It is one of those precious last days of fall, and a cold wind blows from the south with the promise of colder winds to follow. Lanterns line the streets of Terrastella, their glow warm but weak against the indigo night. It does not feel like home to the newly promoted emissary. Surely it never really will. It does not even feel like her body as she walks (walks!) step by step up the terraced stairs to the inner court, tail swinging lazily at her hocks.
Eventually, she makes her way to the study. Lit with a flickering orange light-- candles of all sizes, on every shelf and table and windowsill, scented of honey and oats. The large window is cracked just enough to let the smoke out and the sea air in.
Anandi comes to her queen with the sea still dripping from her salt-tangled mane. It is impossible to tell if she even feels the chill at all. Her poise suggests that if you touched her (and oh, don’t you want to touch her) she would either be icy cold or burning hot. Her eyes dare you to try, or else they invite-- look too hard and it all blurs together: the question, the answer, the challenge, want, need.
She stands in the doorframe, casting a long shadow behind her. “Sovereign Marisol.” Their eyes meet and there’s that ocean again, sweet and dark and deep between them. A calling. A yearning. Anandi holds her sovereign’s gaze a second too long, a shade too intense. It borders on inappropriate.
The emissary dips her head and lowers her gaze with a demure flutter of dark lashes. “Or do you prefer Commander?” A sly smile. Anandi’s heart races a little faster. “Or… perhaps there is something else you would like me to call you?”
Queen, do you want to hear me say queen? How I would savor that word like a cherry rolled around the tongue; split, seeded, red and fleshy. I’ll say it so sweetly to you, you'll think it is yours. It is my word, Marisol, but I will gift it to you. For now. You can never say I was not benevolent.
"We have much to talk about." She raises her eyes, tilts her head gently in question. Waiting so politely to be invited in to the study.
A N A N D I out of my flesh that hungers / and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking / for reason
Marisol despises her, as soon as she walks in the door.
Or—not despises. (She is losing her edge, her way with words.) The Commander is jealous. Jealous in a way that defies description, jealous in a way that makes her skin burn, in a way that overtakes her until she feels nothing but burning, clawing envy green as sin in the corners of her mouth.
Jealous: this girl is so bold as to enter her office dripping wet, sloughing sea-water over the floor, smelling like the bottom of the ocean. This girl, this thing, has no shame. She’s happy to waltz in here with her sharp-toothed smile and her hair wrapped in knots of seaweed. No problem with batting her lashes, wearing a smirk, holding her queen’s eyes a second longer and a modicum more intense than anyone could consider appropriate.
Mari does not make wrong decisions. But this—this may take more work than she’d anticipated.
Slowly, deliberately, she climbs to her feet. Anandi’s eyes are dark, far too dark, a whirlpool in deep water: Marisol meets them with an expression that is not cold, but surely critical, bordering on derogatory. When her lips curl, it is in a smile that is only partially amused.
Her Emissary stands in the doorway, waiting to be invited in, and Marisol remembers her books. Dracula, Carmilla, La Morte Amoreuse. She remembers the old stories of vampires—how beautiful they are, and how unassuming. And how, where they are not bound to morals, they are bound to custom.
Now she really does smile, a brief, sweet flash of teeth.
Mari clears her throat. “That is your decision to make,” she says, somewhere between solemn and dryly amused, “As I will make mine. Come.” And she extends a wing in the tiniest kind of curtsy, stepping back to allow Anandi enough space to enter the narrow office, to slip into the space just in front of her. “I am curious to hear what you think we have to talk about.”
Never make the first move. Is this not the first rule of diplomacy?
It was tiring, all the pretending she did. To always, always play the lady, when it would be so much easier, feel so much better to be the monster. To constantly appear just a step ahead when she was truly a step behind. It was exhausting work, but Anandi was addicted to the thrill of it. Here she could be anyone, do anything. It was all so easy. She faked it all well enough that in this strange new world she not only survived, she flourished.
And she was only just getting started.
She was tired, but it didn’t show. She was lonely too, and this she revealed from time to time-- but only enough to soften strangers, invite sympathy. In this way she was able to suggest the outline of what she wanted them to see-- I’m just like you. I get lonely too. But she let them fill it in, color her with beauty, mystery, danger, whatever they wanted her to be. Hers was a carefully maintained enigma.
