[P] When Tides are Low

[Marisol]

 who's the fool who wears the crown?

Dalmatia’s face screws up in disappointment, and oh, it is an ugly thing.

It sends Marisol’s heart plummeting, sinking through her chest and then through her feet and then through the rock and all the way down to the sea, where she can feel it beating in time with the crash of the waves, all its little cuts stinging from the salt. Suddenly she is sick. Weak. The blood falls away, and her head is overcome by a long, dark rush, something deeper and warmer than sleep that she is very close to succumbing to.

But the ex-vicarius’ face grows so bitter it makes Marisol’s teeth itch: she grinds her teeth until her jaw seems to cement, and something hard and dark glitters in the cold gray of her eyes. 

All at once her pulse comes back to her and it slams into her chest with a force she has not felt in weeks. Suddenly she is burning with heat. She is burning and burning with something indignant, something that could maybe be called rage, because Dalmatia has not been here: she has not seen the way their world has crumbled. The people they have lost. She does not know anything of the flood or that their goddess came down to greet them. Dalmatia does not know, she was not here—and yet she speaks like she is still the one in charge, like she has say over the Unit.

Her throat is rough, but she still swallows. Her nostrils flare, wide and pink, in suppressed frustration. What the hell took you so long then? Dalmatia asks in a voice that rings with derision, and Marisol gnashes her teeth and squares her shoulders and says carefully, coolly, almost with love: “You forget yourself, Dalmatia.”

The air that surrounds them has somehow become even more frigid. The cold wind sinks its teeth into her thin coat and shakes, shakes, shakes. Its needle-teeth are pinned to her shoulders, the rough scrape of salt pushing the chill even deeper into her muscles until she is almost shaking, half from the chill and half from the rage that is still building, building, building. I am Commander, Marisol thinks bitterly, and queen besides. 

She wants to say: you have been gone many years, and probably for good reason.

She wants to say: I have not been your apprentice for a long, long time.

Instead she steadies her breath and says, “It seems… Cicero… is also back. I am going to find him firstly and interrogate him secondly. And then I will kill him.”

Then her dark lips are interrupted by a cold, awkward smile, more anticipation than any real satisfaction.

"Speaking."

credits