[P] too early for surrender too late for a prayer

[Marisol]

I am not led; I lead.

Queen Marisol.

 It sounds strange. It pulls at her like an Atlas-weight. The sound of the court’s murmurs and the knowledge of their sorrow pounds at her heart like a hammer. And though she’s already feeling pretty prickly following the events of that god-forsaken meeting, when she steps down from the center of the meeting and the buckskin moves towards her and introduces herself as Commander Vespir—

Well. Queen Marisol is trying to be sympathetic, but with every word of this stranger’s she’s finding it harder and harder. 

Marisol comes to a clean stop, hooves loud on the cobblestone. Commander Vespir. She wants to chew this woman out for daring to disrespect her, she wants to scream and throw a tantrum and take her out dragged by the hair, anything to get out of here, anything to make this simpler—but that is a barbarian’s solution, and Mari is not a barbarian, at least not anymore—so Queen Marisol grits her teeth and hardens her expression and meets Vespir’s eyes with a gaze that does not sing of anything but steel.

“Thank you,” says Marisol, and her voice is not so rough, a surprise even to her. “Vespir.” (And she says it like this because she knows it is the only way to keep order—not Commander, not even ex-Commander, just Vespir. Her tone does not betray all those years of reading about her and Cleopatra in the Halcyon’s records, or the stories she’d been told. It does not give the impression of belonging to someone who might have looked up to this Commander, once.

Mari tries to force her mouth out of its frown. It half-works. “I imagine,” she continues carefully, “That you have many questions. As do I.”

There is a faint curiosity attached to the end of it, which Mari can’t quite form her throat around. 

"Speaking."

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