[P] i can't be alone with all that's on my mind

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

She watches the way Marisol paces -- mechanical, calculated, deliberate -- with pale eyes, still as a statue except for the way her muscles quiver and her hair tosses each time the wind rakes at her with ice-tipped claws. The rose quartz gems tucked into her hair chime against each other, their chains threatening to tangle together, and yet she does not step forward, does not move to stop the frantic movement. How could she, when she understands that need to keep moving, the desire to avoid standing still in a world that seemed to move too fast around her?

“Sometimes.” Often, if she were truthful, from the moment she had joined the Halcyon and learned that Marisol’s lack of Vicarius had been a break from tradition. At first it had been the desperate desire to prove herself in this strange new land, to rise above her motley origins and create something new of herself. She had spent countless nights after training with a candle burning, studying every book and scroll she could get her hands on that concerned the Halcyon, learning everything that she could to give herself an edge over the other cadets. As the time passed, however, it had become something more -- the desire to serve the Halcyon that had given her a home, the wish to be trusted as Marisol’s right hand, to help take some of the weight off the Commander’s shoulders.

She had also begun to view it as a foolish dream, something that would never come to pass, the further she had researched into the previous leadership of the Halcyon. “Both commander and vicarius have traditionally been of Terrastellan birth, though -- and even those who were not, were at least born in these lands. I always figured you would choose someone who was born here, as you were, should you have want of a Vicarius -- not the bastard child of a foreign god.” Terrastella was her home now, embedded so deeply in her heart she didn’t think she’d ever be able to leave -- but it wasn’t part of her very bones like it was for some of the cadets. Even the few demigods and immortals that showed up among the roster had been Terrastellan born, or at least born among the Solar courts.

Instead of pursuing the rabbithole that her thoughts were leading her down, she shifts so that she can shake away the static clinging to her wing feathers before she drapes it across Marisol’s back. She knows there are always eyes watching, always voices willing to gossip, and she’s angled herself just far enough away from the Commander’s side that the touch could easily be seen as support and dismissed rather than the embrace it was.

“Why do you ask?”

credits

@Marisol