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The late morning sun lent a gentle warmth to Calla’s skin, but the crisp breeze rippling through the lengths of her hair seemed to herald the changing season. Fall was coming, and with it, the retreat of each vine and shrub in the garden that surrounded her. For now, it bloomed as lush as if its time was eternal. But amidst this vibrant greenery, the garden still showed signs of the coming, inevitable change. Leaves and petals drifted past, twirling down as they were borne on the wind.
“Calla!”
She turned towards the voice that interrupted her thoughts, almost chastising herself for how naturally that came to her. Thousands of years ago might as well have been just yesterday, when she couldn’t help but be drawn in by the gravity of a being who made her feel like she could cradle the stars in the palm of her hand. Deitasterra, the Dark Lord, had Calla’s heart from the moment she first saw her as a child.
But this voice, this face, the plain humanity of the teenage girl crossing the garden to her— this shouldn’t have felt so familiar to Calla.
The sparkling, twilight-colored eyes that met her own always made her forget that fact.
The girl called herself Lapis. Calla wondered sometimes (especially during the administrative drudgery required by her assumed role as a professor) why a human name, a mortal vessel, were even necessary. She would never doubt Deitasterra, but it confused her; an eternal being, a force of nature, limiting herself. Limiting herself to be but a piece of herself.
Deitasterra, the very divinity of night, now present before her in the guise of an unassuming sixteen-year-old girl. A facade that would fall away soon enough, Calla had once assumed. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
The girl’s voice was pitched high with… nervousness? Concern? Calla couldn’t tell. “Where have you been?” Her breaths were heavy with exertion. Had she run after her?
“I had some business to attend to,” Calla replied, shaking off her idle musing.
“What was it?”
“...The weather’s gotten chilly. Fall must be coming.” The abrupt change of subject wasn’t subtle, but Calla didn’t want to needlessly worry the girl any more than she must have already been. The tournament loomed heavily over her, if her frantic exchanges with her friends were any indication. Besides which, Calla was in little mood to talk.
Still, Calla could never resist Lapi— her master, for long. She chuckled ruefully. “Well, I gave Astrad an earful…about sending you to the competition,” she clarified. “Though Dmitriy had already chewed him out so much that there was not much for me to say.”
Lapis’ shoulders relaxed near imperceptibly. “I was also surprised that I ended up participating…” Her voice trailed off before something suddenly reanimated her. “Oh, and Professor Astrad really resembles Zephyros! Though Hugo said he’s not so sure…”
Calla raised her eyebrows slightly at Lapis’ sudden outburst. That was…certainly one way to get her attention. Just what was the girl trying to do? Nonetheless, she humored her. After a thousand years alone with her desperate thoughts and self-loathing, she rarely let herself indulge in memories of an evergreen idyll long past. But the image of Zephyros, laughing in the sunlight, came to her almost unbidden. A half-smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Is it because he’s blonde and smiles a lot?” The obvious answer. Calla hesitated a moment before continuing. “But he resembles her a lot more on the inside.” Astrad, bless his heart, was probably the first person in a millennium whose sheer sunniness could crack Dmitriy’s ingrained curmudgeonly habits. She had seen how Dmitriy softened around him, his acid tongue not quite so biting, and his haughtiness morphed into a (still uptight) fussiness and genuine concern. Not since Zephyros had she seen Dmitriy like that. With centuries spent in the aftermath of the War of Subjugation, it was a wonder to Calla that anyone could sidestep Dmitriy’s walls the way Astrad so nonchalantly did.
But Lapis couldn’t have known any of that. Her brow furrowed as she considered Calla’s words. “Like his soul?” she asked with a painfully endearing naivete.
Something in Calla’s chest twinged. At what, she didn’t know. “That’s also a different matter,” she said softly. The mystery of the Followers, and what happened to Zephyros, still weighed heavily on her mind.
