take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
It was a summer evening.
No.
It was an autumn afternoon.
She had been raised to be a sweet girl, polite, to forgive when she was slighted and to always find joy when all felt lost. She wonders sometimes if she will forever live the shadows of those greater than her. (No one in Novus can see those shadows, but Elena can, and they loom over her, watching to see if she becomes anything more than just the foolish girl they all think she is.) She is a legacy child, and that means she looks to the greats, as she is expected to be something herself. Her father had given himself, his life, for her, and Elena sometimes wonders if he could, if he were here, if he would ever regret that decision. She knows he would never say something like that, know that her father so wholly loved her, but maybe he just thought something more would come from the sacrifice.
Sleep has been alluding her, (she awakes and thinks: there was a boy, she awakes and thinks: there was no boy) so maybe this is why she goes back to the festivities. She could try to nap in the warm afternoon in autumn, but she would sit there and turn and toss and plead with whatever gods and spirits there are to just let her close her eyes one time and drift off for a moment. It is useless, her thoughts have been tangled like smoke around trees. Elena had not had this much trouble finding sleep since she had been a little girl and the nightmares of ice and snow had chased her down every evening.
She could go you know, to Denocte, and tell them everything, but she had not forgotten the promise she had made to him. Elena’s heart is not cruel. Selfish, confused, broken, but never cruel.
She can trace the branching lines of her past in the arches of the trees of the swamp. Even when she has gone so far away from it all (from the mountain valleys to the sea) Elena still finds pieces of her old life wherever she wanders. There is this rough cut beauty to her, there among the trees of vibrant color. She almost blends in with a coat of gold and she thinks maybe she can fall behind the backdrop.
That is until she spots the commander up ahead. Elena smiles, a familiar face, and one that was welcomed. Elena finds two baskets and is suddenly beside Marisol, a ready smile, and eyes that are always warm with summer skies. “Surprise seeing you here,” she says handing a basket to the woman. “Since you are, care to join me for some apple picking?” She asks brightly. Elena quietly hopes that she is able to manage the time. Something burns in her chest, and she wanted to share it with Marisol. “There is something I wanted to discuss with you, if you have the time,” she asks patiently, before look up ahead where rows and rows of apples wait.
It was an autumn afternoon.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Unlike the other attendees, Marisol finds very little about the second harvest relaxing, much less enjoyable.
But that is her own fault. She has grown herself to fit the mold of panic, a girl-shaped thing bristling with teeth. Years have passed since the last real battle, the last conflict of any kind concerning Dusk, and still a feeling that the peace will not last gnaws at her insides like some hungry animal. Sometimes it keeps her up at night. What have I been doing with my time? What are the ways I’ve disappointed my people? The slow circles she walks around the edge of the orchard are not ones of contentment or exploration. They are watchful—nervous. The gaze of a worried mother over her children.
This afternoon is particularly warm. Sun shines through the melting-red leaves of the apple trees overhead, mottling the grass that autumn has begun to dry out. The air smells sharply of warm fruit and sweet, yeasty wine, faintly dusty and nostalgic; and the longer she stands in the civilized emptiness of the orchard, listening wistfully to the laughter and conversations of the families and lovers that breeze through.
Another voice breaks through, then, sharp and clear. Surprise seeing you here.
Mari turns abruptly. Her head shifts, too quickly, over her shoulders before the rest of her follows; and she is still bent in an awkward circle when her eyes spark with recognition at the sight of Elena to match the sweet, disembodied voice. “Elena,” she responds warmly, ears flickering forward. Her dark lips curl softly but don’t quite complete their smile. “Yes, I have time. Lead the way.”
Gently she takes the basket Elena offers her, holding it at her side in a loose, invisible grip. And then, for the first time in a long time, the Commander steps back and lets someone else walk first.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She is not the little girl who cried silently in the shadows without the arms of her parents around her. Although, her ghost likes to come and visit Elena. It has anchored itself in her reflection, so that every time she looks, she sees her sad little face staring back at her. Her eyes are wide, and those lips hinge on something that looks like a question that can never be answered. It is either why me or why them, but they both are met with silence. Elena sometimes stares in her mirror, the shadows in the backs of her eyes, and she can almost see the amber color of that little girl who couldn't remember how to laugh, how to smile.
Elena blinks.
And she is gone.
Another girl stands in her place. Elena isn't sure if she recognizes her or not. While that little girl may have been everything Elena has wanted to forget—at least she was familiar. This stranger that now rests on Elena’s skin had crept into her bones the moment she let a demon touch her skin, felt as a monster left bruises on her soft skin, and the moment she walked into the shadows with a lantern. This girl, this woman, Elena has scanned the planes of her face so much, and she thinks she still doesn't know what will happen now. It is so hard to tell when you do not know their soul, and this foreign soul has no language for which she can understand. It speaks in dances and sinful kisses. In boldness and in recklessness.
