THE ARCHIATER.
All her dead and hungry selves lived here. They were strangely nice to look at.
In the cobblestone corners of the streets she saw her childhood reflection, slim-hipped and violent, the hair shorn close to the black nape: not much had changed then, had it? The same pair of sleety gray eyes, reflecting firelight in a way that was near demonic. The kid - she was a kid, really, the ghost Marisol was watching - had no idea she was alive anymore, and walked with the same urgency she always had. Her hooves made no sound on the stone. Her face was hard and bitter, hair bristled off her back. She was wearing a leather cuff on her back leg, the same Marisol wore now. The same scowl on both of their lips. Mari watched the girl, the old her, moving quick and wraithlike in the pathways of her youth, and could not decide if she was prideful or disgusted. In a stomach made of that much iron it all felt mostly the same.
It was dark overhead, the night purple, the crickets cooing, and Marisol folded her wings to her sides to slink more easily through the Court, bap-bap-bap the gentle sound being made as they slimmed easily to fit her ribs, the feathers fluttering in loose wind, and she saw all her dead and hungry selves wandering the Court like spectres and did her best to ignore them, fuck you. No use reminiscing. She closed her eyes and turned it away. Dark, then - darkness all over, comfortingly full and deep, blocking out all those Terrastellan ghosts. A cool breeze graced her cheek, and again Marisol was happy, or she was disgusted. Who knew. Who cared? The wind would be the same either way. It was eternal, and adept.
She envied it immensely.
It was dark overhead. The clouds spun their awkward gossamer. Like water she moved through the streets, sleek and dark and cool. Whoosh went the feathers as the wind rustles them; clack-clack went her hooves on the stone. The three stripes on the back of her wings were so white they’d become near-fluorescent in the dimness. Halcyon Commander. Often she rolled the title around on her tongue, just to make sure it still belonged to her. Commander. Commander. A wing shuddered restlessly, as if it had been set to life, as if something had bitten it just below the surface. Marisol’s long-lashed gray eyes were quiet in the dark, and they remained fixed ahead no matter where that hard-lined head turned, as if they could see something just adjacent to the plane Novus was fixed in, something in a slightly off-put astral world.
Commander. The wing shuddered again. Marisol absently willed it to stop, and it did.
That was her way.
open to anyone!!! yeah BOIIII
