[P] i'll be fine, i'm alright, it's my body

[Marisol]

dying moon
keep me up
keep me waiting

Marisol is charmed by this girl’s lack of fear. It is something she does not see often: her people are a fearful one, healthily suspicious often bordering onf suspicion. She does not even see it often in her cadets. But that she cannot berate them for, either, because some fear is healthy. Fear of death. Fear of failure. And fear of the Commander is what keeps them in line, so she cannot condone that kind of boldness, either.

But Juniper is a little older than her usual recruit pool, a little wiser, a little more mature. She does not wilt under Marisol’s gray gaze like everyone else; it looks as though Juniper hardly feels it at all, the weighted, arrow-head sharp slate stare more like a pesky fly to her than the bite of a snake, as so many others seem to take it. Despite herself, the Commander is a little impressed. She likes the way Juniper looks at her—less scared than intent, less foolish than warm—and as they stand together in the field, the suspicion in Marisol’s gaze slowly fades, replaced by a grudging respect.

She swishes her tail behind her absent-mindedly. Now the air is filled with a new smell of grass, stirred up by the movement, and the air is briefly interrupted by the sound of the stalks rustling together. Nothing is lost unless you let it be so, Juniper says—

And Marisol can’t help smiling. But it’s not totally real. Something about the tilt is off. Something in it feels a little stilted, if not actually cold. Everything about me is lost, she thinks. It is not a condemnation; it is merely a fact, and the weight of it rattles around in her ribcage like an organ has come loose and is now clawing, insistently, at the bones and bars of its cage. Everything about me is lost, and only Vespera knows whose damn fault it is.

She clears her throat. Shakes her head. For a moment her body is overrun with a wave of hateful cold, worse than frostbite, worse than falling into the sea in winter: it stuns her into silence, into breathlessness, into a stupor unbecoming of a general. For a moment she thinks she will be caught in her lie for good.

But Marisol has always been a good liar. So she blinks, she straightens up, she pulls herself together, all of it in time to listen to Juniper’s speech with her ears pricked forward and gaze newly brightened. With a terse, carefully perfected smile, Marisol matches Juniper’s bow with one of her own, swinging one wing toward to the dirt and casting it ahead of her face like a veil.

By the time she pulls herself up from behind the curtain of feathers, she is wearing a real grin, bright and wide. 

“Well, then,” she says matter-of-factly. “Come with me.”

And still wearing her prideful grin, Marisol beckons her back toward the Halcyon barracks. 

credits