[P] if you don't believe, you better get superstitious -

[Marisol]

THE ARCHIATER.

The old gods were singing again, and it was not a pleasant song.

It broke hearts and molted feathers. It was smog in the lungs, an icy ringing in the ears. It lilted through Terrastella’s streets as omnipresently as  the blackguard hum of a swarm of bees, or the sound of flutes so often swirling from the citadel: no matter where Marisol looked she found their ire in the sharp corners of the citadel, the cracked cobblestones under her feet, the way rain still silvered the sidewalks days after their storm had passed. And they were not the only ones. Smoke poured from Delumine, snow from Solterra - that song of blood and bone and death carried through all of Novus as easily as it ever would.

It blares in Mari’s ears days later as she stalks the court in endless circles, prowling with all the angry grace of a predator. Lights are still snuffed out. Windows are still shattered and doors still boarded up. The streets are empty but for the regime and a few dead-eyed, dedicated warriors, and even those don’t for very long, muted and depressed by the state of their city. The world is deadly-dark and quiet. Shoulders hunched and hair newly shorn in what might even be a measure of grievance (or, perhaps, just a renewed dedication to her duties), Marisol is little but a shadow with teeth in the gloom of the capitol, stony-eyed as ever and unwavering in her watchful patrol. Bruises silver her skin. Still-healing scabs line her shoulders. And no matter how many citizens she might have saved - well, it isn’t enough.

Still her people have died. Still they suffer by the hands of the gods. Still they lay sick and weary at the mercy of the world around them, and all the blood in Marisol’s body would not be enough a sacrifice to save them.

It is in this brooding state that she stumbles into the twins. Quiet as the city is it’s easy to follow the footsteps on the cobblestone, and although Marisol is pleasantly surprised to find that it’s Ard and Erd waiting around the corner, her face would never show it: dark lips downturned and gray eyes steely in the dim light, she acknowledges them with only a quick flick of the ears upon their meeting in the street. 

Hail Vespera, comes the greeting, dull and simple, and Marisol squares her legs perfectly underneath her. 

She watches the boys with something like sorrow. There is a strange hint of mortality in those endless gray eyes. 

If only any of them could know what is coming.

@Ard @Erd

[Ard]

ARD

The rains came, and with them, the familiar chilled kiss of winter.

He and Erd were another year older. Three. They had survived another year, escaped Vreis’ cruelty, and they still had each other. Another year, another victory.

Unlike their previous birthdays in passing, however, Ard had received his first birthday gift. From Erd. A bundle of black and charcoal cloth, stitched together with a deep green thread. Unfolding it revealed something that set the younger twin’s anxieties at ease; a black and charcoal cloak with a wide hood and a cowl. A few belts and pouches to keep his sticks of charcoal and sketch papers. The fabric was thick and warm, and when he tried it on, it fit perfectly.

Of course it did. Erd had commissioned it. His brother had picked up an identical one of his own, and Ard couldn’t have loved Erd more. When worn, it was impossible to tell them apart. It was considerate, wonderful, and perfect. Tears of happiness, followed quietly by a hushed whisper of, ’I love you, you idiot.’ Erd had smiled, brilliant and beautiful.

Ard felt safe beneath the warm black fabric, grateful for the way that the hood and the charcoal cowl covered nearly all of his features, hiding him away from the world. It was so easy to let himself hide behind the protection, and his heart had surged with fond affection at his twin’s consideration. It was so much easier to move about Terrastella in hiding, to know that he could simply flip up his hood and situate his cowl if he felt threatened in any way. Erd was, quite honestly, a blessing.

His said twin was slightly ahead of them as they paced through the quiet streets of the Court, their pace brisk, hoods up and cowls in place, revealing only the sharp turquoise of their eyes. The rain had yet to let up and tensions were high. Between the flash floods, the landslides, and the stormy weather, members of their home had gone missing. Ard had stuck close to his brother’s side, never letting Erd out of his sight. The last thing he wanted was for his twin to get a headstrong idea like charging out amidst the storm…

Cowardly? Maybe. At the moment, though, Ard didn’t care. Erd was everything to him.

Just as they went to round a corner and duck into some form of shelter, another equine slipped around to face them. Ard halted in his steps, hooves sliding against cobblestone, and nearly ran into Erd. The warlock’s turquoise eyes lifted, finding the familiar features of Marisol. There was something off about her, though. Her expression was still stern, her eyes that same color of crisp ice, face fierce and lips downcast in a frown, but it was all so very… Different. Defeated. Tired.

“… Commander?” The scratchy sound of his own voice surprised him, yet Ard offered the Halcyon Commander a cautious look over. Was she hurt? Drenched in rain and clearly exhausted, Marisol radiated that commanding energy, yet it seemed… Drained. When was the last time that she had rested? Despite his best efforts, despite knowing it might be a mistake, Ard felt concern bloom in his chest.

