he who wants loses everything.
When the stranger says her name, Marisol shivers unwittingly: something about it strikes a chord in her she wasn’t expecting. Her steps slow. Anselm notes her hesitance, and gently he presses his warm, silky cheek against her leg, as if to say go forward, go forward. The weight of his head feels something like a good luck charm, leaching warmth into her dark skin. Somewhat begrudgingly she does step closer and dips her head to the woman in greeting.
But that chord is stricken again as Marisol notes the stranger’s stance, the soft warmth of her eyes. It all looks and sounds like someone she’s met before—more than the usual sense of familiarity in running across another Novus native, something closer to creepiness, like Marisol has suddenly lost her memory but knows that the thing she needs is just, just out of reach.
With a rattling inhale her dark ears prick forward and she listens. The light from the stars and the moon is just faint enough that Terrastella’s streets look a little unreal, as if painted out of a children’s book or an old, old museum collection. I am Araxes, the woman says, and her ears fall back against her mane, and then, unbidden—
Marisol thinks of a Denoctian with a long, dark braid spotted like a Dalmation; she thinks of two small, fluttering wings against the twisted-color hair; she thinks of Solterra’s warden and the fear and suspicion that had broken out when it came to light that there would be a child from both the enemy courts.
“Araxes,” she repeats. The syllables and familiar and easily worn on her tongue. “Have—have we not met before? My apologies. I—“ Her dark brows furrow, half concern and half embarrassment. “I thought that you were someone else.”
Or perhaps she is someone else, and whatever parts of Araxes she sees in this woman are no more than mere coincidence, a strange overlapping of time and space reverting back to a situation that has already happened.
Either way, Marisol is holding her breath just a little.
![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
