[AW] Strangers in the night

[Marisol]

who are you
when it's all over?

In the cool black of the night, Dusk’s Commander walks infinite circles around the walls of Terrastella. High above the ground, on the cobblestone parapets, Marisol drops her head low and watches over the sprawling fields, the far-away roiling ocean, and the sound her hooves make on the stone is as even, as regular as a heartbeat: there is something comforting about the silence that overtakes her court, about how it is perfectly still under her watchful eyes.

And yet it cannot be that way forever. Marisol has been on patrol long enough to know that there is always something happening, even when you can’t see it, especially when you can’t. Her dark ear flicks at the sound of a wingbeat. The air shifts, cool and wild, and Mari feels the slightest change of it easy as fingers on her skin. She inhales - deep, blue, black - and there, in the treeline, a silhouette shifts, twists, shudders. 

Ah.

Marisol turns to the north and floats down the stairs quick and light as rushing water. Click-click-click says her hooves against the stone, and then a soft patter as the steps melt to dirt and she goes loping across the field toward the figure, spear knocking rhythmically against her flank, wings against her sides. Moonlight streams down in silver silk, brushes the dark of Mari’s skin into glittering mercury.

Evening, she calls, and slows to an amble. The moon-grey of her eyes is watchful as ever. By Her hand.

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