[P] I know beginnings

[Marisol]

"i know endings too,
and life-in-death,
and something else
I'd rather not recall
just now."

There is no room for this anymore, whatever this is. And Marisol knows it like she knows death is coming for her, with eager black eyes and a flat, pretty smile: she knows that every passing second they stand here just talking is one more second she and Isra won’t get to kiss.

One more second they fail to remain in love. One more second her heart twists like something wild caught in a sawtooth trap. One less second left to be alive. She is hurting in the way of a wounded animal. Every muscle is coiled as if to pounce, every heartbeat rougher and deeper and louder than the last, and then she cannot hear anything (anything) but the rush of blood in her ears and the undulating noise of the market, half music and half cacophony.

Isra’s eyes, in the dim-dark, are jewels. Polished rocks of sapphire. Like the ground under her feet, how she turns it from cobblestone to smokey quartz with just a blink, just a breath: that kind of bright, magic gemstone, a specimen from way below the surface of the earth. 

Marisol swallows. Her throat is painfully, desert-air dry. Her mouth tastes like salt and iron, a nasty, earthy funk that sits like silt in the line of her gums, under her tongue, sliding all the way back until it seems to rust any part of her that is capable of speaking. And then she can only stare. Wide grey eyes, mouth just-open, everything in her crushed until it is bleeding something worse than blood. Colder. More crippling.

You should know, the Night queen starts, and Marisol thinks with some regret: I know absolutely nothing.

Nothing at all.

Not even the things I should.

She is trying to think of something to say. Anything. Picking her brain, trying and scraping the bottom of the barrel. There are infinite things Mari could respond; all of them are completely useless. It makes her feel awful. Stupid, inferior. Speechless. Stunned into silence like she is nothing more than a child, struggling under the weight of her heart, swollen heavy like cement, suddenly growing black with rot.

Her pulse is at once too slow and too fast. Too hard and too faint. She feels nauseated, light-headed. The blood is rippling in her head, beating and undulating, like so many uncontrolled waves.

Then—Isra is touching her. 

Shock. 

Nose to nose, cheek to cheek, warmth unspooling from her skin like inside her ribs there is a fire burning and beating, fighting to escape. And Marisol shudders as if she is a creature made of ice finally learning how to melt: her skin thrills, tightens, some part of her begins to understand what it means to fall apart.

“Has,” Marisol repeats softly. It sounds foreign, sharp and hard in her mouth. Cutting the soft corners of her lips. Has. And the word rings in her ears, in her head, like a bell; it rings in her bones, in the hollow of her chest, against her teeth an up into her jaw. “Not will.”

She already knows there is no good answer.

“Speaking.”

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