Marisol’s face careens around to meet her, and Elena, as always, greets her with a smile. She was stunning, even outside the element of the city, Marisol was a quiet force, a respectable face that brings instant admirment from the palomino. “You should save that dance move for the bonfires,” she says with a note of laughter (it is not as silver today as it so often is, but maybe a glittering gold instead.) “You would be sure to be the center of attention,” she jokes.
“Glad to hear it,” she responds as the sovereign takes the basket from her. “There was a great spot just down the way,” she says and takes the lead, a position she is so unfamiliar with. That little girl had been such a follower—following Marcelo from the bridge, following Valerio to Paraiso, following Aerwir to the Woodlands. She had never know how clear a view it was when there was no one standing in front of you.
She sets down her basket beside a tree and there grows a sense of modest confidence when she turns to Marisol once more. “Commander—Marisol,” she says, her eyes may be blue, but there is something in her voice that sparks like green, or maybe violet. “I have not been here long, but I have served Dusk faithfully, and will continue to do so. I have found it is all I wish to do lately,” she says. She turns a careful glance to the woman. Anandi had known more than she should have (although Elena cannot fault the woman and her sharp eye), she hopes Marisol does not delve into the trivial matters of her residents. “Please, there has to be more I can do,” she offers, her hands are wide, upturned, her belly pointed towards the beast of duty and servitude. “I give myself willingly to Terrastella.”
No, she is not that little girl anymore.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Mari knows this—has known it, since the day they first crossed paths in the bristling cold of the city last winter. But in this light, the warm, ichor-gold light that spills over the orchard from the setting sun, the realization comes rushing back to her as though it is the first time. Her gray eyes fall on the heart-shaped mark on Elena’s forehead; the moon-white waves of cloud-soft hair. Her own kind of beautiful, Marisol remembers (or realizes), is the kind that brings things to life and softens the harsh edges of the world. It is the kind of beautiful one only possesses from the inside out.
For years and years, Mari has had coworkers, comrades, who are just as stiff as she is. All warriors alike seem to have their walls up—it’s almost a necessity, considering the facts of the job—and the Commander must take some responsibility for training her cadets to be cold, too, and follow in her footsteps.
There was a brief moment, just after her succession to the throne, she’d thought politics would be a change. Wasn’t it supposed to be a game? But Israfel and Andi are just as sharply-edged as she is, and Mari is still not quite foolish enough to let her guard down around any of the other sovereigns.
So Elena is… unusual. A part of her still does not quite believe that someone so good would want to be so deeply involved. But perhaps, Marisol tells herself, in this case—unusual is a good thing.
She doesn’t respond to the golden girl’s tease about dancing, but a little laugh does escape her—just enough to let Elena know that her remark was not thought of badly. (It is Marisol’s own shyness that keeps her from dancing, and she knows as much.) Onward they trek, down the faint slope of the orchard hill, past rows and rows of years-old apple trees whose boughs are heavy with fruit, through the warm screen of golden light that pours down from above; when Elena stops next to a particularly abundant tree and sets down her basket, Marisol stops too, not too far away.
And when Elena speaks, the Commander’s gray eyes remain fixed on hers with pure, attentive interest. A beat passes in which Marisol remains silent. Her ears are pricked forward, and her mouth twists faintly in thought.
Finally, she says: “You have indeed served us faithfully. I could not ask you for more.” A pause again. Marisol works her mouth out of its knot and sets it into a faint smile. “But—if you would like more responsibility, I will not say no. May I ask what you were thinking of?”
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She has never considered herself to be particularly beautiful, not in the way Marisol was. Marisol was stoic, the kind of beauty you find in a museum, the kind of beauty painter’s emulate, trying to capture forever on a canvas but never coming even close to the real thing that is held there in the sharp, alluring lines of her face. She is a leader, it is clear as day when Elena looks to her. That is why everyone finds her so beautiful, that kind of thing cannot be captured by any art form, it is something alive and moving, and it crosses like a shadow over Marisol’s dark face.
Marisol would have a nice laugh if she let herself, she would be beautiful dancer if she forgot her reservations, Elena knows as much. Neither of these things are easy, Elena knows as much of this as well. Elena would be easy to love, and she would love easily in return if she let them in, and if she could stop burning everything she touched. But there are all things we have that stay tucked away. Would rather keep it hidden than risk it breaking.
