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“What’s going on?” Lavinia rubbed her eyes.
Poison Oak tapped her shoulder again, “Come on, wake up.”
“Urgh,” she rolled over and pushed herself up from her mattress. “Why?”
“You’ll watch to see this.”
Lavinia would have rathered rolling over and falling asleep for at least two more hours, but she was a good girlfriend. So she got up. With minimal complaining and bad noises.
“How did you get in anyway?” she asked as they snuck out of the Fifth Cohort’s barracks.
“Your security sucks,” she put an arm around her shoulder, though there was still the layer of Lavinia’s sleeping top between them, which would stop her from breaking out in a rash, at least for the time being… Going to the baths had been a little embarrassing lately, but whatever. Still worth it.
“No it doesn’t,” she paused. “Actually yeah, it kinda does. I’ll see about getting the watch updated. We need to fill out the rota better.”
Poison Oak stopped her from tripping up no less than five times as they walked in the dark blue pre-dawn, catching her hands so that she wouldn’t eat shit on the path and have to show up to command at morning muster with a broken nose.
“Where are we going?” she asked eventually when they turned a corner away from the picnic area, where she’d thought they would have been going since… well they usually went in that direction.
“Red baneberry showed me this spot yesterday. She says the sunrises are,” she held her fingers in a chef’s kiss position, “Exquisite.”
“Oh right! So you’re not murder/kidnapping me. This is a date thing,” Lavinia laughed. “I never thought you were doing those things, for the record.”
Poison Oak gave her a strange look, “Of course it’s a date thing. I would be way more competent at murdering you.”
“Of course.”
“I would!”
“I’m not disagreeing with you.”
She snorted as if she found this unlikely, but they’d reached the top of the trail, of a hill above New Rome and Camp Jupiter. She could distantly hear the honking and whizzing of accelerating vehicles at the mortal side of the Caldecott Tunnel, people on very early commutes, and tried not to yawn.
Poison Oak patted the ground next to her, and she could see the sun peeking up from the eastern horizon already, lighting up the sky in a soft gold first, then blossoming out into soft pinks and reds. “Hi Aurora,” Poison Oak waved over, and for a second, Lavinia thought it brightened in a kind of wink.
“Hi Apollo, hi Aurora,” she waved at it too, and the sky did it again.
Poison Oak made a noise at the back of her throat, “We met at this party a couple of years ago,” she was slightly green-cheeked, but that might have just been the light coming up against the sky. Lavinia reached up with the back of her fingers and pressed them against her cheek, and it was unusually warm.
“What, did you guys go out or something?”
“A couple of times,” she said. “But we decided to just be friends,” she reached over and tangled her fingers in Lavinia’s hair, and she followed her hand until she was lying on Poison Oak’s lap. “Couldn’t decide on what we wanted to do next together.”
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrow, “Is that a dealbreaker for you?”
“Not really, but,” she sighed. “No chemistry, maybe. Lovely goddess, but once you’ve made out for six hours on average for three days and realised you have nothing else in common, it's easier to break things off.”
“You made out with the goddess of dawn for eighteen hours?” She raised her hand, and Poison Oak only slightly reluctantly high fived her. “ Legend . Was it fun?”
“It wasn’t bad?”
Lavinia looked over at the pink sky, which seemed a little less vibrant than it had before. “My girlfriend is awesome, Aurora, right?”
It brightened up again.
They watched the sun come further and further up into the sky - Lavinia briefly wondered about how raising the chariot worked with time zones, and then realised that that was a whole can of worms she didn’t care about enough - and then Poison Oak spoke again, “You’re doing your exams soon, right?”
The Legion didn’t have a ‘school’ as much, but for any demigod who wanted to go out into the mortal world, they needed some kind of qualification, especially if they weren’t going to New Rome University. Lavinia had never really been one for school, but she wanted the bit of paper at least, especially when the Legion was footing the bill.
“Yeah,” she made a noise like a beached whale. “I hate studying. I can’t wait for this whole ordeal to be over. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it though.”
“College?” Her girlfriend suggested.
Lavinia snorted, “Fat chance. I’m finishing school, but that is it, I swear to the gods.”
“Dance school?”
“Maybe. I’d have to look into it.”
“Broadway?”
She sighed, “Not so far away. That’s nearly three thousand miles,” she interlinked their fingers.
She knew Poison Oak was rolling her eyes even though she wasn’t looking at her face, “That’s saccharine.”
“So?”
She kissed the top of her head, “Fair enough.”
“I’ve got time,” Lavinia shifted around so she could peck her on the mouth. “I have years left in the Legion before I have to make a decision about anything. I mean, I’m not going to stay there when I’m like… I don’t know, thirty? But it’s a ten year minimum, not a maximum. We have time, Poison Oak.”
“Still saccharine.”
“What are you going to do? How's the replanting going?”
She shifted her head side to side, her viney hair moving independently up and down, “I’m- its slow going. We’re not in drought anymore, which is good, but for all the trees that were lost, it could take decades to regain back to where we were.”
The sun was fully up now, and down at the side of Camp Jupiter, she could see legionnaires getting up. going for early morning jogs or the arena for training. “I’ll be there,” she said, looking away from them and back at Poison Oak. “I’ll help.”