[P] working on my backwards walk

[Marisol]

every night i
live and die;

Marisol stretches over the length of the cushion beneath her like a cat. For a moment, everything in her is stretched out and languid, from bones to muscle to the slow and lazy beating of her heart: for a moment she is really relaxed, the tension unspooling all at once, like so much thread. For a moment the world is bearable. The gray light isn’t quite enough to keep her eyes open. It is calm and soft, and the beating of the almost-hail on the glass outside makes a noise like a drum or the tattoo of a heartbeat. A noise that could lull her to sleep, if she let it. Maybe even if she didn’t mean to. 

I can squeeze, Izzie says. Mari half-smiles, a drawling curl of the lip that flashes just the barest slice of teeth. She wants to say something. Or, as the seconds tick on, anything. something fitting for a girl in her position, not too friendly but not totally frigid, not overly familiar or not familiar at all. There are so many rules now, even more than the army of self-imposed ones she had already been living under since being titled Commander. Queen just adds another layer to it.

She watches with sleepy, dark eyes as the scribe rearranges her papers. A stack is squared against the edge of the table, then taken apart again. Two sheafs are laid on top of one another. A feather pen goes rolling off the table. Mari’s ear flickers as she hears it hit the floor, but she is distracted by a dull, childish dread as she looks over the thickness of the stack and realizes, too slowly, she’s the one who’ll have to look over and organize them later. A little sigh escapes her then. A whoof of warm breath that stirs the curled edges of the papers.

But then the ochre-eyed pegasus settles into Marisol’s side, permission only half-asked for, and she is at once quite distracted from the minute shifting of the reports still laid across the table. Izzie’s skin against hers is strikingly warm. Her hair curls up against Marisol’s nose, the mixed red-and-white strands smelling of dust and old ink and something else made for comfort. The Commander blinks and leans slightly back in sharp surprise—something like electricity, both exciting and uncomfortable, jolts right through her and pricks the hairs on the back of her neck.

“It’s hard to visit,” Mari sighs, half joking and half despairing, “when I already live there."   

“Speaking.”  

credits