems to travel a bit further than the last, that white sticky stuff lingering on the grains like a marker. I extend one leg hesitantly, unsure of what the liquid may do to me if I touch it, and tap the very tip of it to the surface.

Nothing happens. Absolutely nothing – and, before I can pull my hoof away again, the liquid bites back, splashing my entire foreleg in it. It seems to cling oddly, as though there is some solid quality, and, when I pull my leg back and rest it in the wind, it feels like there is something gritty caught in my coat.

It only strikes me after I have taken a mouthful of it that it is a very, very foolish thing to do. I don’t even have enough time to curse the impulse before my mouth is flooded with a reprehensible taste; I manage to spit out some of it, but some of it is sucked down my throat, and it makes me want to vomit. I choke, trying to cough it up, and fall back several steps, my wings flaring out to keep my balance. My mouth feels raw, and there is this horrible, stinging sensation in my nose.

I bury my hooves in the grainy substance, eyeing that gnawing liquid skeptically. Disgusting, absolutely disgusting – but I don’t feel ill, beyond a nauseating aftertaste, so hopefully it isn’t anything dangerous. I shake my head, looking up and ahead and down the shore each way.

The landscape looks repetitive, somehow, in its foreignness - and it occurs, abruptly, to me that I know nothing about this place or its people, and I have absolutely no idea where to go.

---

@open! || hi, this is nic, and she knows absolutely nothing about anything in spite of living like fifty lives before this. || gregory orr, "once the two of us"

"Speech!" 

@

[Apolonia]

summer is past, and we are not saved

When O leaves the cliffs—sparking bright with the orange flames of bonfires eating at the air, packed with the warm bodies of the festivalgoers; the air up there heavy with the smell of smoke as all these mortals’ worries, written down on carefully torn papers, are eaten up by fire—it is not quite dark yet. 

Instead, the sun is still smiling from the horizon in a thin sliver of god-teeth. What light does seep over the churning ocean is weak hues of yellow and orange, or rosy like the skin of a ripe peach; it is barely enough to illuminate the sheer steps cut into the cliff that O traverses down to the beach, slick with mist and too steep to do more than crawl down. (It requires more patience than she was born with, and the fact that she is willing to climb them to see Andi is something of a compliment in and of itself). Off the sea comes a bright-white wind made sharp with salt; and the sky above is a colorless kind of dove gray, mottled in some places with the thin cotton clouds, and in others left smooth as a stone from the bottom of the river. 

It is a kind of peaceful drollness that almost never resides in the desert. And despite the subtle ache in her chest and the insistent whisper of Tuchulcha to go home, go home, go home—when O glances down and sees the gray beach so far below unfurled like a scroll, the gray sky so far above resting over everything like a blanket, something in her is soothed by its infinite repetition: different visions of smoke, fanning out in every direction.

But there is a spot down below where that repetition is interrupted. O realizes it with a start when she is halfway down to the copse of sand, still perched on the narrow staircase like a bird, and even that mild jolt of surprise is enough to send her uncomfortably close to slipping on the salt-stained rock. 

There is someone already down there.

She pauses her descent. For a moment, too, she debates turning (carefully) around and heading back up to wait for Andi on the safer part of the cliffside. It might be easier to find me there, anyway, is the attempt O makes to justify her dread at finishing the climb. But she knows it is not true; the emissary had specifically requested they meet down there, on that crescent moon of white sand. And she’s come this far. Giving up here would be weak. O is not weak.

I will be anything, she thinks, but weak. So the girl—woman, now, almost—ducks her head closer to her chest, turning away from the soft nip of the wind as it pushes her against the cliffside, and slowly, carefully, continues her descent.

By the time she steps off the staircase the sun has disappeared almost completely, and a new family of frothy white clouds has formed across the length of the sky. Her limbs are stiffer than she expected them to be, and she hits the ground with more weight than she means to, spraying up a small shower of white sand around each hoof. The air down here bites harder than it did a hundred feet up. Thinking with envy of how warm it might be at home, O can't help shivering as the breeze washes over her; it tousles her dark hair into a salt-toothed knot, pushes her hackles to rise like a wolf's. Tuchulcha's metal arm against her skin is bitterly cold, and briefly she wonders if it might leave a freeze brand against the dusty gold of her skin. (Not that anyone would see it: the holster has not left her side since she picked it up that day at the oasis. Years ago, now.)

