Marisol wishes she had spent more time in the fields, as a child. She had always been drawn to the sea and its terrible beauty, the terrible, beautiful drop of the cliff into the crashing water — perhaps it was her downfall. Perhaps, if she had been more attached to the cobblestone buildings of the inner city or the beauty of the way Susurro stretches into infinity, she would not be… like this. Grief-stricken. Stone-hearted. The Commander with the bloody smile.
But it is far too late. Now, willful or not, she belongs to the ocean.
Even as the Commander trudges further into the fields, she feels the sea calling her, tugging with nagging insistency at the salt in her heart. She hears its roar in her ears, though it must be a mirage (it is too far away for the waves to reach her). As the sun settles lower and lower on the horizon, the sky turns from blue to purple to fleshy petal-pink. The stubby golden grasses of the field become a reflection of the sunset, and suddenly they are awash in shades of warm red, orange and violet, undulating in waves as the wind goes rushing past and bends the blades to meet the dirt. The world is very quiet and very warm. The air smells of something familiar, between hay and rain.
Normally, the fields would be bustling. They are often used as a meeting place, not just for Terrastellan officials, but for the trysts of lovers and gaggles of teenagers sneaking out at night. Today they are unusually silent. Mari cannot see anyone else for yards and yards, and there is no sound except for the stubborn beat of her heart, the wind churning, and the whisper of the million blades of grass moving against each other. She comes to a stop in the sea of flora and closes her eyes.
A deep breath in, a deep breath out. For a brief moment respite comes to her. Her mind goes blank, her pulse steadies, her stance strengthens; perfectly still, Marisol is simply a vessel for calm, letting it pass through her like a tidal wave and trying desperately to keep herself in its path.
Peace permeates the world as red and pink burst over a field of gold, a field that is home to lovers and quarrels, to animals both tame and wild. Antelope skip merrily below, ignorant to the winged thing in the sky who is not a bird. (Oh, but she is a goddess, she is the pale hand of Vespera bearing love and judgement and ruination and resurrection.) Her shadow on the ground is the only sign of her passing.
Here, there are no tree boughs that hold her, that flirt with ash-strewn wings, that play games and make her dodge and dive and challenge her.
If one but looks up, would they see a girl flying fancy-free within the skies, or would she be a cloud rolling overhead in slow circles? Overy now and then she dives, swooping down closer and closer to the earth just to feel the curve of the world rise up underfoot. At the last minute she banks, turning pale cheek away from disaster, laughing green eyes shooting heavenward once more where she is held.
Juniper is the silent observer, the unbound reveler, a priestess learning a new way to love.
So when a woman she’d heard of, come to see herself, stands still and quiet in the fields where even rabbits lie together and chat, she cannot help but come down. Soft, so soft is her downfall. Circling lazily, slowly, she drifts to a stop when feet touch the ground. And how near she is!
Reach forward and she could touch Marisol, run ebony kissed lips over wing that smells of salt and battle. But she does not, she does not. “I’ve disturbed your meditation,” she observes apologetically. Times of reflection are near sacred in the temple, allowing for growth and improvement. Shame flushes pale cheeks with color, draws bright eyes down.
They cannot stay there.
Rising like the tides within Marisol’s soul, spring bright eyes dip and swoop and sway over the body of the Commander just as she had done in the clouds just moments ago. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” she confides with that ethereal smile.
She sees the shadow as it drifts down in its perfect, lazy spirals, sees the shape of its wings, too large for a bird. It is behind her, but she does not turn. Does not fear. The world is quiet, and the smell of the stranger is the dusty rose-and-honey of Terrastella, anyway. Marisol’s cool, dark eyes remain trained on the way the shadow twists and turns, warps and flips, until it becomes too large to ignore and settles on the ground just ahead of her.
Then she moves.
The Commander twists her head over her sable shoulder and the rest of her body follows in a motion smooth as the curve of a river. The girl that faces her is light everywhere she is not—the not-reflection of something Marisol might have been, as a child, but damn well isn’t anymore.
And the girl that she isn’t is pretty. Small, winged, well-built. Bright-green eyes swathed in ink that trails to her lips. Light seems to unfurl from the horns behind her ears. She blushes as she speaks, and it’s so sweet Marisol almost trusts it.