The wind blew again, ruffling Lapis’ cape and the skirt of her overcoat. A few strands of silvery-blonde hair were pulled loose from her face, flickering like filigree in the sunlight. But Calla noticed that Lapis herself was standing very still. “Aren’t you cold?” Calla said idly to the girl now stopped in front of her.
She didn’t expect much from such a question. She was surprised when the clumsily eager, exuberant girl that she had gotten to know remained silent. Instead, the girl was staring at her, eyes wide with a subtle intensity that Calla couldn’t place.
Calla was struck with an uncharacteristic self-consciousness. “What’s the matter?” she asked evenly, despite her uncertainty. Had she said something to offend the girl?
Lapis started suddenly, struggling to find her words before she managed to squeak out, “Oh, it’s nothing…That dress just looks good on you!” She forced a flustered smile, cheeks flushed a soft pink.
The girl looked lovely, Calla thought, before suddenly registering what Lapis had said. “Does it?” Calla asked. She had picked out an outfit that suited her mood, the velvety dark green being a softer, welcome respite from the elegant but stark regalia that her role, once as a general and now as a professor, usually entailed. Against the vibrant red of her hair, the green dress made her look and feel young in a way that years of war, then centuries of isolation, had somehow not completely stolen from her. Her time in a torturous stasis aside, she would’ve still been in her twenties, forced to lead a war when she was not much older than the girl in front of her now was.
All that to say, she had no clue what counted for fashion in this day and age. And incredulously, even in this damnable kingdom, she wanted to know.
So, was her dress considered fashionable?
Calla waited expectantly for Lapis to elaborate. The younger girl also seemed to be waiting for something, her bright, bashful smile slowly giving way to a sigh. Her shoulders slumped as she turned away from Calla and back toward the palace wing.
Oh. Calla’s eyes softened with understanding as she laughed lightly to herself. Didn’t the girl know she was beautiful? The quiet boy who often comforted Lapis certainly looked longingly at her like a lost puppy when Lapis wasn’t looking. Even that holy knight descended from Arverna held Lapis with a beseeching regard unusual for how withdrawn he was from the rest of Area Academy. Her stomach clenched as she remembered that Lapis had intended to dance with him at the now-foregone ball. At that, her better judgment left her.
Calla reached out to the now-retreating girl, gently turning her face back to her gaze. She was suddenly, acutely, painfully aware of just whose face she was seeking in that moment.
The soft curve of that face, the searching depths of those eyes, were uniquely hers.
“Those clothes certainly suit Lapis,” Calla breathed out, almost to herself. Her fingers brushed lightly against Lapis’ face as she laid a gentle kiss upon her cheek. Stepping back, she felt a soft thrill of pleasure seeing Lapis’ now dazed, flushed face.
She knew, then, that she was playing with fire.
In that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Her mood turned somber as she remembered their current situation. But even that couldn’t hide her quiet affection for the girl gazing back at her, breathless and uncertain and so beautifully human.
Calla’s eyebrows furrowed slightly as she regarded Lapis. “I wish I could pray for your victory,” … whose victory? “—but since everyone’s eyes will be on you, please try not to stand out too much.”
Calla had witnessed Lapis’ sheer optimism and will push her to grow in leaps and bounds. Even just a few months ago, she would have taken it for granted that Lapis’ ability wouldn’t exceed the expectations held for a typical apprentice knight. But the girl who had once clumsily raised a dagger over her back (yes, she was aware of that), and who had recklessly jabbed a broken sword into a dark beast’s mouth while protecting her, was coming into her own. Lapis had grown strong; strong enough, certainly, to raise unwanted questions if she performed too well in the tournament. That warranted caution. Calla knew that Lapis would grow stronger still.
It was only a matter of time until she would be strong enough to absorb every piece of Deitasterra’s shattered heart.
…And what, then?
Calla wanted to see Lapis shine her light upon a broken world; she wanted the world to behold Deitasterra in all her glory, come heaven or hell.
She no longer knew which one she would come to believe.