As she stands in the doorway and looks too long at the queen, she can only wonder at what secrets the other woman hides. In her heart, in her wings. She teases Anandi first with a humorless, toothless smile, then with the brief flash of teeth. There is a mystery hiding behind the soft flesh of her lips. Anandi’s heart races at the thought of revealing it.
“As you wish,” she says with a graceful curtsy (she had no right to be so graceful, doing such strange maneuvers on such unfamiliar legs, but she had practiced the gesture long and hard) and then she is invited inside.
Anandi slips into the room, fitting neatly in the small space she was given. The two women are close now, close enough that for a moment, desire --for what exactly? A kiss or a nibble? A fight or a feast?-- turns her vision crimson. But she blinks (slowly, drunkenly, not particularly wanting the feeling to fade but knowing it must, the show must go on) and the world is in perfect clarity once again. Marisol’s cutting grey eyes are an anchor and an (unknowing) invitation.
“I am curious to hear what you think we have to talk about.” She says it like they are enemies at war. She is wise, to not trust her emissary, and Anandi thinks she might love her a little bit for it. The princess despised idiots, and there were quite a lot of them in this world. It would be far more interesting to rub shoulders with a woman of intellect.
She garnered Mari would not appreciate the intricacies of small talk and relationship building, so she jumps right into it. “I would like to discuss your expectations of me. Where you would have me. The image you would like me to represent when in public and abroad. The extent of my authority.” She pauses to search Marisol’s eyes for a reaction. Then she lowers her voice and leans in cheek to cheek, close enough to feel the warmth of the sovereign's skin in the scant air between them. “And, there is a… personal matter, as well.” She turns her head, eyes the open doorway behind her pointedly. They would have to close it. All in due time.
A N A N D I out of my flesh that hungers / and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking / for reason
If there was not the matter of Theodosia to stand between them, and Orestes besides—
Well, if there were not other things to be dealt with, maybe the thing coiling in Marisol’s stomach would be closer to lust than envy. Even now she is not sure which is which, or what is what, or why, exactly, her heart has picked up so much speed inside her chest. It bangs against her throat. Then the underside of her tongue.
In the dead silence of the office, the world is still. Like a dream. Like a painting or a picture, capturing something mid-movement.
In this painting, there is only dim light: only Anandi’s skin, shining like silver, and her eyes, jewel-bright, eerie green. There is only thin yellow light from the flickering lanterns, which cast strange shadows, sort of monstrous, over the cobblestone.
In this painting, everything has gone quiet. There is nothing to listen to but their pulses. Anandi’s light breaths. The faint sound of birdsong just outside the window. None of it is stronger than the buzzing of blood in Marisol’s ears, how it rises and abates, like waves beating on the sand.
Mari presses her lips together. She is trying to hold something (everything) back. When she breathes in, it smells like sea salt, or blood, and really—what’s the difference?
Anandi steps forward. So much heat comes off her (as if pouring out of a fire) that Marisol almost shudders. And they are quite close now, maybe closer than she should be, but how can she care when a girl so pretty is doing so much to impress her? The room seems quieter. Darker. Smaller. With a telekinetic hand, Mari reaches out to shut the door behind them; as she moves, her chest brushes Andi’s, then her shoulder, light enough it could (it isn’t, though) be an accident.
A satisfying click as the door closes. Anandi wants to know where you would have me, and Mari, drawing back to her original standing position, pauses halfway. When she laughs, short and quiet, they are still standing cheek-to-cheek, and her breath stirs the fine hairs behind the Emissary’s ear. “Oh, anywhere,” Mari answers mildly. “We can always start with the desk.”
Then she steps back fully. Suddenly her eyes darken, and her voice grows totally sincere: “Anandi—Andi—forgive me for being mistrustful. You know better than anyone it is the nature of politics. But I hope we can become friends soon enough.” The word is weighted. Her tone is light enough, but the suggestion in it is too heavy to be completely disregarded.
A beat of silence. The room seems to widen; a weight has been lifted from the Commander’s shoulders, despite her uncertainty as to Anandi’s response. She tilts her head and flashes God’s faintest smile, continuing: “Your personal matter, then, first.”
"Oh, the body—its hungers, needs, and limitations. You look at somebody and you realize that they’re in there, inside there, somewhere, and how will you ever reach them, understand them?"