Too distracted by picking her way down the cliffside, she has missed the spectacle made of drinking seawater. So the only thing that crosses her mind when she glances over this stranger is that the girl looks young—young, and lost, and magical; two wide wings pressed against her side, significantly taller than O is but not intimidating in the least, perhaps because of how obviously out of place she is. 

O has heard stories of girls falling out of wounds in the sky, or falling up from holes cut into the earth, unconcerned by the rules of gravity. She knows there are not only other lands but other worlds, and that Novus has a penchant for collecting these travelers, whether that is by chance or fate or the will of the gods, and that this girl—as unique as she is or isn't—is not the first to arrive here on accident and certainly will not be the last.

The Solterran clears her throat, and says in a voice that straddles the line between cold and skeptical: "Unless it's death, whatever you're looking for probably isn't in the middle of the ocean."

"Speaking."

[Nicnevin]

SHE’S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

Blessing of blessings. Fate must be smiling down on me, because I am found quickly.

I am studying the shoreline, wishing that I could wipe that horrible taste from my mouth. It doesn’t burn, but the taste lingers, and it’s nearly stale on my tongue. I thought that the ceremonial wine that the priestesses serve in the temple during rituals was the most disgusting drink in the world, designed to quell your appetite, but I think that this might be worse. The ceremonial wine didn’t sting, and it smelled nice. This smells…

I don’t know how to describe it. Sharp, maybe.

I didn’t have wings in many of my lifetimes, and, even when I did, I was always constrained in where they could take me. It strikes me that, if I fly up, I will be able to get a better view of the landscape – and, if there is anywhere civilized nearby, I might be able to pick it out from above. I’m not sure what I want to, though. The cliffs are jagged and slick, like wolf’s teeth, and the wind is strong. I managed to glide down to the shore without much trouble, but that was just gliding, and I was still buffeted by the wind. I glance up, biting down a grimace. It’s not as though I can’t fly. I’ve always been rather good at it, in fact – but the forest prioritized agility, the ability to swiftly dodge trees, not this.

It’s probably not worth worrying over. I’m sure that I can handle it, and I need to get back up the cliffs anyways-

There is someone else on the beach – approaching me.

It occurs to me in rapid succession that there must be stairs on the cliff-side, for her to have gotten down without wings, and I probably should have noticed them earlier, and that she might have seen me attempt to drink that foul liquid. (I certainly hope that she didn’t; the humiliation, I’m sure, would be nauseating.) She carries a hurlbat, which does not worry me so much as it makes me intimately aware that I stumbled into this new world unarmed. I should have asked the priestesses for a weapon, at least. A spear, or a sword, or a bow – anything would have been better than relying on this still-youthful body. It would have been excusable if I’d had a spiraling horn, as I did last time, which was a weapon in itself, but the coiling horns on my skull are not well-equipped for any kind of combat.

I haven’t met many foreigners, and, when I have, I primarily met them on the battlefield. (I wonder what her accent will be like, and if she’s a native to this land; I hope so.) We aren’t on the battlefield, and she probably could have snuck up on me if she were looking for trouble, so I watch her with something like nervous anticipation, trying to keep the chestnut tangles of my hair out of my eyes. (In the tumultuous influence of the wind, it’s a feat.) When I get a better look at her, I decide that she can’t be much older than I am, in this lifetime; a year or two at most.

Unless it’s death, whatever you’re looking for probably isn’t in the middle of the ocean. Her accent is – unfamiliar. I knew to expect it, but somehow it still feels strange; her voice doesn’t seem like it should be a voice to me. I tell myself to just be grateful that we speak the same language. It’s too much to expect anything familiar, here.

“The…oh-shin?” I repeat, hoping that I adhered to her pronunciation correctly. I incline my head, slightly, towards the liquid thing lapping up the shoreline – I assume that she is referring to it. “That?” Is it deadly? I hope not, or, if it is, I certainly hope that it isn’t poisonous, at least in small quantities. I’ve died before, and, while I’m not particularly afraid of dying again, I don’t want to die before I find the heir; I swore an oath in blood to the priestesses, and my honor would never permit me to be an oathbreaker.

