[AW] in the back of my mind

[Marisol]

i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.

So often Marisol forgets there is life outside Novus, even outside Terrastella. Since her rough-and-tumble days as that kid with the scars, that girl with the spear, she has always been one-track-minded. No room for loyalty outside to her court. No room for gods that are not Vespera. 

So a mild surprise overcomes her, though it shouldn’t, as the girl starts to talk about her home. (Perhaps part of it is that Kalae looks like one of them. Marisol would not have been surprised to see her emerge from the Terminus in the way of any Novus-born kelpie, or appear like a statue from the base of Veneror itself, like that fall when the gods came down to visit.) 

Which possibility is more frightening—that those beyond the border are not like them, or that they are exactly the same?

Mari purses her lips and blows out a harsh breath through her nostrils, trying to turn her focus away from where it rests on suspicion. She tells herself there is nothing to be scared of from one strange girl; she tells herself that even if there is, she has no evidence, not yet.

“Novus has welcomed plenty of strangers,” says Marisol finally, and twists her lips into an awkward (though genuine) smile, her gaze blinking first at Kalae and then back out to the ocean. Still the birds are wheeling in the sky just past them; their caws and cackle sing sharp through the air, colder, really, than any breeze. “You’ll do fine, Kalae. We worship Vespera here, and she is a benevolent god—” Her voice is confident, unwavering, but oh does she think of the earthquakes and the broken temples and how Asterion had laughed when she wanted to bless him.

Finally she turns back to look at Kalae and tilts her had with a sheepish grin. “But we are also a land of freedom, and you’re free to worship whatever you please, or nothing at all. I would be happy to show you around. And tell you more if you’d like. There’s…” Mari sighs. “Been a lot of change, recently.”

@kalae  <3

"Speaking."

queen marisol

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