[AW] that old illusion that it's safe;

[Marisol]

i opened my mouth and the night poured in-

The cool black night looms overhead. It has already lingered far longer than it should. 

Autumn is coming, oppressively cold, and with it comes longer nights and shorter days and dawns that bristle aggressively instead of coming in soft tides, their washes of pink and violet and silver-glazed stars sharper than ever. Marisol accepts it as numbly as she accepts almost everything else. What use is there in pushing back? Besides, something about the change is almost a comfort. Now she has a real excuse to hide away from the outer world - doesn’t have to justify slinking away early from festivals held to celebrate the solstice in perfect weather. Doesn’t have to push herself outside the Dusk Court walls for foolish flights of festivity.

The hoarfrost lining the grass, the biting early-morning wind, the omnipresent wash of darkness, it is a portal to Marisol’s real self: nothing but teeth and wings and polished metal.

It is in this lingering, purple-blush darkness that Mari emerges onto the cliffs above the Terminus Sea. Rarely does she bother to make her way out of Terrastella, infatuated as she is by her home Court, but the nagging, uncomfortable loudness and awe that’s flooded it post-summit meeting is enough to push her far, far away. The silence that follows her now, as she slinks a winding path over the stone, is a comfort. It lets her wings hang loosely rather than be crushed to her sides; it turns her gray eyes down from the sultry sky; it lets her walk in loops rather than her usually militaristic straight lines, exuding a kind of relaxedness that is all too uncommon on the dark face of the Commander.

Surprisingly enough, the sight of another figure isn’t quite enough to shake it. Perhaps because it is a figure she knows.

Asterion, she calls out against the wind, voice gravelly but unexpectedly warm. Salt freckles her dark feathers.  The spray of the ocean flecks her skin with water. Mischief, if one can even really call it that, coming from Marisol, glimmers like starshine in those dark, molten eyes. She watches him. The purple gloaming on his skin, the silver in his hair, the bird perched at his shoulder - and all of it together, the calm consciousness with which he stands, makes her heart move almost unsteadily in her chest.

Still she steps forward. Forward and forward, until they’re nearly shoulder to shoulder, the warmth of his skin almost close enough to touch hers. She peers down into the ocean as if that closeness doesn’t matter at all.

Good morning.

@asterion