[P] your voice is wild and simple

[Marisol]

you are untranslatable into any one tongue.

I am not a lady, she thinks, when the letter arrives on the wing of that tired bird. Her chest is filled with a sharp kind of surprise as she reads through it. Lady. I am hardly even a girl. 

But how can she be hurt? He thinks she is a lady. What a bizarre measure of praise. (She could be, maybe, if the right person asked it of her. And it would be a lie to say she hadn’t thought of it before—what it might be like to shed her dirt and blood for something made of silk, or the smell of salt for the foreign perfumes that so often followed Florentine. She could be, if the right person wanted her to.) 

But that was never what they wanted.

And so she would be what they wanted—less a lady than a warrior, less a person than a diplomat—she leaves a neatly written slip of parchment detailing the projected plans on Israfel’s door and, in the very earliest hours of the morning, makes her way down the steps of the citadel. Anselm is still curled up in sleep underneath a pile of richly purple blankets. Outside it’s only just starting to light; the sky is washed with faint yellows, pinks, oranges; a cold, cold breeze howls through the streets, and Marisol squeezes her eyes closed for a second against the sting of it.

The world is quiet. So, so quiet. And perfectly calm. There is no movement, and little to be worried about as far as anyone can see. The lights in the windows are turned to their lowest. Trees groan and whisper just beyond the cityscape. For a moment, Marisol simply stands and drinks in the wind, tastes it in the darkest corners of her mouth, wonders with a bruised and still-bruising if this is the right choice, if any of this is the right choice.

For what it is worth, Marisol of Terrastella, bravery is worth more than luck.

Well. Perhaps it is some back-handed gift, then, to be born so stubborn. If it’s true. If he knows enough to say so. There is no evidence, at the moment, for or against him. And, like they say at home—innocent until proven guilty. Right until proven wrong.

---

The desert, by the time she lands, is colder than she’d expected.

How long has it been? Last time she was here—

Well. Last time she was here, many things were different; no use reminiscing on it when it only brings around new bouts of pain. No more Isra, no more Raum, no more girl-queen Seraphina. Now Solterra is noiseless as death, choking on the cold wind that sweeps up little sandstorms at her feet. There is no life here. Or maybe that is what separates the Day court from the rest of them—maybe there is simply life she cannot see, buried in places she can’t find, and she is the fool for thinking this place is a graveyard.

Still, she thinks it.

The windows of the apartments and the storefronts are shuttered. Ghost town, she thinks as she passes silently over the streets; streets where the stones are encrusted with sand and dust lines the windowsills; where flowers have wilted in their vases, where even the gold has started to rust. Where there was all life and gold-fever.The few people that do pass through the streets are hurried, their heads low, their shoulders crunched together. There is not the faint sound of music or the smell of food cooking, as there always is in Terrastella.

They are afraid. And Marisol cannot blame them, but oh, it hurts her heart.

Marisol, the lady of dusk: I have heard you have eyes like slate, and you are a warrior.

She knocks on the door of the citadel.

"Speaking."

queen marisol

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