THE ARCHIATER.
The crowd around her shifts and reforms, and Marisol turns a blind eye to it: the necessary apology extricated, she returns to feigned ignorance with a hard blink of those gray eyes and a strategic shift to face away from the object of her accidental brush. She is closed-minded, hard-headed. Blood rushes in her ears, loud and hot, and she pulses her jaw in an attempt to stifle the ocean-sound that overwhelms her, although the ocean is miles and miles away. So inordinate is her focus that she does not acknowledge the movement of the man beside her until he speaks - until not acknowledging him would become sheer idiocy, stubbornness without a cause. Mead? Then she glances over her shoulder at him and turns.
Regretfully, no. The cold gray of her eyes is sleety in the dim light. Marisol gazes at the festival-goer with intensity and without shame, taking in the easiness with which he stands, the flower crown tilted at a jaunty angle over his head, the sharp, convex blade at the end of his tail, tensing slightly as they turn to face each other. A strange yin-yang they make - black and copper, dark and light, and yet strangely similar - centered, muscular, that close-cropped hair a mirror of militaristic upbringings, though Marisol can’t help noticing that the cut of her mane is cleaner than his.
He smells of Terrastella, and yet they’ve never crossed paths. Perhaps Marisol’s seclusion is a detriment, she muses now, if she cannot recognize those of her own court, the men and women she’s meant to protect, by anything other than scent and the barest touch of passing-by recognition. Perhaps there is something to be said for socialization, at least in the name of duty. But even the thought makes her uncomfortable; as Marisol opens her mouth she struggles for something to say, or even the motivation to say it, and the more she struggles the more the tension in her muscles is heightened, the more the pulse in her jaw grows, the more her eyes flicker back and forth, sharp and carnivorous.
Incense blooms in her nostrils. Hail Vespera, she murmurs coolly. It is almost-amused, but even as she speaks, she can’t help hoping her instinct hasn’t steered her wrong.
The sky is dark and fragrant. Marisol tilts her head at him and they stew in their silence, the warm night an impending ruination.
