[P] your voice is wild and simple

[Marisol]

you are untranslatable into any one tongue.

Marisol feels like a child again. Again. Well, not quite—she was not a child, not even when soft and small with youth, not even when her wings were too weak to fly with, not even when her parents still cooed over her like a baby. Even then she hadn’t been a child; responsibility choked her from the moment she was born. There had been no novelty to it and very little excitement. The bright-white feeling of a pleasure just found, teeth filmed with sugar, a heartbeat that did not stutter—foreign concepts. Nothing new and nothing good. There were no playdates. No running and laughing. Just drills and spear-throws and sleeping cold on the floor of the barracks, and the horns blaring in the morning, and the light coming pink through the windows.

So to say again is not accurate. She feels like a child, then, for the first time.

Like a child in that things are new and clean, that they are not recognizable, that the thing she feels fluttering in her chest like butterfly wings is a feeling she has either never had or never been able to put a name to. Like a child in that, whatever this thing is, she has no handle on it yet.

The Commander blows out a short, mild breath and watches it ruffle the loose leaves of the teas in front of them. A ripple crosses the surface of a saucer of milk. It smells like so many different things in this sunny room, like dust and saffron and black tea, like caramel and ginger and sour lemon; it stings the inside of her nostrils and burns deep into the back of her head, drilling and spinning, though most parts of it she finds pleasant. It doesn’t smell like this at home, she wants to say, and almost does. These are not things I know. The only thing familiar about this place is the books: laid like bricks, dusty and solid, spined in gold.

Home smells like home. Sea salt, clean linen, lavender. And it feels like the hole in her chest that pulses worse every passing moment that Marisol is away. It feels like an ache—like gnashing, grinding teeth. In her head, she sees it. Home. The gentle crashing of the waves on the sand. The rising and falling of the blue-shadowed mountains. The lights sparkling on the wet streets, the glitter over everything, the spell of spices and sweet alcohol. She cannot imagine what is like to be someone like Orestes, always changing, always traveling. She cannot imagine what it is like to shed not only your skin but your brain, your tribe, your home.

How is that not like dying?

There is a long silence after he finishes speaking. A long, uncertain silence, as if neither of them quite know what to say or how to act. Finally Marisol says “I am glad to hear it,” sincere if a little soft,  and then with a little smile begins to pour steaming-hot water into her teacup, then into his. A cloud rises up between them, then disappears, like a breath in cold air. “Our fields are quite good for blackberries. I will send some soon; I think you’ll like them.”

You would like everything about it. The ocean, the fields—Mari’s vision is starting to blur, a glittering, silver-red gauze. Her lips prickle from sharp teeth beginning to come uncovered. I could show you the sea again. I could show you what it’s like to be out of the sun. Unbidden, she thinks of Amaroq and what it felt like to drown. Unbidden, she wonders whether they have become the same kind of monster.

You would like it. You would love it.

Mari licks her teeth and swallows her pride.

The office is still for a long moment, stiller than a held breath or a bated heartbeat. Orestes’ voice is a balm in the dry air. And she laughs at his joke, bright and clear, brief and happy; a flash of white teeth, a blink, a sheepish turn of the head, quick and easy. Laughing does not come easy to her. It does not even feel particularly good. But it is the right thing to do, she knows—the thing Orestes wants—and even she cannot take that from him, this boy with the golden tattoos and the terribly loud heart. (She could not take anything from him, she thinks, or would not. And that scares her.)

(It is not the kind of thing a Commander should fall prey to.) 

“My favorite?” she repeats, as if the question is incomprehensible, but of course she already knows the answer. Yet Marisol wavers. Until now there has been dignity to save. Until now there has been a way to turn back. If she tells him, that will all be gone. If she tells him—

Marisol sips her tea. Steam curls against her seal-soft skin. She says quietly:

“I want to go with the one I love.

I do not want to calculate the cost.

I do not want to think about whether it's good.

I do not want to know whether he loves me.

I want to go with whom I love.”

"Speaking."

queen marisol

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