[P] please do

[Marisol]

 who's the fool who wears the crown?

Marisol thinks she recognizes the look on this girl’s face. 

It is a look of softness, the strange co-existence of hope and fear. Somewhere underneath it lies loneliness, too. It is a look she sees often on the faces of her cadets, and in the dark eyes that look back from her mirror; a look that makes her heart twist and ache in her chest when she meets the stranger’s warm eyes and is overcome by a crashing, choking wave of empathy.

How can someone be so alone?

Anselm slinks out of the crowd and presses himself against Mari’s back legs. He is shockingly warm, his thick fur bristling to new heights, radiating heat that seeps into her dark skin. Marisol flicks her tail over his narrow back, perhaps to comfort him or, equally as likely, to hold him back. 

The three of them are their own little world, their own fragile bubble. Just feet away their court is celebrating, raucous and gleeful, in a way that is typically not ascribed to their court—a kind of joy that is not subdued, nor thoughtful, nor restrained. It is wide, flashing smiles; eyes that glint with mischief; spilled drinks, dances made from rapid twirls and songs that are sung in voices bubbling with laughter and the heat of the close-packed bodies always growing stronger.

By Her hand. The greeting is returned, and if Marisol’s dark ears prick up in surprise then the movement is overshadowed by a flashing, quicksilver smile. The night around them, the darkness, is interrupted by spots of firelight and the glint of gold and silver jewelry and the flare of the queen’s white heel, gleaming so much brighter than everything else.

She steps forward—a quick, fluid movement that snaps their distance in half. “The equinox,” Mari explains. “The longest night of the year. It’s superstition. But a good excuse to celebrate. I’m Marisol,” she adds, unthinkingly; she has already been distracted by the noise and fervor of her unruly court, watching with a sharp eye to make sure no one has been hurt. 

Yet she is calm. Still and mostly unfazed. The sweetness of this stranger is something like a comfort.
"Speaking."

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