“Well, the meditation didn’t seem to be working, so.” She flicks her slate eyes up and down the girl like she is gauging something, though it is impossible to know what. “You didn’t interrupt much.”
She is not altogether surprised that the girl knows her. Marisol’s duties as commander involve more time than she’d like to admit spent shaking hands and signing treaties; her walks around Terrastella are more often interrupted by gossip than turmoil, and the Halcyon itself is so old, so deeply ingrained, that not to know the Commander’s name would be odd for anyone not sparkling-new to Novus. “I’m flattered,” she says in that cool, raspy voice, and something almost humorous is in it. “Well, now that you’ve found me, what can I help you with?” Her eyes darken a touch.
But not threateningly. With something faint, with something else.
She is dark and she is beautiful, the way beige gaze moves up, up, up to the girl with curious new-green eyes. Juniper drinks in the Commander like a river, like a lake, like a woman starving for more than just the stagnant waters of her precious swamp. It is not long before a reply is given, a reply to the goddess-girl, the priestess' child, and Marisol's words are not hard.
Unlike warpaint upon skin, there is an inquiry there, brooking room for answers to questions given and asked. If fear were to take another's hearts, it would find no room in Juniper's.
The dove Pegasus is freedom incarnate, she is laughter, she is reckless and beautiful.
So she does not fear when Marisol speaks, even daring to chuckle and shake her head. "I am sorry it went so poorly, at home they would have made you try even harder should you admit to such things." Black framed eyes seem to glisten with interest, gleaming under the light, under the attention when the other woman brushes over her.
For a moment, the priestess wonders what exactly it is the Commander finds.
But she cares so little for that now, not when her shoulders square and crown tips towards the sky. Thoughtful, perhaps, could be used to describe the way Juniper is now. "I would very much like to join the Halcyon Unit. I am Juniper of Terrastella, from the recesses of the swamps. There, I was trained under the tutelage of many Priestesses of Vespera, shown the way in those wilds where so few could survive."
And there is a hunger that licks at her belly.
"I have heard of Halcyon growing up and Vespera all my days. Now, I aspire to do more than dance and run wild in a swamp. If you'd have me, I should run and dance and be wild among your soldiers, but I would learn to fight and I would listen; I would learn of you and your soldiers, Marisol. Vespera gifted Halcyon and his soldiers long ago, and where she leads I shall follow until she draws the last breath from my lungs." What more could she say? Already, Juniper could almost trip over her own tongue, but not quite. Not yet. So her eyes fall from the heavens like a meteor.
They land hard and soft and shatter upon Marisol once more, looking at the many shades of chocolate and cream upon her skin. "And perhaps I could help with your meditations?" There is laughter returned at last, and oh how it tastes like a summer breeze.
At home, Juniper says, and the Commander has to wonder: what home, besides this?
The question is answered a minute later, but in that minute, Marisol can’t help her heightened suspicion, the soft raise of her brow, the slight quirk of her lips. Yet her expression is warm still, and less untrustworthy than it is curious, a childish kind of need to know more and more and more. She bites her tongue. Wait, wait, wait. Give her a chance.
And when Juniper does elaborate, Marisol finds herself pleased by it. The priestesses of Vespera—oh, there is so much Juniper could teach them about the world, about their goddess, about the makings of a perfect Hierophylakes. The Unit has been lacking in parsons, that’s to be damned sure. And Juniper is the perfect remedy. Well-taught, well-bred, a girl of religious tact and Terrastellan blood through and through. A smile tugs at Marisol’s lips. Warm and maybe a little self-satisfied.
“Ha!” she says, and her grin widens, bone-white teeth blinking in the sunlight; one eye screws up against the glare. “For me meditation seems a lost cause. But we—I—would be well pleased to welcome you to the Unit. As a Hierophylakes?”
She waits for the answer with bated breath. For many years, the Halcyon has been scrambling to recover from the scandal of its last leaders, and Marisol feels that responsibility like bricks on her shoulders. Years have passed already in vain attempts to rebuild, and years more it will be until they regain their former splendor. But this is a step forward. A movement toward glory. Better this than nothing.
Suspicion is an unending pool in the Commander’s eyes, raking over every minute nuance of pale ivory visage as one would pile leaves in their yard. Everything about Marisol is meticulous and well thought out – from the sharpness of her gaze to the careful curling of her mouth as it tilts down, down, down to the earth which holds so many children.
