[AW] strong and bound for glory, cursed with a thousand stories;

[Marisol]

"this hour I tell things in confidence. 

I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."

He’s watching me, Anselm remarks through their bond, his “voice” strained with a little bit of irritation. Marisol answers with a metaphysical sigh—I know.

She’s suspicious of why, exactly, Anselm might be the one to hold his attention. Should he not be more concerned with making a decent impression on his queen? But some part of her is relieved. With his attention caught by the dog, she is left with a little more room to look him up and down, to narrow her gray eyes in scrutiny and wonder what he’s doing here, why she’s never seen him before. 

Mari screws one eye up against the sting of the breeze, ignoring the brief flash of panic the introduction of a blind spot induces in her by rationalizing that even if he makes a move, Anselm sits like a stone between them. His tall, almost transparently-white ears shift forward; the pale, greenish yellow eyes glint in the cliff’s half-light. Though his posture is stiff, his dark mouth still curves in a relaxed pant and his tail wags lazily, stirring pebbles up from the cold ground. 

I think I’d make people say it every time. Mari’s lip quirks into a sharp smile, quick as lightning, a flash of insolent humor that is there and then gone within a blink. Almost imperceptibly—even to her—her opinion of him changes. It swings, but she cannot tell in which direction. Does she respect his honesty? Or is she turned off by the ease with which he says it, the knowledge that this kind of ego is almost never an act? Both? She lets out a little snort before responding, amused and bewildered. “I certainly get tired of your Majesty,” she says dryly, “though maybe not Commander.”

That one still feels like a part of her. She can’t help thinking it always will. When a new king comes, when the world falls apart, when a stranger asks her who she is—it will always be Commander, not Sovereign. It sits on her like warpaint. Like a second skin.

“That’s Anselm,” she adds. “He’s a... new friend.” As if in response, the dog’s mouth falls further open in a smiling pant, tongue lolling into the cold rush of the wind; and the thick carpet of his white fur swirls in that same breeze until he is but a cloud held down to the earth by his duty to the queen.

“Speaking.”

credits