[P] every awful second

[Marisol]

THE ARCHIATER.

Marisol aches to go home, to stumble back into the embrace of Terrastella. She thinks about it like light at the end of the tunnel; a halo of want, strange only because want is strange to her, a girl so cold and soldierly she does not even know her own thoughts half the time. In the distance she can see the very edge of Dusk territory, shrouded in mist and miles away, and it pulls at every muscle of her heart. Briefly she thinks of the twins and if they’re doing okay alone, then of Theodosia and how her training might be going - then she’s startled back to wakefulness by the response of the silhouette at the end of the street.

The girl is short, taut, militaristic. A silver collar refracts light from its circlet around her throat. Marisol thinks the two of might be similar, never mind the soft brown of the stranger’s skin and her too-bright blue eyes and how they stand in stark contrast to Marisol’s dark-and-grey - more importantly, they’re matched in the tight wind of muscles, the critical way they look each other up and down, the smooth coolness of her voice when she speaks, like steel hardening into its final blade form. It is militarism. That she knows well. Mari dips her head in a subtle greeting and watches the girl with molten-silver eyes.

Was there something she needed? Not really, Marisol realizes, but still she stands firm in the center of the street. Perhaps this is the danger she had missed in the crush of bodies that filled the festival - perhaps there’s something to be discovered here, the information she’s been waiting to unpack and take back to Terrastella. The girl is Solterran, that much is obvious, and Mari’s constant prowling at the borders has made her privy to whispered rumors of the Day Court’s violence, the fire that swallowed their capitol, the anger that lives inside every one of them.

Seems dangerous enough.

I suppose not - seems it’s just in my nature to look for trouble where there is none. A faint smile washes over her lips, then disappears, as if brushed away by the breeze that surrounds them. You’re Solterran, she says then. It might have been a question but for the way her voice lilts down at the end, as if she already knows the answer and her words are just a casualty of politeness, and they very well might be.

@Tieran