[P] whom the gods love die young

[Marisol]

“Light came from the east,
bright guarantee of God,
and the waves went quiet;
I could see headlands
and buffeted cliffs.
Often, for undaunted courage,
fate spares the man
it has not already marked.”

It seems almost impossible to believe in love after the life Marisol has lived. 

But if she could see—past the black fog in her eyes, past the pulse of pain in her chest, past the cool, slick feeling of blood pouring down her shoulders—the way Elena bolts toward her, pure panic and prayer and adrenaline, she might believe in it again.

As it is, pain blinds her. Elena is invisible, a shooting star lightyears away; the comet-trail she leaves is nowhere close to meeting the hospital yet. Her bright gold body is still an echo, a far-away suggestion, of what it should be. Perhaps, even worse than knowing Elena is too far away to hear her scream, Marisol does not even know she is coming.

For all she knows—she is dying. And alone.

Her head is filled with the black hum of honeybees: a hundred stingers, Two hundred wings. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, she thinks. Buzzzz. Isn’t it always the queen who suffers the most?

A thousand stingers, now—two thousand wings. The swarm of them weighs more than she can possibly stand. When she falls to her knees in the cold, soft, dirt, Marisol’s dark head comes crashing down too. She falls against the marsh ground like a stone into a well. For far too many long, painful minutes, she lays in the grass and mud, her body as heavy as something already dead. Listening: 

The buzz of the bees. The cool, dark wind as it rushes through the trees. The quiet bustle of the hospital, too far away to be of any use to a girl who can’t walk, much less fly. Marisol lays in the grass and mud and listens. Her not-quite-living body is a statue too realistic to be comfortable.

And, as she listens, she hears the ominous hum of the insects turn into staticky, not quite words: Oh gods. Oh gods.

If she were any more awake, she might say the same thing. She might have even thought earlier, in those minutes-that-might-be-hours pressed up against the dirt, of sending a prayer up to Vespera. If a Goddess is made for anything, isn’t it for hearing people beg Her for mercy? But Marisol is so dazed and so pained that the only thing she can come up with in response is, I’m not sure there are any. 

A beat passes, and the voice does not come again. 

If there are, Mari thinks blurrily, they aren’t listening. 

Bloods pulses in her ear. The sound of it, like creeks rushing over a rocky bank, briefly overshadows the buzzing of the bees. And for one brief, incandescent moment, the sound of her that blood-rush convinces her, fully, that she is alive. Alive, alive, alive; Marisol’s gray eyes flutter stubbornly open, and—

---

“You can’t leave her here, Marisol.”

The woman in the doorway is staring at her. Her face is a mask of fury and concern—brows furrowed, her eyes alight, ears pinned to her neck.

The girl on the doorstep is staring at her, too. She has a gaze made of blue silk; her skin is like stone, and one of her legs is dipped to the heel in white. 

“I have to,” Marisol says, but she has the voice of a child still, and it breaks with effort. The girl on the doorstep looks up at her, and her face is eager, unbearably sweet. Pain washes over her. It crashes into her in one long wave; it leaves gashes and cuts all over her dark skin; it rips the joint of her wing clean in half, and she screams.

“You can’t—“

---

Marisol’s gray eyes flutter stubbornly open, and Elena is sleeping against her shoulder.

For a split second, she is more confused that intrigued, more startled than in pain. Where are they? The sky is so dark, and Elena’s cheek is a sunbeam on her skin. There are no clouds, but Marisol swears she can feel the weight of the sky falling down, down, down; can feel the rain and the mist seeping over her body; there are snowflakes cluttering her eyelashes, but she hasn’t seen snow in months.

Then everything comes flooding in, one nightmare crashing into the next, and Marisol’s pain—full-body, in some places dull, in others sharp or burning—is nothing compared to the lightning of her panic.

It slashes through her in one ice-cold, sword-sharp moment, and she struggles to sit up as fast as she can manage. There is a flash of pain as one bruise compounds—a terrible noise as a new stitch pops. Overwhelmed by dread and fear, Marisol heaves. She glances around in quick panic, but there is nothing here, not even another bed, no one but her and Elena. The room smells clean and terrible, like ash and cotton. And the bile that rises in her throat, when she coughs in pain, tastes like poppy seeds and passionfruit. It burns a long trail down her tongue and through her nose.

“Elena,” she rasps. It hurts to speak; blood runs from the corners of her mouth; still, though, she sounds like someone else. An alien. A demon inhabiting the wrong body. “Listen. For just a minute. Please—“

Marisol coughs again, and the floor rushes up to meet her in a line of dark fog.

“Speaking.”

credits