[P] wash me in the riverside [fall]

[Marisol]

by sword
by salt

“Dusk would be nothing without you.”

Marisol’s throat closes.

At first she cannot even meet the golden girl’s eyes. Instead, the queen turns to pick an apple from a low branch, watches every inch of its drop into the basket, gazes at the grass underfoot until all she can see is its zig-zagging pattern, a never-ending, unrolled carpet of green and brown. 

Around her, the world is picking up speed. And noise. Her ears are filled with the faint ringing of blood; she can hear her people’s laughter, and their steps crunching in the leaves; and almost she thinks she can hear the music of the spheres, a high, sweet whine, as the world keeps on turning around them. 

Mari closes her eyes against the burning vision of the grass. She breathes in deep, until her lungs are filled with the smell of bruised apples and bark. Wind blows through; it ruffles her closely cropped hair. 

When she stares at Elena, she looks—shaken. Her ears fall back, though they don’t flatten to her neck. And when she does look up her gaze is a bright, glassy grey, her eyes blown wide, almost terrified. A rock sits in her throat, fit in the curve of her neck so tightly that swallowing feels more like choking. But she manages, at least, to rasp: “You give me too much credit.” And when the words do finally escape, they’re punctuated by perhaps the faintest smile she’s ever worn.

It feels foolish to wear, an ill-fitting coat. What use does a queen have with a smile—faint or not? But through the high-speed pounding of her heart, through the quiver in her jaw and the turning of her stomach, Marisol still can’t ignore a flash of something like pride in the bottom of her chest at Elena’s words. (She knows it should mean nothing. She knows the only approval she should be seeking is Vespera’s—that she is meant to serve her god even more than her people. But still. Still.)

I accept, Elena says. In a rare moment of vulnerability, a feeling just between relief and pleasure, Marisol’s dead-girl smile grows wide and bright and flashes across her face in full force. “Good,” she says simply. And—even rarer than anything else—she presses her forehead gently against Elena’s for the briefest, sweetest moment. 

Clouds have gathered above them. The light has turned from gold to gray, and the sky is perfectly moody. Tension hangs overhead—the threat, or maybe the promise, of rain cast down like a weighted blanket.

“Blessed be the fight, Champion,”  says Marisol, and she turns back into the orchard.

“Speaking.”

credits