[P] working on my backwards walk

[Marisol]

every night i
live and die;

Hearing Izzie’s laugh relaxes her somewhat. For the brief moment that it rings through the still air, they are back to normalcy. They are friends again, or something like it. The world is easy and quiet, peaceful. It’s the way things were before all… this. Something beats its wings in Marisol’s chest. It’s thrilling and lighter than air, and the breeze it stirs up rises all the way into Mari’s throat, then the back of her mouth, the cold of it settling like frost in between her teeth.

Outside, the wind is howling, dark and savage, through the streets. Hail beats insistently against the windows, like a child throwing its fists in a tantrum; as Mari watches the weather rage outside, she is afraid, for just a sliver of a second, that the stained glass which colors the street outside might break. In her mind’s eye, she can already see it breaking: cracks growing like spiderwebs, colored glass seeping into the streets. Art destroyed by the roiling storm. Her dark ears flicker rapidly as the clinking of rain and ice grows louder and faster, drowning out the way the scribe’s laugh fades slowly into silence. Or maybe just helping it along.

“I can’t,” Mari counters, lackadaisical. “Believe it, I mean.” Letting out a little sigh, the Commander focuses on trying for a posture of relaxation, legs folded neatly against her sides and wings laid against her back; by the time Izzie finally turns to look at her (even though her yellow gaze is still skittish), she looks and feels about ready to doze off, lulled into sleepiness by the tattoo of rain on the streets and and the gentle sound of pages being shuffled throughout the room. 

But now is not the time or place for a nap, so she works hard to stay awake, blinking up at Ismene with drowsy gray eyes. The note of sorrow—is it even self-disgust?—in the scribe’s voice makes something in Mari’s hear squeeze and hurt, a pang of sympathy, or, at worst, just pity. “You realize,” the sovereign offers finally, “your chances of getting a tongue-lashing are significantly lower now that I’m in charge of them.”

She smiles just a little, a dry and wily thing. Real humor is hard to come by these days. For a moment she muses on the right thing to say next, the right way to convince Ismene to stay.

But when she glances outside again at the storm, she doesn’t think it’ll be a problem. 

“Speaking.”

credits