The door closes and all of Anandi’s senses are heightened. First Marisol’s scent: musty and intriguing; warm feathers, warm flesh. Then the rest of the room: dusty pages, spilled ink, an ocean breeze sighing through the cracked window. In the enclosed space, every sound is amplified. The soft give and take of their breathing is heightened and rhythmic, like leaves brushing against each other in the swaying wind.
And of course there is the brief touch of skin, so light it could be imagined. (It isn’t.) And the emissary isn’t sure if it is a test, or a question, or a demand.
In such tight quarters she is keenly aware that Marisol was having the exact effect on her which she generally had on others. Throat tightening, pulse rising, face flushing.
“Oh, anywhere,” The words a hot knife. Andi’s skin, butter. “We can always start with the desk.”
For a moment her breath catches in her throat. It makes her feel like she might begin to float, until a moment later when the breath is released with a warm exhale and a big smile. Anandi quickly looks down and wipes the amused surprise from her face.
“If it pleases you, Marisol.” Her tone is a demure purr, eyes submissively cast down. It wasn’t her favorite part to play, but Anandi could do it. Marisol almost made it easy. Her eyes quickly glance upward.
You like it, don’t you? Being in control? You want to see a beautiful thing squirm. I think I know you, queen. I think we’re more alike than you realize.
“Shall we invite the Warden too?” The words are light as butterfly wings; not meant to sting, but to tickle. A test, or a question, or a demand
“Focus, Anandi.” The words ring softly in her mind. Anouk, sweet Anouk, her guide and compass.
She focuses, and all the girlish uncertainty is gone from her features in the blink of an eye. “Friends.” The word is like walking a tightrope. She smiles. This would be by no means boring. “I hope so too.” The tension is not by any means gone. If anything it sharpens and strains, pulling in different directions. She hides it well, but not perfectly, behind a relaxed posture, easy breathing, slow lazy blinks of the eye.
About that personal matter... she hesitates for only a moment before diving in. Might as well rip the bandage off. “As you might have realized, I’m a kelpie.” Surely Marisol at least suspected. Anandi was not terribly careful with her identity. Her expression then is less of a smile and more a baring of the teeth. Anouk, the dark wet stain spread across her underbelly, slides up her body to the side of her neck. Then he pulls himself into the air and floats, with a small bounce, as a small sphere of water by Anandi’s cheek. He looks at Marisol, as abstract a definition as look can be, for a long moment.
“Be careful, Anandi.” Fills the unspoken bond between them. She nods, almost imperceptible.
“I left behind sisters deep in the ocean. Family.” She watches the sovereign’s face carefully for any reaction. Did Marisol understand? Could she, in this big bright world filled with so many things? Anandi’s bonds were forged in the darkness, in the long wait between meals. To the kelpie princess, family was everything. “I’m going to bring them to the surface. I want to know if they can find safety in the ranks of Dusk Court, free from persecution for… what they are." What I am. "I can assure you, if you give them the opportunity, they have many skills you will find... useful.” Like Anandi was useful, or could be.
Marisol takes pleasure in the simple things, mostly because she hardly has time for anything else. She is careful to keep her satisfactions close to the chest, out of the light, where they are neither too obvious nor too suffocated, always stretching and grasping for things they cannot have. Normally, when they are satisfied, it is impossible to tell; nothing in Marisol’s stance changes but, maybe, the shifting of weight, the curl of a lip. It is a secret thing. A thing she does not want to name. Of all the things to love, why should this be one of them?
But here and now her gratification is obvious. It’s too intense to bother hiding. Besides, they are alone. Blissfully alone. Who is she pretending for? They are one and the same, or close enough to it that the little differences don’t matter. The soft purr of Anandi’s voice makes Marisol shiver, half threatened and half satisfied; the sound the kelpie makes when her breath catches in her throat, a sound like dying, makes Mari gluttonous for something more, everything else the Emissary could offer her. What she would be willing to offer, if lightly pressed. Mari is ready, ready, ready. Ready to run. Ready to bite. Ready to press until she feels a pop, pulls a tendon, beats Andi into the ground the way she knows Andi was planning to tame her—with a fluttering of lashes, with a noose around the pounding heartbeat, with the heat that sloughs off her skin in waves.