But it does not hold the pale girl-goddess before the Commander.
Only the skies wrap their arms about her, their cool breath tickling her ears, their soft songs a lullaby to sing a girl to sleep every night in the swamps. There is no fear in her heart as she looks upon Marisol, and she does not mind the unexpected pleasure that runs through her skin when the darker woman’s lips turn up, up, up where they belong. A sense of triumph and welcome spreads, hungrily devouring supple flesh until she feels as though her swamp has reached far and wide, her sister’s prayers splaying over the land until they find her again.
This could be home.
“Nothing is lost unless you let it be so,” she breathes, solemnity a noose about her neck. There is a gravity in the girls’ words, a knowingness in the tilt of her head; she does not elaborate, but merely bobs narrow crown up and down, exuberant in her attentions.
Words are not murmured but roared, pride and eagerness filling the commander even as it pulses through the Priestess’ heart. She raises her wings proudly, head high and eyes bright as she nods. “A Hierophylakes,” Juniper breathes. Then, with a flourish she dips her head low, wings parallel to the ground. “It would be an honor to bring Vespera back into the folds of the Halcyon, Commander.” As ferocity fills her tone, there is nothing but a barbaric grin upon dual-toned lips and determination in those green, green, life-giving green eyes. “Through any battle, through every battle, and feast and celebration and grievance, I will stand beside you and among you. Train me to be brave and bold, and with Vespera as my witness I will not squander your time and guidance. Let me be her voice to your troops, and I will keep her close to all of our hearts, always.”
Conviction is threaded into the very blood that burns in her veins, unending devotion to a goddess she has never seen, yet would never abandon, is clear in the reverent tones that echo from her throat. No, Juniper will not fail her Goddess, and she will not fail her Commander.
Vespera would be with the Halcyon once more, her words as prayers upon her lips, and her hymns as guidance when there would be war.
Marisol is charmed by this girl’s lack of fear. It is something she does not see often: her people are a fearful one, healthily suspicious often bordering onf suspicion. She does not even see it often in her cadets. But that she cannot berate them for, either, because some fear is healthy. Fear of death. Fear of failure. And fear of the Commander is what keeps them in line, so she cannot condone that kind of boldness, either.
But Juniper is a little older than her usual recruit pool, a little wiser, a little more mature. She does not wilt under Marisol’s gray gaze like everyone else; it looks as though Juniper hardly feels it at all, the weighted, arrow-head sharp slate stare more like a pesky fly to her than the bite of a snake, as so many others seem to take it. Despite herself, the Commander is a little impressed. She likes the way Juniper looks at her—less scared than intent, less foolish than warm—and as they stand together in the field, the suspicion in Marisol’s gaze slowly fades, replaced by a grudging respect.
She swishes her tail behind her absent-mindedly. Now the air is filled with a new smell of grass, stirred up by the movement, and the air is briefly interrupted by the sound of the stalks rustling together. Nothing is lost unless you let it be so, Juniper says—
And Marisol can’t help smiling. But it’s not totally real. Something about the tilt is off. Something in it feels a little stilted, if not actually cold. Everything about me is lost, she thinks. It is not a condemnation; it is merely a fact, and the weight of it rattles around in her ribcage like an organ has come loose and is now clawing, insistently, at the bones and bars of its cage. Everything about me is lost, and only Vespera knows whose damn fault it is.
She clears her throat. Shakes her head. For a moment her body is overrun with a wave of hateful cold, worse than frostbite, worse than falling into the sea in winter: it stuns her into silence, into breathlessness, into a stupor unbecoming of a general. For a moment she thinks she will be caught in her lie for good.
But Marisol has always been a good liar. So she blinks, she straightens up, she pulls herself together, all of it in time to listen to Juniper’s speech with her ears pricked forward and gaze newly brightened. With a terse, carefully perfected smile, Marisol matches Juniper’s bow with one of her own, swinging one wing toward to the dirt and casting it ahead of her face like a veil.
By the time she pulls herself up from behind the curtain of feathers, she is wearing a real grin, bright and wide.
“Well, then,” she says matter-of-factly. “Come with me.”
And still wearing her prideful grin, Marisol beckons her back toward the Halcyon barracks.
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