If I die, it should be an honorable death: not the result of impulsively sipping some unknown substance.

(I must admit – being young again is horribly frustrating.)

---

@open! || sorry O for the fact that she....knows Nothing 

"Speech!" 

@

[Apolonia]

summer is past, and we are not saved

The girl’s eyes show their whites like a frightened prey animal. Her hair is tossed into a frenzied chestnut tangle by the wind, and her mouth has been pulled into a nearly comical expression of surprise. She looks wild, in a way O only recognizes from watching fights in the colosseum: it’s the expression of someone who expects to be injured, if not killed, but is less afraid of the pain than they are of the surprise. 

That, at least, is admirable. This girl must know; the act of dying is rarely worse than the shock of it. For a moment they stand there, in the cold gray wind, worked over by the sting of salt, and stare at each other, and O commits the look of her to memory. Bright-eyed. Wild-haired. Her dark skin flecked by gold. The impression of a leaf, fancifully detailed with veins all through it, like real flesh, is baked into her forehead like a pawprint into mud, shining with the kind of bright-yellow light that only comes from something divine. 

The question, then, is what. Solis certainly doesn't give out markings like that.

O licks her teeth. She pushes back the urge to let the hurlbat hang in her grasp, as it usually does upon meeting strangers. Instead she is careful not to move it from its holster at all, despite Tuchulcha’s hiss in her ear to be careful, be careful, be careful. It hardly seems like this girl will be a threat. And even if O’s instincts are steering her wrong (has that ever happened?), she has all the advantages of being a native and a soldier. 

Some part of her even dares to hope that, should anything open, Andi might rise from the sea and protect her. How pathetic a thought. How terribly romantic.

The Solterran shakes her head, dislodging the thought. She stands stoic in wait of a response. But when it comes, it throws her off guard. This girl repeats, in a voice that doesn’t quite stutter but does pause in places, like she doesn’t know what she’s saying, or how to do it properly: The… ocean?

For a moment, O wonders if she’s being played.

Even the kids she grew up with—Solterran natives who might never need to leave the desert, and had certainly never actually done so at the time they knew each other—had heard stories of the ocean. If nothing else, they’d have seen it in paintings or woven into tapestries. Each of the courts, too, have their own beach: it is nearly impossible for her to imagine that there is anyone at all who doesn’t know what the ocean is. (Perhaps it is better, then, that she doesn’t know of Nicnevin’s thoughts on the sky. That would almost be too much.)  On the other hand—why lie about it? There's nothing to gain from acting dumb, at least not here and now.

Briefly O’s face scrunches up in thought, and she searches the girl’s expression for a sign of dishonesty. But there are none, and she cannot decide whether or not that is surprising. There is some part of her that expected this all to be a prank or a lie, and another part of her that is bone-achingly glad it isn’t. Life has been a chore recently. To meet someone from a different world feels like a swift kick, an omen, a god smiling down from above to say—here you go, girl. 

You will never run out of things to learn.

O clears her throat. Her expression is unusually eager when she raises her mismatched eyes to meet the stranger’s; and when she realizes the girl’s are mismatched too—one red, one gold—she half-smiles at all the ways they seem to mirror each other. Then O answers: "Yeah. The ocean." And this time she draws the word out slowly, trying to clear it of the sharp clip of her Solterran accent to let it sing more clearly through the air. "Have you never seen it? Or—heard of it?"

"Speaking."

[Nicnevin]

SHE’S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

When I don’t know what an oh-shin is, she looks at me with a particular curiosity – like you might look at a rare species of bird, or something that’s not quite supposed to be where it is. (I suppose that I am rather out-of-place, here.) This is the first good look I’ve gotten at her face; her eyes are mismatched, like mine, but different colors. They’re young, in some way, too, somehow, even though she’s physically older than me. The priestesses say that outsiders rarely remember their previous lives, so they usually seem younger when they are young, like new souls. I notice, too, that she is dangerous. It’s not just the hurlbat she carries; I didn’t pay too much attention to the look of her, when she came walking up, altogether too elated by the presence of another person to care, but she’s built strong, and she carries herself with a certain confidence.

I’m taller than she is already, and armed with horns, but I doubt I’d stand much of a chance against her if it came to a fight. But it doesn’t seem like it’s going to. She’s smiling at me, halfway, with a gleam in her eyes that I don’t quite recognize. I smile back – it’s a little bit uncertain, a little bit wobbly around the edges, but certainly not forced.

