[P] Discovery

[Marisol]

  who's the fool who wears the crown?

Marisol breezes through the halls with her usual sense of urgency, though really, there is nothing pressing to be done. Instead she is in search of an old Ilati scroll she will ask to be transcribed again before the ink turns old-white and the parchment itself falls to pieces. Something about an obelisk, about a home made in the deepest depths of the swamp. Something that should be rewritten before it’s completely forgotten.

The castle is teeming with activity. Conversations bleed through the stone walls and seep from under closed doorways. Courtiers are hanging wreaths and ribbons over doorways, splashing conifers with ornaments. The open kitchen has filled the citadel with smells of winter—apples, anise, cinnamon—and it is followed by the clattering sound of pots and pans, knives and spoons, as the chefs and bakers laugh their way through preparing a feast for their city. Part of Marisol is aching for some quiet; the other part of her is glad that her people are still alive, this much so. 

Mari’s muscles are aching and sore, a reminder of the hours she spent training yesterday, hurling spears to relieve the anger, the stress, the shoulder-crushing weight of sovereignty. But it’s a good kind of ache—a memoir, a testament to the fact that she is still here and still strong.

Silently, the Commander shoulders her way into the library. It looks and smells as it always does, like an undisturbed piece of the past. Dusty light filters in through one of the tall, shuttered windows, and the air is filled with the smell of old books and blown-out candles, a smell that Marisol draws in deep and tries to hold, the smell of calm, of childhood, of being alone.

Only—there is someone else here. 

Marisol stops, slowly. Whoever this is, she does not recognize them, which is… strange. The stranger wears a skin like the night sky, black studded with pinpricks of stars, and her wild, tangled hair is the silver of a full moon. “By Her hand,” the Commander offers, mostly pleasant, by way of greeting; she dips her head in a silent nod, too, and waits to be acknowledged.

"Speaking."

credits