[SWP] don't get too close

[Marisol]

you looked at death in a tarot card, and you saw what you had to do -

There is nothing - well, almost nothing - left.

Rains flood the fields. Crumbled bricks of sandstone lay slumped in the wet streets. Sinkholes stretch their yawning black mouths deep into the earth, so wide and so dark they seem to go on for endless miles. Terrastella is the textbook definition, the reference picture, for disaster: rent with mudslides and broken rock and bodies already lifeless or still fading to dust, wasted on the dystopian world.

But still they have their Sovereign, their regime, their scar-silvered warriors; still they have their Halcyon unit, rain-drenched and sorry and wrecked as they are; still the citadel has withstood the raging storm and still no war is impending, and for that Marisol must be grateful.

She tries to keep this in mind, as the newest tragedy unfolds before her.

Against the mud-slick ground Theodosia is her own pale light, that lavender skin glowing in the impending darkness against the perfect curve of the newly opened sinkhole. Her wings are outspread and head ducked toward the ground, and Marisol would be mad, if the energy for it, that the unit’s own commander couldn’t find her way here before a cadet, but now is not the time for petty squabbles or measures of judgement. 

Mari slicks her wings to her sides and goes diving down.

She lands with a kind of crash, hooves slipping in the wet dirt, wings beating wildly to keep her from falling into the sinkhole as the force of her landing sends her spinning dangerously close to the rift; it’s only years of precision training that keep her from tumbling in after the foals, having underestimated how loose the ground is around it. Choking on what was almost a breath of surprise. Mari braces her legs and looks over the edge -

In the darkness float the silhouettes of two spindly-legged youths. The Commander’s heart bangs so loudly in her chest it almost makes her sick, and for a moment she almost wishes she could turn away and let someone else deal with it.

But what choice does she have - 

Keep them back, she snarls to Theodosia, And call Ard and Erd, and tell them to bring a sling. And with little ceremony she slams a hoof against the edge of the sinkhole and goes plummeting into the deepest part of the open earth, landing between the two foals with a forced confidence and little of an obvious plan.

---

this dumb bitch i swear to god

aimless | kokovi