“Yeah. The ocean.” She draws it out very carefully; she’s noticed, I’m sure, that I don’t really understand what I’m talking about. Her accent sounds to me like those little bobs in the liquid – it rises and falls, nearly melodic.

“The…ocean?” I repeat, carefully, just to make sure I’m getting it right.

“Have you never seen it? Or – heard of it?” She says it like it’s a very strange thing that I’ve never heard of the ocean. I wonder if it is; I wonder if oceans are common knowledge to people in this land, unlike in my own. I shake my head, which sends chestnut strands of my mane fluttering back into my eyes. (I give up on actually keeping them out of my face. In this wind, the effort is totally futile.)

“No, never – my homeland is a great forest, and I've never left it, before today.” Not in any of my lifetimes. Perhaps it is a strange coincidence; most theorists believe that it must be possible for souls within the forest to be reborn outside of the forest, else we wouldn’t have space for them all. (I am not so sure, but, then, I have been the ephemeral wind and morning dew, and I knew that I was not alone when I was them.) But – souls are everywhere, and death and life are everywhere, and so must be rebirth, even for outsiders, though I have been told that it is much more difficult for them to remember their previous lifetimes. It is only the natural way of things.

I watch her thoughtfully, wondering if it is really so strange to have never heard of an ocean before. “We almost never allow travelers into the forest,” I add, by way of an explanation, “and we very rarely leave.” When I consider it, I am not so sure that anyone who has left the forest has ever come back to us – a thought that is troubling, considering my present circumstances. But those travelers, I tell myself, did not leave intending to come home. (I do not know that for sure. I have never met any of them, in any of my lives.)

Besides. The fate of my people lies on my shoulders – if I do not find the heir, I am not sure what will happen, but I am sure that it will be troublesome. Worst comes to worst, a struggle for the throne could ensue. We have enough trouble from outsiders; internal conflict would put the forest in horrible danger.

“What…is the ocean? What is it made of?” I look back at the grey liquid suspiciously, the memory of its awful taste reemerging from the spot in the back of my head where I’d carefully buried it.

---

@Apolonia || <3 

"Speech!" 

@

[Apolonia]

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.

"Speaking."

[Nicnevin]

SHE’S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

When I try to say ocean again, she smiles – quickly – and nods, and I feel a broad grin grow across my lips. The little flush of pride that burns up in my chest is probably overstated, and I should probably feel embarrassed about it, but I don’t – I don’t, because I tell myself that I have learned something (maybe several somethings), and the priestesses say that you should value learning anything, no matter what it is, no matter what you are when you discover it. It is the greatest task of life – of all your lives – to try to understand.

That is why, they say, we are born again as many different things, living or otherwise. How can you inhabit this world without understanding it? I thought it was simple, in my first life. (I was disciplined, dogmatic – driven to a fault. I could not see outside of what I wanted to.) Every subsequent one has proven me wrong, time and time again; I have learned to enjoy it, not fight it.

Your homeland- your homeland sounds so- different, she says, and I feel my head dip in the barest semblance of a nod. I agree – and I’m not sure that there’s anything else to add to it. There are some differences so broad that they evade comparison, some gaps so wide that they are insurmountable. Trying to describe my homeland, much less compare it to this place, is impossible. (My homeland is beautiful, so beautiful – but I know exactly enough about outsiders to assume that some of them would find it horrific.) But this place is alien. I was sure that the priestesses only transported me some distance away, but it doesn’t feel as though I am on the same world any longer.

She speaks of forests, then, though ones that she says might be smaller than my own. (I am so caught up in elation at seeing forests, other forests, natural forests – that I barely notice.) I stumble into a request before I can think about it. I wouldn’t normally, I’m sure; it wouldn’t be proper to make one of a perfect stranger, no matter how endearingly friendly this one appears to be. And – there is still that knight-voice in the back of my head, open-mouthed, persistent, all but yelling at me to be cautious, reminding me of the forest. Reminding me of my blood on the tip of an outsider’s spear; my body burnt until it is lifeless in an outsider’s fire. (I cannot tell I am a strangling vine wound around a tree or a woman in that one; I think they set me ablaze in both lifetimes, and, although I am sure that the smoke smelled different in both, and though I am sure that it felt different both times, the memories blend together in an ugly, muted haze. Even when I am eyeless. Even when I cannot truly feel the heat.)