[Erd]

ERD

Hoods up, cowls on, Erd guided his brother through the downpour. They, like so many others of Terrastella and the outreaching provinces, were hoping to find someplace dry to wait out the worst of the storm. It showed no signs of relenting, however, the skies dark and gloomy. Oppressive, almost. Otherworldly.

Erd was attuned enough with nature, with the elements themselves, to know that this storm was not normal. Something had caused it. Something was causing it. Did it have any relations to the strange tremors that had been felt throughout Terrastella? Or the goose that had visited, only to disappear shortly after arrival? Whatever it was, he didn’t know, but all they could really do was stay above the worst of the flooding and not be caught out among the buffeting winds.

Encountering Marisol was not part of their plan. Drawing up short with Ard behind him, he was aware of the bump of his twin almost slipping right into him. He cast his brother an apologetic look, his expression mostly covered by the hood and the cowl, before directing his gaze once more to Marisol.

’Hail Vespera.’ The same greeting. Erd recalled her saying the same thing when they had first met, just after literally falling into Novus. He nodded in reply, not yet feeling comfortable, or familiar enough, to reiterate that very greeting back at her.

The Halcyon Commander looked… Off. She looked tired, as though she had been working tirelessly for days. When was the last time she had taken a rest? Ard’s voice, a quiet rasp of, ’Commander?’ reached Erd’s ears and the elder warlock simply frowned. Using his limited telekinesis, he pulled the hood from over his head and removed the cowl, letting them both fall heavily about his neck and shoulders. Ard’s remained on.

“Are you alright, Commander? You look…” Tired. Exhausted. Sorrowful. Erd wasn’t a learned fellow, uneducated at the best of times and he found himself worried that he may say the wrong thing. Yet, he couldn’t lie. Not to Marisol, the one who had found them and brought them to the Dusk Court proper. “Unwell.” Another pause. The flick of a pierced, silver ear. ”Should we find somewhere dry for you?”

@Marisol

[Marisol]

WITH SWORD AND SALT -

She laments the obviousness of her debility. For the most part,Mari is robotically adept at covering her weaknesses: she has learned from experience how to put weight on a bruised leg to cover a limp, more than once both begun and finished crying in the space of a moment, covered her sprained joints with nothing more than the a grinding of her jaw, but today her is exhaustion is so deep it cannot be covered and she feels that visibility as openly as a fresh wound.

It is a hateful thing, to be so exposed.

And it almost makes her bristle as she stands there, with all the defensiveness of a predator trapped, for what kind of Commander is she if she cannot even control herself? The muscles that line her shoulders are wound into tight knots, her gray eyes glower chilly and uncouth. Inside her chest war sympathy and disgust, rage and sorrow, wanting and a childhood of unrelenting discipline, and all the while she stands as still as a victim of Medusa underneath the rain and sleet.

Marisol is quiet as Ard speaks, though pleasantly surprised enough to blink involuntarily. The rasp of his voice convinces her that he has not become any more talkative since the day she picked the twins up from the fields. Ard, she responds simply. Her tone is no colder than it has been - perhaps only more vacant, the intensity leached from it by days of rain and darkness and the overwhelming fear that doom is upon them at long last. And when Erd continues she can do nothing but look at him drearily, for a long moment, until the caustic response spills from her mouth unbidden: Good luck finding anywhere, the end of the remark snapped off as violently as a tree branch by a tsunami.

It is not mean as much as it is war-weary. Marisol can only hope they understand that - that they have the sense (and the experience) to understand the bitterness in her silver voice is not aimed at them.

Are you two safe, at least?

---

<3

aimless | kokovi

[Ard]

ARD

’Good luck finding anywhere.’

The statement was said with a crude, bitter snap that caused Ard’s ears to dip back in uncertainty, tension coiling in his muscles and anxiety gripping tight to his damaged heart. He shifted his weight from hoof to hoof from the sheer weight of his own transgressions, turquoise eyes darting to glance nervously towards Erd before redirecting his attention back to Marisol beneath silver lashes and a baleful gaze. He was, not for the first time, so very grateful to the cloak of blacks and greys that hid him from the majority of Marisol’s gaze. It was a familiar tone, the Commander’s, sharp and virulent, but it lacked the dangerous anger that he so recalled from their previous handler. Sucking in a deep, deep breath, Ard let it hold within his lungs as he counted.

Slow. One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five. Release. Repeat. Slow. Count to five. Release. Repeat.

Counting helped. It eased his mind and his heart, reining in his wayward, frantic thoughts back into his own control before they could spiral someplace dark where not even Erd could bring him back.

