Born in Beauty

by Melody Rose

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Ansel said playfully.

  “Uh…” I stalled. The last thing I wanted to do was be honest about what I was really thinking about. “Just nervous… for uh… the draft, you know.”

  My voice came out lame and juvenile, like I was complaining about an upcoming test. It hurt even my own ears to hear the whine. I did what I could not to scold myself too much, but it was Ansel’s words that helped the most.

  “You’ll get drafted,” he said with a surprising amount of confidence.

  “You want to tell me how you know that?” I said with a smirk.

  Ansel was the Fotia branch leader on campus, after all. He must have some hand in the draft picks.

  As if he could read my thoughts, Ansel said, “Just a gut feeling.”

  “Is this one of those kinds of things where you can’t tell me, but you’re really telling me something important?” I asked, bouncing my eyebrows knowingly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ansel said as his eyebrows knotted together in confusion. “But if you think I have any say in the draft picks, you should know that I don’t.”

  “What?” I balked. “I would have thought for sure you did.”

  “All the Olympian Officials decide,” Ansel said, miserably failing at hiding the bitterness in his voice. “The three heads of each branch meet and evaluate all of the second years.”

  “Right,” I said with a slow nod of my head.

  Just then, Khryseos and Argyreos bounded up to me. The pair brought an instant smile to my face. However, a slight panic struck me when I reached down to pet each of them. If I didn’t get drafted, I had no idea if I would get to keep my dogs. I wouldn’t remember them or where they came from or who they came from. These two had been such a huge influence in my life, even just over the past year.

  My hands slowed as I stroked their heads. Ansel must have noticed the change in my demeanor because he bent down next to me, putting one hand over mine.

  It was such an intimate gesture, a dangerous one considering where we were. My eyes swiveled around, searching for anyone who might see us. We were alone on this end of campus, which made sense, considering that everyone was heading for the opening ceremony. However, there were the possibilities of someone walking by, popping out from behind a tree, or traipsing around using some invisibility power. Ansel was taking a huge risk by touching me in this manner. I nearly pulled away, but he held onto me tighter.

  His deep green eyes bored into my blue ones. He stroked my knuckles with his thumb and pulled it off Khryseos’s head. Now Ansel held it, independent of anything else, with such a tenderness that made my heart race. His expression was so serious and serious that I felt as though I couldn’t look away, even if I tried.

  “Cheyenne,” Ansel whispered my name. “You will get drafted. You won’t forget this. Us. Or anything. I promise.”

  His conviction was clear from the tone in his voice. It shook me and eradicated all of the nerves. My muscles relaxed, and the tension defused from me. While Ansel sometimes made my mind go blank, right now, he made the world dissolve away. I wanted to stay in this bubble with him and avoid the opening ceremony a little longer. I felt like I could stay here for the rest of the school year.

  Sitting on the ground like we were, our knees were touching. The air was warm, breezy on a summer night. Twilight colors streaked across the sky as the sun began its descent beyond the horizon. The environment was idyllic, romantic even. It would be so easy to just lean in and kiss him…

  A single, solid bark smashed through the moment like a battering ram. Ansel and I snapped towards the dogs. They sat together, identical statues on the edge of the path that led to the quad. The pair of them stared at me directly with expectant glares.

  “Really, girl?” they seemed to say.

  Argyreos cocked his head to one side as if to say, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You know better,” Khryseos replied as he licked his nose.

  I rolled my lips over my teeth. In one fluid motion, both Ansel and I peeled away from each other and rose to our feet. I rubbed my palms on my thighs and followed after my dogs with a sharp inhale.

  I heard Ansel’s footsteps behind me as I made my way over to the dogs. I walked in between the pair of them, both of their heads following me as I went. Khryseos and Argyreos looked up, never deviating from their scolding gazes. I knew I was probably projecting their emotions onto them, but it still unnerved me.

  I couldn’t get too comfortable with Ansel. If I was worried about losing my memories of not getting drafted, being with an officer was a one-way ticket out of the Academy. It was a known rule that students couldn’t be romantically involved with any upper ranking officials. Other students could be with each other, but it was not recommended. Officials found romantic relationships to be distracting from students’ studies and classes.

  But we were mainly twenty-somethings in a college-like atmosphere. It was only natural for some relationships to pop up.

  If I wanted to get drafted and focus on my fighting skills, the last thing I needed to do was get involved with anyone. Let alone an officer.

  Like a gate slamming shut, I made up my mind. I spun on my heel and drew in a breath to address Ansel head-on. He seemed surprised when I turned on him so abruptly. I crossed my arms across my chest, protecting myself from the potential blowback.

  “We can’t do this,” I said abruptly. I made my voice hard and firm. I spoke to him as much as I spoke to myself. “We just can’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ansel blinked back at me, confused.

  “Don’t,” I said as I held up a single finger. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. This.” I moved my finger back and forth between the two of us.

  “Oh,” he said, his face falling like a dejected dog. “I know you’re right.”

