[P] to be braver

[Marisol]

"Good sense comes the hard way.
And the grace of the gods
(I'm pretty sure)
is a grace that comes by violence."

When the raven arrives, it feels like nothing more or less than a bad dream.

How can Marisol be sure she is awake? Already night is here, the world gone silent, and the sky steely with a thick film of clouds and foggy rain. The candles in her windowsill barely make a dent against the darkness. She is reading when it comes, but dozing off, only retaining bits and pieces, the pages and the carefully printed words swimming every time her eyes flutter open and closed. The soft drumming of the rain is better than music; her heartbeat is slow, so slow, and her blood has finally ceased boiling.

But then there is a sound. A sharp, hard knock. Mari startles upward, and from the other side of the window a bird is staring with beady dark eyes, a limp letter tied to its leg. Rain sloughs off all those layers of black feathers as it sits impatiently on the windowsill. A moment of dark, cool silence, then—of candlelight flickering, of the sovereign’s heart pounding in her chest. 

Another knock of the beak against the glass. 

She shoots up, pushes the window open and somewhat carelessly pulls the letter from the birds leg; within a heartbeat the bird is off again, frazzled and maybe a little irritated by her unusual shortness. But Marisol is already distracted by the loopy script and the name signed at the bottom.

---

You have many questions, Anselm remarks as they pick their way down toward the stormy beach. More than usual, sighs Mari. 

The sky is still overcast, the world colored in moody mauves and grays. On the thin strip of sand below, Mari’s pulse races at the sight of Orestes, an ambiguous dark blot   buffeted inconsistently by the rolling waves. Her heart beats a warning against the inside of her throat. Her blood races; by the time the Commander hits the sand her whole body is on-and-off, patchily numb, strangled by adrenaline and pain and anger. 

Marisol is trembling when she comes to a stop, overwhelmed and underimpressed by the sight of him, nothing more than a man with his feet in the sea.

“Where,” she asks softly, “have you been?”

“Speaking.”

credits