The submissive cast of Andi’s eyes toward the floor, the softness of her voice: it fills Marisol with a satisfaction so potent she feels it in her teeth, a lick of salt, a buzzing smugness in the chest. A throbbing heartbeat twice its normal size.
She is finally, finally learning, there are ways to win that don’t require blood.
Marisol doesn’t bother responding to the quip about their Warden. She only smiles, a subtle twist of the lips. But something in it has changed, tightened, become colder: the gold has finally turned to iron, and the thread of it sits between her teeth and wires her jaw together so the points of her teeth don’t quite show. Something between a smile and a smirk. Something between sincere and deadly. The lazy coolness in her eyes implies that mention of the Warden might be just off-limits. But it is only an implication, not yet a real warning.
Then, suddenly, she is startled and distracted by the movement of water on Anandi’s stomach. Mari’s grey eyes don’t quite widen in surprise, but they do follow Anouk’s path with surprisingly innocent curiosity. She is fascinated by it (him?): the trail of dampness he leaves on Andi’s gray skin, the easiness with which he slides up her shoulder, then unsticks himself from her neck, floating in a perfect, pearlescent orb at her side. For all Novus’ magic, Mari still finds herself amazed and far too interested in the way he bobs in the air like a bird without wings.
She flicks her ear, turns back to look at the Emissary directly. Her immediate reaction is to say yes; she even opens her mouth to say so. But then it closes again. Her dark lips purse. She understands the longing in Anandi’s tone, but her life has followed it in a completely opposite direction: Dusk’s queen has always been alone. Her father is dead, her mother lives, directionless and without memory, in the slums, and the only siblings she’s ever had were the cadets she grew up with, who, like her, were not the type to show affection. You have no idea, she thinks, how lucky you are. Something ugly rears its head: jealousy.
But her face is still relaxed, unbothered. In a voice more sincere than she has ever used with the Emissary, Mari says, “Of course. They deserve safety regardless of their… usefulness.” A beat of silence. A dark-grey gaze softened just slightly, the way water beats down stone.
I was the blood in the water, and oh —
it felt so good
to run so red.
Anandi, eyes lowered, can taste the satisfaction in the air. It makes her heart race and fill with purpose. She was absolutely built for this; the latest result of generation after generation of refinement, culminating in a beautiful girl built to lodge herself beneath the skin. Stay there, until the moment was perfect and then-- without hesitation-- erupt. It is in her blood to please, to satisfy, to be drawn closer, closer, closer…
Despite the irritation of submission, Anandi basks in the sovereign’s pleasure. A good little wolf. Maybe it was a mistake to bring up the warden then, for the scent of satisfaction takes on a metallic taste. Still-- it was not a real jab, and she had not received a real warning for it. She shifts her weight subtly, drawing ever so closer to the queen. Her queen, she knows. But with this scant space between them it is hard to see her as anything more than a woman.
Anandi swallows the wanting growl that rises in her throat. It is perhaps too easy to forget about politics here. To not just forget about the rules-- but defy them completely. But as much as Anandi was built to satisfy, survival too was coded into her genetics. Not just for herself but for her species.
“They deserve safety,” the sovereign says. Anandi did not know what she had been expecting, but it was not this. A flush of surprise creeps into her delicate features. She was not aware of the weight of this issue until it was suddenly gone, and before she can contain it a sigh of relief heaves from deep in her chest with a soft “oh.” She laughs suddenly, a little nervous and self-conscious and hysteric with relief. It is a flash of girlhood, like taking off a mask for a split second, and even when the moment is gone she can’t help but feel a little giddy. “Thank you.” She presses a kiss to Marisol’s cheek, brief as lighting and soft as rain.
Maybe it was another mistake. She can’t tell anymore. When lines dissolve like sugar on the tongue, who’s to say they’ve been crossed?
And then the emissary pretends the kiss never happened. With all the force of her willpower she refuses to let herself think of the closed door, the warm flesh, the electric air. She ignores how it’s hard to breathe in here, packed in tight with all this tension and so little fresh air creeping in from the cracked window. “So. I was planning to visit Denocte first.” Delumine was introverted and quiet as usual, and Solterran relations seemed… favorable, to say the least. Plus the night court interested her on a more personal level (the markets, the underworld) and she saw nothing wrong with mixing business with pleasure. She suspected Marisol of all people would understand this. “Unless there’s somewhere else you needed me?” And oh, she cannot help herself, a brief glance to the desk slips through her vice-like self restraint.
