[FTB] to make every moment holy

[Marisol]

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

This is a man she has never seen before. A man she has dreamt of, maybe; years ago. When she didn’t know what he looked like, the sound of his voice, or anything but the way he would look at her, with eyes like fire and his mouth twisted around that word: love. The way he would look at her, like she was the only good thing—the only important thing—left in the world. 

She could never have expected it would be him. The sun king. A foreigner. But here, now—under the rustling trees, just inside the roar of the waterfall and the rainbow freckles of sunlight coming off the foaming pond—here, now, looking at him, Marisol cannot remember at all what it was like to expect anyone else.

There’s only one thing left. The Commander rolls her tongue around her teeth and tastes the sting of salt. She stares up at Orestes with eyes that are less the grey of stone, now, and more the grey of ash, still smoking, and her whole body feels as though it is wracked by the force of her heart thrashing like a caught animal against her chest.

And he is gold in every sense of the word, a golden thing in a golden world, shining with golden light. When Marisol (gently, too gently) press her mouth to the tattoo on his shoulder shaped like a sun, it burns against her so hot that she almost jerks back; but the pain of it is not really pain at all, and so she stands her ground. His cloud-white hair drifts over her neck as he reaches out to touch her wing. And for a moment she debates saying something—pointing out just how much it means that she would let him so close to what literally keeps her off the ground. But that moment passes, and Marisol is too overwhelmed to do anything but listen to the sound of her own breath and his, rasping already with effort.

His mouth makes a track over her neck, her shoulder, down the curve of her spine. Every inch it passes makes her shiver one more time. 

“What spring does with the cherry trees,” Marisol repeats, dazed; and her mouth curls into a half-smile made hazy with desire and contentedness. And when she laughs it is all the ringing of church bells in Terrastella, all the beautiful clashing of swords in Solterra, somewhere between shy and sweet and totally unafraid.  “So—you want to make me blush. Well. You’re getting there.”

Teasingly she flicks the nimble tip of one wing against his cheek.

“Speaking.”

credits