Regardless – the words pop out of my mouth, however ill-advised. “Really? There are? I’d love to see them…could you- could you show me?” The words are out of my mouth for the briefest moment before I remember my manners; they are normally immaculate, and, if I could color from it, I’m sure that I would. (I feel a rush of heat regardless.) “Please?”

I shouldn’t be following strangers, probably, or trying to - but everyone is a stranger to me now. I still can’t wrap my head around it; I am trying not to think about it.

She tells me, then, that the ocean is made of saltwater. I wrinkle my nose, rather unable to wrap my head around the concept; that burning, biting sensation was salt, then? It didn’t taste like any salt I’d ever tasted before. “Salt…water?” I repeat, not quite sure what to make of the concept “Why…shouldn’t you drink it?”

I try to sound inconspicuous. Merely curious. Surely, there were no nasty side effects to speak of with something that sounded so innocent, even if it tasted foul – surely.

---

@Apolonia || <3 || gregory orr, "once the two of us"

"Speech!" 

@

[Apolonia]

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.

"Speaking."

[Nicnevin]

SHE’S A WATERFALL PLUNGING OVER THE LIP OF A CLIFF:
white foam shattering on the rocks below.

The stranger assures me that saltwater is not dangerous (in small quantities, anyways); it only tastes bad. I have to swallow a sigh of relief before I reveal my folly. If I haven’t already, then surely the gesture would make it abundantly clear that I’d had a taste of it, well before I ever knew (or understood) what it is.

“Oh,” I say, reassured – albeit entirely unwilling to admit to it. (That would just be shameful. I’m an adult, technically, and I should know better.) If she suspects that I’ve already drunk saltwater or has any prevailing theories about my concern, they aren’t evident on her face or in her tone, and so I just nod my understanding. Most things can make you sick, in large enough quantities…but at least the saltwater was just disgusting, and I spat most of it out besides.

She agrees to my request to show me the forest, but she adds that it is a bit of a walk. In the back of my mind, I know that it is no mark of wisdom to follow a perfect stranger anywhere, but I decide, although I know better, that I trust her. (The knight that I used to be advises against trusting outsiders, but I disregard her opinion.) I don’t have time to think about it for long, because she mentions warming ourselves up at a festival, and all my caution dissipates immediately at the prospect of a festival.

“Thank you!” I chirp, and then immediately add, “There’s a festival going on?” Oh, I have so many questions about it. We had festivals at home, but I don’t know much of anything about how or why outsiders celebrate. (For a moment, I recall sweet wines and apple ciders, sugary pastries dripping honey and syrup, firefly-filled lanterns strung from the lower branches of ancient trees, the ones near enough to the ground and sparse enough to be easily accessible. For a moment, I recall a low haze of gold, and singing, and string and woodwind instruments, and the dancing. I was good at it in my first life, but not my second, and I have yet to decide if this body is well-suited for it or not. She is lanky now, still somewhat clumsy, but perhaps she will grow into it.) Oh, I have questions upon questions upon questions, but I can save them for the walk to the forest and through the festival. Which forest? Why are they celebrating? What is the celebration like? How do they celebrate?

There will be time for all of those questions, I’m sure – it’s only a matter of asking them. (Hopefully she will not lose her patience with my ignorance.)

There is light in the distance, a dull glow against the clouds. I follow her gaze to it, and I think, oh yes, that must be it; and the soft gold of it nearly reminds me, for a moment, of home, and I can’t help but wonder if – when – I will ever go back.

(It probably isn’t worth considering. I’ve only just arrived.)

She is off walking, and, before I actually follow her, she turns and tells me that her name is O. “O,” I repeat – a single syllable, or maybe a single letter. It’s not what I’d expect from a name, but maybe outsiders have different conventions from us. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Nicnevin.” I mean every word of it.

And then – I scamper forward to follow her as she picks her way towards the cliffs, a splash of autumn leaves against the bone-white of the shore.

---

@Apolonia || aaaand done <3 || gregory orr, "once the two of us"

"Speech!" 

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