Perhaps their court is about to fall apart. Perhaps it already is—it does not seem quite right, that two of its figureheads are carnivorous kelpies, and the third a pyromaniac. Often Marisol wonders how she has changed. If she is still capable of anything that could pass for leadership. Recently, life feels overwhelmingly like an endless circle of excuses for violence; and it would be impossible to deny she is spinning that wheel, too, with every spar on the steppe or moral weight she holds over the cadets’ heads.
But this is all impossible to think about when she is so pleasantly distracted by Andi, who plays all the right cards and smiles just the right way to turn Marisol’s heart away from becoming somber. Even better (maybe worse) than the emissary’s sharp, clean smile is the expression that comes over her when Mari concedes to allow her sisters in: for the first time that she can remember, Anandi looks genuinely pleased, not just satisfied. Her storm-grey cheeks are suddenly rose-flushed. Her green eyes go bright; when she laughs, just a little, Marisol can’t help feeling like she’s witnessing something she isn’t supposed to.
Still. Still the Commander can’t find it in herself to lean away when Andi presses that kiss to her cheek; and she can’t find the will to chastise her, either. Instead Mari bears the touch with careful grace, and when they separate finally reaches back to crack open a window. In rushes a wall of bitingly cold air. Despite herself, Mari flinches as the salty breeze digs its teeth into her skin and rustles the short hairs of her mane, half-surprised and half-relieved by the way it seems to snap her back to reality.
I was planning on visiting Denocte first. Marisol’s gray eyes narrow imperceptibly. It is an interesting choice, though she cannot rightfully say it is the wrong one; having already visited Ipomoea, and knowing Orestes firsthand, the Night Court’s new queen is the largest unknown variable. And yet she cannot help wondering if Anandi has some ulterior motive. A girlfriend to visit? A sister to seek out? Denocte is a carnival, a bacchanal. Nothing good, Mari thinks grimly, ever comes from Denocte.
But it presents the biggest potential risk for them, the possibility of a biggest loss or gain. Even she understands that, as painful as it is to admit—and oh, it is quite painful. “Wise,” comes Marisol’s thoughtful (if clipped) response, and she manages not to respond to the flick of Anandi’s eyes toward the desk except for what might be the flash of a smile. “Take Israfel with you when you go. Unless that would be an issue for you?”
I was the blood in the water, and oh —
it felt so good
to run so red.
Anandi doesn’t know much about leadership- except for numerous examples over the years from her father and eldest sister of what not to do. But she knows how to get what she wants, and that often involves ensuring others get what they want. No one could say that Anandi was not a team player... as long as she was on a winning team, and one edging ever closer toward her personal goals- no matter how circuitously.
So. Did she have a issue taking Israfel? The two women did not rub each other the right way, so to speak. One was too loud, coarse, and stubborn; the other too sly and strategic. But Anandi was feeling magnanimous. “Of course not,” she smiles. Anyway it would be good to work her way closer to the regent. The benefits of friends in high places and whatnot.
(They would end up walking the long road to Denocte, and all that you need to know about it is that when it was time to return to Terrastella, Anandi swam and Israfel flew. Later, only later, they would grudgingly grow close)
“I’ll let her know.” The window is opened and a wind sharp enough to cut blows through. It seems their conversation has concluded for now. Even if it hasn’t, Anandi’s thoughts are miles and miles below the sea, where her sisters remain in the dark. She had to share the good news. “Goodnight, Marisol,” she says finally, lips cradling the words like crushed velvet.
Anandi’s long tail drags on the floor like a bridal veil as she turns and leaves. She likes to imagine the room grows a little colder, a little less bright. For someone so measured and calculated, the emissary had a fanciful streak. But being in Novus was practically walking through a storybook world for her, something of bedtime stories and fairytales. It’s only natural her imagination would get carried away from time to time, when surrounded by so much magic.
As she walks down the quiet hallway, steps echoing softly on the cold stone, Anouk quivers with excitement and peels away from her belly, bobbing near her head in excitement. “That went well, Anandi,” he says. After a moment of hesitation, he adds: “I like her, you know.” Anandi just smiles, and makes her way to the sea, but unspoken between them is a lukewarm sense of agreement.
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