  “Hell yeah, I’m right,” I said, finding my courage as I spoke the words. “You want to get off this campus and into the field. I want to get drafted and make the Ultimate Weapon. We can’t do any of that if we succumb to… whatever this is.”

  “But you feel it too, right?” Ansel said. He took a step forward, and I found myself staying right where I was, letting him shorten the gap between us.

  I returned my arms to their crossed position and groaned. I bit my lip and looked up at the sky. It was a pastel rainbow of colors, inspiring nothing inside me despite its beauty. I wanted the clouds to spell out my answer, tell me how I was feeling.

  “I mean…” I stalled, “I kissed you first remember.”

  “I remember,” Ansel said, unable to stop the corner of his mouth from rising up into a smile.

  My lips curved into their own smile as I thought back to our first kiss. It was passionate and heated, not just because Ansel was literally on fire.

  “So yeah, there’s something there,” I admitted, “but we can’t leave it there. It’s not worth the risk.”

  It took only seconds, but I saw the moment Ansel made up his mind. His eyes went cold as the wall shot up around him. It was the final separation between him and me. While it was something I knew had to happen, something I had asked for, it still didn’t ease the ache in my heart that came with the sight. I thought I saw a flash of hurt right before the wall came up, but maybe I was just trying to make myself feel better.

  Ansel the soldier was back, putting up the barrier between the two of us.

  “I understand,” Ansel said, his voice flat. “I think that we shouldn’t walk into the mess hall together.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I said as my gaze fell on the start of the cobblestone path beneath my feet.

  It was too hard to look at him. Too hard to acknowledge the possibilities between us. We were closing this door, taking another path. It might have been right, but it was far from easy.

  I felt him as Ansel walked past me. There was a moment, brief and tender, when he paused next to me. We were side by side, each looking in d
ifferent directions, him towards the direction of the quad and me into the fields. We stood in the space together, breathing together. It lasted only a heartbeat and then passed.

  In my head, I counted to sixty before I dared turn around. Ansel was gone, out of my line of sight. Khryseos and Argyreos were still nearby, this time giving me goofy grins, which did absolutely nothing to encourage me about my decision to cut things off with Ansel before they even really started.

  I jerked my head in the direction of the quad. “Come on, you two,” I said.

  Both dogs got to their feet and bounded up next to me. Instead of prancing ahead, however, the pair of them stood next to me and leaned their bodies into my legs. The weight of them comforted me and warmed my heart.

  Khryseos looked up at me with a goofy grin as if to say, “You don’t need him, girl.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got us,” Argyreos agreed as his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth.

  A soft smile spread across my lips. I reached down and scratched their necks. Each of them got a couple of pats until I felt good enough to walk into the heart of campus.

  Because the dogs were right. I made this choice to keep them. To keep on this path. To keep true to myself. It was the right decision, no doubt about that. But man, was I going to miss the thought of Ansel’s touch as it--

  “No!” I said aloud to myself, startling the dogs.

  Their ears perked up, and Argyreos whined a little, surprised by the noise.

  “Sorry,” I apologized with a reassuring ruffle of his fur. “I just have to stop thinking like that, or this whole thing is never going to work.”

  So I steeled myself by lifting my chin, thrusting my shoulders back, and heading confidently down the path towards the opening ceremony.

  6

  The Military Academy of Olympus campus was lush and vibrant in the summer sunset. Green coated the trees with bright, thick leaves. The cobblestone paths seemed recently polished, shiny and new as if they were rocks at the bottom of a river. The old-fashioned street lamps burned with the light of the Eternal Flame.

  This ancient fire was also known as the God’s Fire. It was a magical element that could never be extinguished. According to myths, it was the original flame that Prometheus gave to the humans against Zeus’s orders. The Eternal Flame was powerful and hella temperamental.

  We had a love/hate relationship, the Eternal Flame and I. While yes, I had the ability to control it and withstand its intense heat, that didn’t mean the Flame always wanted to listen. It often had a mind of its own and had to be negotiated with. It made for a very volatile element to use and manipulate.

  When I passed under one of the first street lamps, the single piece of Eternal Flame within the glass intensified and flickered, almost as if it was waving at me. I paused and looked up at it.

  “Well, hello to you too,” I thought inside my head, projecting my thoughts out to the flame.

  It was a weird experience, talking to the Flame. It never really spoke back to me, not verbally, at least. It responded directly to my gut, like an instinct. So it wasn’t always the easiest thing to read or decipher. At least when it changed externally, like glowing violent red or turning a calming blue, I could figure out what it was saying and how it was feeling.

  The Flame surprised me with the gleeful greeting. There was a warmth in my belly, a comfortable feeling as though I were back at the hearth at home, curled up with a good book. It almost seemed to wish me luck, reassuring me that this year would be a good one.

  I chuckled at the thought and gave the Eternal Flame another smile. “Thank you,” I thought, sending as many positive and grateful feelings into my message.