Instead of speaking, the younger twin held his tongue, letting his brother handle the conversing. He would do far better than Ard could, and the warlock desperately wanted this to go well. He did not want the Halcyon Commander to come to the conclusion that she was wasting her time with them, even though that was exactly what he thought. Well, not in regards to Erd, but… Frowning deeper, the boy’s turquoise eyes lowered, staring down at the running water along the cobblestone beneath their feet.

Clearly Marisol was in a mood, and he could not blame her. The world had gone tits up, a disastrous mess, and nothing that anyone did or suggested seemed to help. He didn’t blame her for her sour disposition, not at all, and his anxieties and panic was not caused by her. It wasn’t her fault, and he did not blame her. He could not, not when he understood it so well himself.

[Erd]

ERD

If this dreadful weather had done anything for certain, it was ruin the moods of the people in Terrastella. Since their impromptu arrival and subsequent ‘adoption’ into the Dusk Court, the people all seemed like a jovial, pleasant sort. It had taken them some time to grow accustomed to being welcomed and wanted around an area, but the constant rains, floods, and landslides seemed to put a damper on that. Not that he could judge them all for it.

Citizens of Terrastella were missing. Some were probably even dead, caught unawares of the mercy of the storm. The local wildlife had practically invaded the capitol, desperate to find even a semblance of a warm, dry place to hide and wait for it all to blow over. Erd found it to be no surprise that the gloomy atmosphere and perpetual state of exhaustion would have spread to Marisol as well.

Her words, while biting, were not meant to slice or harm or inflict any sort of pain. The twins had been abused long enough to be quite capable of telling the difference. If anything, they appeared to just be a means to vent the overwhelmed frustration that the Commander was feeling. Where his brother seemed uncertain, shifting his weight and drawing closer to his own side, Erd simply smiled sympathetically. He understood. Gods above, did he understand.

“We’re safe, yeah,” the elder warlock stated softly, the calm of his voice almost overrun by the sound of rain falling around their very shoulders, “You don’t have to worry about us. We’ve been taking care of ourselves.”

Erd’s gaze drifted to his brother, peering at him through frosted lashes and taking in his frozen stance and rigid posture, before letting his eyes wander back to Marisol. Concern twisted his expression then, turquoise eyes growing warm with earnest apprehension. “And you? Are you alright, Commander? You haven’t been injured in the storms, have you?”

Because if there was anyone who was surely out among such foul, dangerous weather, it was the Commander of Terrastella’s flight army. Surely there had been no rest for her, and Erd wondered briefly just how many men or women the Halcyon Army had at their disposal. Were their ranks stretched too thin? Was that why Marisol, cool, confident, self-assured Marisol, seemed so frail and threadbare?

Erd inhaled, paused for a moment, then opened his mouth to go ahead and inquire. “… Do you need help? Is there anything we can do to help?”

@Marisol - one million years later I'm so sorry ;o;

[Marisol]

WITH SWORD AND SALT -

She regrets it as soon as it comes out of her mouth - the venom and ire of a girl not so much upset as overworked, exhausted so deep into her bones that she cannot find the strength to act human in that long, long moment. 

But the human of her comes back almost instantaneously, an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Her heart rocks in her chest like that of a child’s. And she feels like a child, then, chastised for acting out poorly in public. But she is her own mother, beating down an insubordinate daughter, and to be both the punisher and the punished is a feeling so uniquely weighty and uncomfortable it’s almost worse than the guilt itself, like she’s looking at her reflection through both sides of a funhouse mirror, and she wants to pretend it never happened but the fear in their eyes and the way they lean backward, away from her, says that is not possible.

Evil girl.

I’m sorry, Marisol half-mumbles, almost too quiet to hear, but meets their eyes through dark lashes. Her gaze is soft and kind and unsure and it is so utterly unlike her, to be this soft, but what other apology could be so sincere? I am not injured. Just tired. Tired is not the word, really - exhausted or enervated or something similarly complete and allconsuming would be more accurate, but Marisol has never been one to weep and whine over her own discomforts, and today is no different, though she might shiver a little more than usual against the cold.

Her eyes linger on Ard, watchful and somber. As kind and lovely as Erd is, the Commander cannot disguise that she sees more of herself in the troubled twin, that her heart aches just a little more for him because she has always been inclined to love the things she wants to fix.

Is there anything they can do to help? She turns her sleet-gray eyes to the sky, still rolling with thunder and rain; she watches hail slide from the roofs of their buildings and shatter against the cobblestone; she shivers again, this time a fullbody shudder, and offers them a wan smile. It is a strange slice of moon in a nighttime already too full of light. It’s alright, she answers in a tone hoarse with exhaustion. Helping is the Halcyon’s job, anyway.

---

<3

aimless | kokovi