[P] your voice is wild and simple

[Marisol]

you are untranslatable into any one tongue.

She is surprised at the comfort she feels in this study, foreign and familiar at once. She is surprised at how the huskiness in his voice almost has the power (already) to make her shiver. She is surprised at how much her heart responds to the soft, boyish smile that curls his dark lips—how it starts to beat louder, and how it skips against her teeth.

She is surprised at how easy it is for her to shed her titles, and for him to shed his, and and most of all how warm her skin is turning in the dusty light of his office under his true-blue eyes. The room smells of old books and blown-out candles; it smells like the perfume of the desert and the sea, intermingled. Mari breathes deep and her chest burns with the salt of it.

And then he starts to recite that poem,

And Marisol’s heart stops completely, weightless like a feather in whatever, and then it sinks like a rock passing straight through her chest and down to the floor.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines, and Mari’s face lights up like a child’s; I loved her, and she can’t hold back trembling, sheepish smile; love is so short, he says, and though it makes her heart hurt, though sorrow rises in her like so much salt, an equal part of her is already in love with the song of his voice and the way he looks at her like she is something more than a shield or a spear.  

“Ah,” she says. She is smiling and yet her voice threatens to break, so low and unsteady it’s become. “Neruda.”

And now he is staring at her with those pretty eyes, blue like the sea, blue like magic, and Mari’s pulse is trembling in her throat like the wingbeats of a hummingbird, and when she does meet his eyes it is shyly, through a curl of dark lashes, and something that is almost a smile but not quite, an expression that hovers between interest and uncertainty, warmth and caution. But when he speaks—oh, she listens. She listens with rapt attention, with large, curious eyes and her dark ears pricked forward, all the lines of her body earnest and relaxed. She listens, not with the face of a warrior but the look of a girl.

 I was prophesied to save them but I could not.

I have been given new powers and a new people.

I believe very much in duty.

I love beautiful things. I hate the cruel; I hate injustice.

She looks at him with her lips half-parted, comically, tragically surprised, and she wants to say we have so much in common, too much; what do you not know about me, then? but she does not.

Instead she rearranges the sharp lines of her face into a faint blue smile and meets his gaze with warmth, head titled slightly, eyes still searching. There is so much to talk about and so much she wants to say and, for the most part, those things do not intersect. How does she decide? Between these two duties—between wanting and giving—between the things that claw at her heart and then at her head? She can’t, she can’t. There will never be enough time, and now it’s all slipping away, and she’s running out of things to say and the will to say them and the time to ask—

There is the sound of hoofsteps on the staircase and she breathes a tight sigh of relief.

The young Appaloosa who enters the room bears a tray of teas and water and baked goods; he does not meet her eyes, only pauses to address her as Sovereign, and though Mari smiles at him there is a new wave of pain wracking her chest.

She is not meant to be Queen, not meant to be Sovereign or Lady or anything royal. It should be Commander. 

It should be Commander, she thinks, and blinks down at the ground for a moment, and tries so, so hard not to let any tears even begin to form in the corners of her eyes. Breathe. Her chest is tight; her throat is hard with salt. But she manages to breath. She manages to clear the film in her gaze. She manages to steady her voice, and by the time Orestes is speaking again she is able to look up at him (and does) with her usual calm neutrality. Breathe. And somehow she does.

Marisol Ibarra of Terrastella is perhaps the world’s greatest actor, and if she does her job right, no one will ever have to know.

“And I as well,” she admits. A brief pause. Then again, in a voice solid and steady: “I will not pretend to know how to help Solterra recover from the tyrant king, but I do promise that I and my people will do what we can to assist you in working toward justice. I think… I think a public alliance would serve both our courts well. We would present a stronger image to the other courts. Terrastella is a nation made for healers, and I worry…” she swallows, inhales. “I would like to ensure that no one misconstrues that for weakness. We might balance each other, in a way. Your soldiers could teach ours new methods and spar with them; our healers could teach yours of medicine, and the Ilati of the ancient ways that have kept their kind alive through untold disaster. I would extend to you and your people an invitation to our midwinter celebration and Vespera’s festivals. Well, I would do that anyway. But.” She flashes him a smile, slightly more comfortable than the last.

“My people and your people both deserve to be protected. I think—if not this agreement I’ve suggest, if I am indeed overstepping, in which case please know that I apologize—mutually assured peace would be, at least, the place to start. And perhaps the exchange of some literature. I could begin now.”

For half a second Marisol bites her lip—as if in desire, as if in uncertainty. It is a strange look on her, ill-fitting, a bizarre feeling, even to her. And then she is straight-faced again, meeting his gaze with some measure of composure, and trying to appear regal in the face of the thing that curls in her gut like fire. She wants to ask: say yes, for the good of us both. Say yes, so that we can move forward. Say yes, so that we, here, will not have to talk any longer of disaster.

Say yes, so I can move on to tell you all the poems I know about love.

"Speaking."

queen marisol

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