THE ARCHIATER.
Strange omens had gathered at the end of the streets. They might have been sent by Tempus or by Vespera, but either way they carried with them a supernatural chill. Feline shadows with crepuscular purple eyes, the sound of flying where there were no birds, or still-decaaying piles of ash and iridescent cracked glass. Even worse, Mari had seen her old selves walking the Court, sleekly built and short-haired and sempiternally youthful, and they were the last straw, what had turned her away from the inner city in an aggravated, cold-blood frenzy.
For the most part, she tried to think of them - her old selves - as little as she could. It didn’t do much good. Plus (and perhaps more importantly) she didn’t even really recognize them now, those small, dark girls who didn’t wear any scars, nor the mark of the Commander, which she wore every day, now, in three thick white lines over the back of her wing; they were innocent, and unafraid, and in conjunction worlds apart from where Mari stood now, psychologically speaking.
She had to shake that thought from her mind forcefully, but she managed it, as she had learned to manage everything. After years it had become easy. Pacing a long, winding track through the still-blooming fields near the edge of the cliff, Mari walks with her wings half-extended and head low to her chest. Worry crawls in her head like a wild thing. What are the regimes discussing now, so far away on the summit, and do the gods watch? Are they watching now?
Of course. It would be sacrilege to think otherwise.
When she hears the quiet approach of another Terrastellan, Marisol pauses in place and tilts her head to look, gray eyes wide and steely in the oncoming dark. By Her hand, comes the murmured greeting, and once again she falls silent.
