[FTB] to make every moment holy

[Marisol]

I will follow you down
until the sound of my voice will haunt you

For the moment there is nothing but this: 

Orestes’ breath on her hip. 

His mouth, a prayer against the dark velvet of her neck.

His voice, a deep blue, equal parts soft and lurid, rumbling into her ear and then all the way down to the bones it breaks cleanly into pieces.

For a moment all the world falls away and even Marisol’s mind goes blank. Birds sing sharp and sweet from the branches of trees whose leaves have gone red, and yellow, and orange; this is all she can hear, except for the crunch of their steps in the dying grass and the soft huff of her own breaths. All together it sounds almost like another song.

For a moment she is focused on him, him, him, only him, more intently and more lovingly and more fearfully than she has ever focused on anyone else; focused so certainly and passionately that it makes her sick; so hopelessly that she nearly stumbles when he reaches out to touch her and then rushes away, as if in that split second she has forgotten how to stand on her own, and the world seems to slough away underfoot, like a bad dream being pulled off a sleep-tapestry.  

Marisol wants to say it then, although it could not be without crying. I love you.

But the sentence is not quite finished—not meant to end there at all, even if it would be easier to pretend so. 

Admit it, foolish girl, and find the real words: I love you more than I could ever possibly be okay with.

She won’t. Or can’t. It doesn’t matter; they’ve fallen apart already, and Orestes is nothing more than a flash of fool’s gold winding through this copse of dying trees,  a body made of salt and seafoam. Her mouth feels suddenly and terribly dry. Her gaze cannot find a good place to land, because to look at him feels like submitting to death, and to look anywhere else can only be an affront to whatever made him so divine. Perhaps this is love—two terrible choices wrapped up in gold ribbon. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter, and never will, how terrible the choices are, as long as they are tied in that particular knot.

Marisol slows to a walk and blinks against the falling sun; the world has been cast now in a misty haze of warm, prismatic colors, split into soft crystals by the fog and illuminating every surface they touch with a glow that looks near-godly. Orestes closes the distance between them with steps as soft as a ghost’s, and ver the strong rise of his shoulder she catches sight of a waterfall which briefly makes her lose her breath. (Mari’s travels outside of Terrastella are rare, and so the whole world has still—for her—retained her novelty. Nevermind the fact that for most of her life she couldn’t have imagined being caught at Amare dead or alive.) In the shifting light his eyes are not just blue but green, gold, red, opalescent. The intensity in them makes her shudder like she’s been caught in a cold wind; and when their gazes meet fully, something in her stomach curls like a snake ready to strike.

He steps forward, and that thing lashes out, all teeth. 

He steps forward and Marisol is paralyzed, starting from the chest, and spiderwebbing out until she cannot move, cannot even really breathe, for the way his gaze settles on her like an anchor and turns the air between them heavy with heat. And when he steps forward again, she does not move. Does not flinch as her warrior’s body begs to, or lean away as her child’s body wants to. Even when he reaches out to touch her—

Even when he reaches out to touch her, and the soft velvet of his mouth brushes a layer of dark, glossy feathers no one else has ever touched before except in violence, a place Marisol calls more sacred than a shrine, and instead of feeling violated she feels wanted. 

Warm to the bone. Drowning in quicksand. Heat building against her hips.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body.

She swallows, roughly and with difficulty. It is not the first time she has heard this voice out of someone’s mouth—a voice made of alcohol and perfume, made for bedrooms and dark alleys—but this is the first time it has cut her so quick and so deep. 

And I want my grasp of things to be true before you.

Now his breath skates the place where her pulse hammers hardest against her neck, and though Mari’s ear flickers wildly, the reflex beyond her control by now, she leans delicately forward as if the heat of it isn’t quite enough, and it isn’t. Maybe nothing ever will be, she thinks, now that she knows it can feel like this. Maybe it’s worth it anyway. Maybe this is the thing, and maybe he is the person, who will finally hold her together instead of breaking her apart, and maybe this is the relationship that will last her to the grave, maybe this will be the father of her children—maybe this is love (no, it is). Maybe this is life in its entirety, the way he looks at her, like a star swallowing the universe.

Marisol.

She shivers. And breaks.

I pledge myself to you.

And breaks.

 It is the first pledge in all my lives made not of duty, but of love. I am yours.

And when she looks up at him, his breath stirring the fine dark hairs on her cheek, his gaze brighter than the sun, she cannot manage more than a sound between a gasp and a sigh that says without saying anything: me too, me too, me too. 

Marisol presses her forehead to the crook of his neck and says, her eyes closed, her voice soft as a prayer—“I did not understand the stories until now.”

“Speaking.”

credits