[AW] take an angel by the wings

[Marisol]

heaven talks
but not to me

When Marisol hears the scream echoing from the heart of the swamp, ringing like a bell, loud as a siren, it does not take her more than a moment to go speeding toward it. 

She has heard a scream like that many times, if not the same. A scream of panic and confusion. A scream of complete lostness. It is a sound she knows very well.

Grinding to a halt on her patrol around the edge of the forest, for a second Mari pauses in bewilderment, heart beating a fiery tattoo against her chest; she wonders if it is a trap, if it is safe to investigate. But even if it isn’t, that is her duty.  She steels herself, regaining consciousness, and digs her heels deep into the soft mud to take off upward into the sky in a flurry of churning muscle and spotted wings. 

Even in the heat of summer, the sky above Terrastella holds a kind of biting chill; it is a comfort to feel the cold wind on her skin like she’s felt a hundred times before, shaking sharp fingers through her short hair,  ruffling the shiny black feathers lying flat against her wings. The ground peels away beneath her, replaced with an ever-rolling wave of wet ground and green trees, rushing and rushing until her deep-gray eyes catch sight of a hole in the foliage, and, below that, a flicker of movement.

She pins her wings to her sides and goes diving down, down, down.

Mari half-lands, half-crashes in the wet mud of the forest. She’s used to it by now - the way the ground can fall away beneath you and the dark shadows covering the trees in the thickest parts of the swamp - but she still stumbles a little on her landing, too much energy retained in her plummet and stored in the broad set of her shoulders. Leaves and mud spatter away from her hooves. Instantly her gaze zeroes in on the stranger and her wings half-fold in; she twitches against the urge to reach for a weapon.

The girl curled against the ground is mottled in brown and white and gold. Marisol thinks the wings held to her ribs might be double layered but can’t quite tell; her hooves are lined in yellow and streaks of silver rip through her dark hair. She doesn’t seem dangerous. But she does seem scared.  Are you hurt? asks Marisol, her voice low and hoarse, gray eyes wide.  Do you know where you are?

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