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

[Marisol]

i opened my mouth and the night poured in-

Ha, she scoffs. Hardly. For once the humor in her voice is dialed to its full capacity. It rings against her throat like a bell rings through the air, a strange kind of grating that feels, sounds, wrong coming from the Commander, dependably stoic. Her tone rasps disbelievingly, growing more incredulous every second she thinks it over, the idea of seeing everything when, in fact - 

My world is a knife-point, Marisol says absently, and the heartbreak of the situation is that it’s true.

Knife-point, spearhead, half-drawn sword: it’s all the same blade and a delicate sill to be balancing on, never more than a wrong step from cleaving her own chest in two like a moth pulled in half at the wings, like a cow’s head in the abattoir. And what a damned knife point to be standing on. Every minute she feels it pricking at her throat like a fist closes around a struggling bird, insistent and quietly unlivable. What a knife-point, so silver and bloody - only ever scraping the surface of the world, rusted by the rain and the salt-spray and Mari’s silent Weeping-Madonna tears shed like dew sheds from fresh grass. What a knife-point, forever iscariotic.

 The cloud-scent on her skin only bothers lingering, she thinks, to cloy the smell of crushed open iron underneath it.  Her wings will never carry her high enough to escape the cistern mud of her heart.

Mari’s voice is strangled when she manages to use it again. Fine as in acceptable, she answers dully. Not as in impressive. Perhaps a harsh judgement to be passing when this year’s Halcyon crop has displaced most other Terrastellan warriors in the rankings, but when the Commander watches them all she sees is her own failures repeated like a broken record, roaring from the loudspeaker, emblazoned in the dirt, flashing like an alarm light in every misplaced step, every misaimed attack, every stupid mistake that her cadets make. When she watches them she sees her old self, close-shaved and viciously wild, and she hates them for it.

And herself.

But they have time. As do you. Not old yet, Asterion. She grins a little, and the cloud-light catches on her teeth. Vicious again. Not old yet - there is life left to be lived, she thinks, not only for Asterion but for her. And as promising as it is, it is also a hard pill to swallow. What else is there? What dreams has she already vacated, a ghost in the night? How many paths has she just recently turned off from, agitatedly unaware, always so young and so stupid - 

Not old yet, she says. Slow down.

@asterion