[P] what i know about forests is they always grow back

[Marisol]

WITH SWORD AND SALT -

Let it remake you, Isra says, and Marisol wonders what there is to remake.

Is it too much, or not enough? The weight of her body, the fact of her body, and the terrible things it always begs for. The many places her dark skin has been wrought by scars or purplish bruises. How her hair has learned, finally, to stay bristled short. Or the way her brain still asks woefully to lay quiet when there is not a quiet moment in the world to give it, now that every timeline has been swallowed by blood.

Marisol’s head buzzes like the singing of cicadas. Struggling to breathe, she pulls Isra in tighter with the curve of her wing until their is no space left between them, until every bit of warmth in the air or in their bodies is shared,  and something in her mouth - an iron bit, a still-beating heart - starts to quiver. She is remade already by the way Isra’s lips touch her cheek and her pulse matches Marisol. She is remade into something worse than she was before: something that wants and wants and wants and will never do anything to fix it.

There is not enough time to say everything that needs to be said, and so, as is her way, the Commander says nothing.

They break apart. The light is blinding when Marisol finally screws her eyes open, and its glare makes her feel almost sick.  It sears through her skin and into her brain. Her chest hurts wretchedly as Theodosia comes to mind, unbidden; she wonders when she became one of the people she hated most, and bile fills her throat. I have lost my morals, she thinks bitterly, and even the beauty of Isra’s delicate face is not enough to staunch her sudden disgust: I have lost everything, is the thought that follows, and her whole body clenches with the effort of holding back another crisis. 

Tears shimmer into her eyes. She feels too pathetic to blink them away.

But she ducks her head against for a brief moment, at least, to hide them as they fall. Isra asks what she is doing here, and for a moment Marisol struggles to justify it as she thinks of Asterion, and Theodosia, and her own people’s struggles. There are too many reasons and none of them are good. Too many reasons and none of them matter. I heard about Raum, she says bitterly, and watches Isra through a swath of tear-dark lashes, And what he did to you, and the girl-queen. I worried… for you, and what might happen to the rest of us if Solterra was overtaken.

Most of all, though Marisol would never admit to it or its inherent selfishness, she worries what she might do to the world if Isra were hurt. How easily she would be willing to burn it.

---

@isra <3

aimless | kokovi