THE ARCHIATER.
Something about the steely resolve in Theodosia’s steps assures Marisol that she’s up to the challenge of training. There are very few who have an interest in it, fewer still who can actually handle it when it starts - but the fierceness in the newcomer’s voice says she’ll do it, no matter the cost and the blood and the time she’ll spend beaten down, and Mari admires her for it. Two sides of the same coin. She sees much of herself reflected in that purple gaze, in the resolve that ripples under her skin like water.
And so when Theo responds with an immediate fighter, the Commander is as pleased as she is unsurprised.
Mari meets the cadet’s gaze with a molten-gray stare that is both cold and impressed, dark lashes beating away the pollen that washes over them in the breeze, short hair ruffled, wings still pinned to her sides. The world around them unfolds in cacophonous possibility - sun bleeding into the saturated sky, the field they stand in endless and awe-inspiring. Tomorrow, she begins, voice smoky in the cool air, Come to the steppe at noon. Half a day’s flight that way - Mari gestures with a toss of her head across the inlet of the Terminus Sea, where the Steppe looms tall but shrouded in fog, and fixes Theodosia with a gaze so intense it pierces. And we’ll start. Don’t be late.
She dips her head ever so slightly, then begins her trek back to the Dusk Court.