  The Flame, satisfied, settled back to its normal stance, center of the street lamp, calm but bright. It swayed like one of those hula dancers on the dashboard of a car. The gesture made me laugh out loud, enjoying the image in my head.

  “What’s so funny?” someone said from behind me.

  I whirled around and let out a little squeal at the sight of one of my best friends. Benji stood a couple of feet from me, dressed in his all-black uniform. The new second-year sash, red with a black line down the middle, slung across him as elegant as the Miss America pageant sash. His tan had evened out over the summer, and his black hair stuck up in a manicured, fashionable way. He would have actually had to use some product to get it to swoop like that. Benji’s face lit up with a wide smile, showing off straight and white teeth.

  Without thinking about it, I dashed up to my friend and threw my arms around him. Benji caught me in his strong arms, though my momentum caused him to teeter back a little. We laughed together, the joyful sound ringing in my ears, as I thought about how good it was to see him after such a long summer.

  I pulled away and held him from me to examine him properly. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “Same,” Benji said, his smile never leaving his face.

  “What’s with this new look?” I asked, waving my hand up and down his body to indicate this refined Benji. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like it, but we’re a long way from the flannel and the baseball cap.”

  Benji shrugged like the transformation was no big deal. “I finally decided to stop hiding behind the gruff and messy look.”

  I cocked my head to the side, confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “I came out to my family,” Benji said with a big inhale. He tucked his hands into his pocket, signs of his shield coming back up with his curved shoulders as if he were trying to shrink himself. But Benji caught on to what his body was doing and actively straightened his spine.

  “Oh,” I said, reacting without thinking. “Wow, Benji, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that they didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well,” Benji said with another shrug. “When I came here, no one knew me. It was a fresh start where I could just be myself. I thought that here of all places would be accepting considering how fluid the gods are when it comes to their sexuality.”

  “Got that right,” I said as my thoughts ran through a series of sexual stories about the gods. They weren’t my favorite of the myths, preferring the conquests and adventurous tales to the adulterous ones.

  “So I took that confidence home and told my dad and stepmom,” Benji said.

  “From the smile on your face, I’m assuming it went well,” I guessed, my eyebrows rising up in a question.

  “Better than I ever would have thought,” Benji said, the relief oozing from his voice. “Belinda gave me the biggest hug and told me I would always be her Benjito and Dad… well, he was mainly sad at first because he hated to think that I couldn’t tell him something like that.”

  It surprised me when Benji sniffed a little, and the corners of his eyes went blurry as the beginnings of tears came. But none of them fell as Benji continued. “He was great, just great.”

  “Aw Benji!” I said, pulling him into another violent hug. My friend let out a laugh that sounded filled with relief and excitement. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “Me too.” He hugged me back, tight and fierce. “Do you think Darren and Violet will think it’s weird?”

  “Absolutely not!” I pulled back from him and took his hand in mine. “If anyone gives you any shit, you send them to me, and I’ll burn them alive.”

  As if it heard me, the street lamp above our head flared. Benji and I looked up at the over-eager Eternal Flame. It shook faster and turned a deep, blood red. The glass filled up with steam, and we could hear the hiss of the sizzle.

  I pointed up at the Flame as it emphasized my point. “See? It agrees with me.”

  “I’m glad to have that stuff on my side,” Benji said, a little hesitantly. “I would hate to be on the wrong side of that stuff.”

  “You and me both,” I agreed. I swung our hands back and forth enthusiastically. “Come on. Let’s see what Violet and the other chefs have cooked up for this feast.”

  “Yes, please,” Benji begged. “I’m starving.”

 
We ventured down the path, walking hand in hand for a while until we got closer to the mess hall. The marble buildings looked regal in the fading sunlight. Long shadows stretched out onto the short grass from the various columns, statues, and figurines unique to each of the training buildings, dorms, and classrooms. The sight was like a breath of fresh air, reminding me why I was here in the first place.

  For the first time all summer, I was excited to dive back into my studies. Yes, I itched the whole three months to get back in the forge because that was where I felt most comfortable, but it was nice to know that that same feeling extended to the Academy campus as a whole.

  Benji and I entered the mess hall, which was already packed to the gills with students. They buzzed about from table to table, the sash colors prominent in the sea of black uniforms. It was a long room with high ceilings that had paintings from the Greek myths of our ancestry. I loved that mural as it depicted so many of the infamous myths. It was like one of those I Spy books from when I was a kid. There was always something new to notice or spot. Whether it was Athena’s bridle, the Helm of Hades, or Aegis, the famous shield of Zeus, it was the perfect piece of art for a Greek history nerd like me.

  The buffet was packed, the line stretching all the way to the door. Even from where I stood, the smell hit me full force. Sage, rosemary, garlic, and some sharp cheese I couldn’t identify right away. It was a cornucopia of delights, all the staples of an American Thanksgiving with turkey, ham, green beans, both in casserole form and freshly steamed. The cranberries came in three different ways, and the gravy flowed from a fancy container that was shaped like the Argo itself.

  “Holy Hermes,” Benji whispered from beside me.