THE ARCHIATER.
In the peachy-purple gloaming something like unrest stirs in Terrastella, and Marisol takes it in calm stride, just as she has learned to take everything else.
With animal intensity her stony gray eyes remain fixed on the horizon, where, hundreds of miles away, she knows the Summit is in session. The craggy silhouette of Veneror is its own heartbeat in the far darkness. As much as she is loathe to admit it (to herself, much less to others), something like fear has been beating quick in her chest since the moment Dusk’s regime left: in their absence it seems that she has the whole of Terrastella’s fate balanced on her shoulders, and it makes her aware of how alone she is, how truly alone, no Ard, no Erd, no cadets trailing her.
Just her. Slim-hipped and violent, well-versed in cracking her own bones. A commander sans shield - who is she then?
Swallowed mostly by the pearlescent grass that grows weed-fast in the fields, Marisol stands with her head raised to the setting sen and wings folded to her side. She is a smoothly built silhouette against the impending dusk. Despite the calm scene around her - brief breeze, a warm sunset, the quiet song of crickets - still something inside her is wound up tightly, and still she stands militaristic, shoulders set, legs squared, ears flickering in lazy patrol for any impending strangers. Please bring them home safe, comes her silent prayer, near-childish for the intensity with which she speaks it. The want is so incredibly loud. By Her hand, let all the regimes escape unscathed, and let our Courts be better for it.
When the footsteps come, Mari’s head turns toward them only slightly. They smell of Dusk, not of danger, and her vigil has made her already too tired to look for conflict where there is none (never mind that it might be her first instinct). Cool as always - Hail Vespera, she murmurs to the stranger.
It is all, in her eyes, that needs to be said.
@indra
