[P] closed doors and open windows [marisol]

[Marisol]

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

From the comfort of the tower Mari watches a body walk, so small against the white ground, and wonders what, exactly, the girl is looking for. 

It is bitterly cold outside, windy, and the streets are slicked with ice; whatever she is trying to accomplish, the sovereign muses, it must be important. The streets are otherwise empty. The world is otherwise silent, lacking the usual song of birds or children laughing. Even Marisol herself doesn’t go out in this kind of weather, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. (Although it could be pointed out she doesn’t even really feel the cold anymore. It’s closer to a force of habit.)

Her office, nestled up almost against the roof of the citadel, is a disaster. Papers are strewn all over the floor, books piled into precarious towers. Candles burn shakily against the incoming darkness. Anselm is laying sleepily in a pile of pen nibs, a white comma close to the fire that burns in the mantle, utterly unconcerned with the frazzled way his bonded is sifting through paperwork, history books, festival receipts and everything else that been foisted on her to complete before the next solstice.

You could at least help, Mari grumbles through their link. Anselm lazily blinks open just one hazel eye, the color of which is almost bleached out by the way the firelight plays over it, and closes it again without responding. 

The room is closing in. The walls are folding forward; everything is getting smaller, pressing in. The sovereign flashes her head out of the window for a moment and inhales lungful after lungful of cold, sharp air, so cold it makes her shudder, so sharp it sends a prickle of pain into her chest. She closes her eyes and drinks in the wind.

When she opens her eyes again, feeling a little less dead, she looks down to find the stranger waiting, statue-still, at the base of the tower. The distance between them, completely vertical, doesn’t seem all that huge. She could just—fall.

Marisol holds her breath, unsure. Then, resigned, she trots down the steps and into the street.

Outside it’s bitterly cold; as soon as she steps outside she is buffeted by a strong gust of prickly wind, feathers flattened against their will, hair bristling in the breeze. The girl waiting in the street is only a touch smaller than she is, painted in bright gold like sunlight (burnished, now, in the purplish darkness). “By Her hand,” Mari calls, her voice half-lost in the wind. “Come inside.”

“Speaking.”

credits