She picks apples with Marisol, blue eyes scanning the branches, looking for red and green amongst the colors of fall. Her basket has a few before she speaks to her, her words falling just like the apples in to the basket.
Golden ears tip forward to catch the commander’s own words, and she would blush if she could. Though, she hardly finds herself worthy of such praise, work had been all there was left for her to harvest. She had tried to find love and it feel to ground, rotten.
Elena sighs, not loud, but there is something whimsical that twirls off her lips like the dancer she was.
“I wish a warrior like you, strong. To fight and protect. I wish I could do that for my Court, for my loved ones.” Marisol who stands with strength even on quiet days like this, like she could brace a storm and come out taller than before. Valerio had never seemed to be afraid of anything. Her father had shred apart his very body to protect the ones he loved. Aletta, would have disintegrated the world, drag it into dust to protect those she cared for, those who looked to her as their leader.
And what could Elena do but patch them up in the aftermath?
She frowns slightly, looking down at the ground and swallowing back the disappointment and the self-hate. When she glances up again, her features are washed clean of the doubt. She remembers there is hope in healing, Lovelace had taught her as much, and she had found it in every wound, ever tear cried from agony, and in every broken bone. She smiles softly then, her lips just barely curling the corners of her mouth. “I love healing, I love Terrastella and its people, I love helping them,” she says, her heart aches with how much she loves this home, her home. “Give me something to devote myself to the people, to help you, Marisol.” She is open, honest. Elena wants to become a leader, and she knows that to be a leader you must bow your head and give yourself to those who need you most.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Perhaps, Marisol thinks, this is what life is supposed to feel like.
For this brief moment, the world has stilled. There is no noise but the faint rustle of the burnt-orange leaves, the whoosh of the stiff grass played through by soft wind; then the satisfying, crisp sound of each apple being pulled from its stem, the weighty plop as they hit the basket. In some places this gentle music is undercut by the sound of Elena’s breathing, or Marisol’s own. But without fail it always returns to its soothing rise and fall, and Mari finds the constant ache in her chest ebbing away in time.
Elena’s blue eyes are brighter than the sun, brighter than the moonlit sea, even in autumn’s slow gray light. And they are what Mari grips onto like an anchor as the world unfolds around the two of them, Marisol and Elena, Elena and Marisol. For this moment there is nothing to worry about. For this moment, they are not idols but women; not public figures but citizens, picking apples in a godly-gold orchard.
But she should know better than to hang onto it, because everything good must break.
I wish I was a warrior like you, the golden girl says, and the Commander’s stomach clenches like she has just eaten something poisonous.
All at once the peace that had so permeated the air is gone. Marisol’s blood is slowly turning to ice; her jaw grinds of its own accord, and she lapses into a brief, cold, silence. Elena cannot know what she’s said. She cannot know what it means. And so Mari works hard to keep that strangled feeling in her chest, which must be pain, or might be horror, from turning into real anger or disappointment—she pushes it down and down and down, until it is not a wave but the faint burble of a creek.
“Don’t say that,” Marisol answers softly. Her eyes drift up from the basket of apples to meet Elena’s, and the light in them is a little broken. (Perhaps it isn’t light at all—perhaps the thing inside her is, and has always been, darkness, and it is now bleeding out through the little cracks.) Her chest rises as she mulls over a response; then it falls, and still she says nothing, her mouth twisted into an awkward line, gaze stormy, as Elena finishes speaking.
“To fight for your country,” the Commander continues finally, “means nothing if it is not safe from the inside. All they that take the sword,” she muses, “shall perish with the sword, and I have taken it so you—you all—don’t have to.” A brief lapse of silence; she pulls down another apple, lets it fall heavy to the wicker basket between us.
“It is a good thing, not to be a warrior. You belong here—really here, in the city. Taking care of the people. As Champion of Community.”
Overhead, the clouds are gathering into a thickly knit gray blanket. Suddenly the air is warm, and wet—there might be a rainstorm coming, Marisol thinks, and she lets out a little sigh.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena’s first experience with death hadn't been her father. It had been a solider of the light.
“Sing me back home, before I die.” He had asked her. She had been so small, staring up at him with then amber eyes. She had wanted to get another healer for him, had started to go when he stopped her. Asked her to sing again. And Elena did. She sang for all she could, in those small soprano lyrics. She sang and sang and sang. She sang that soldier of the light all the way back home, and kept singing until her mother finally came to her and pulled her away. “He is home.” Is all she said, but she didn't need to. Elena already knew. She knew he was home.
Elena has no legacy here, she has no echo that skips across the lands of Novus. She does not deserve anything Marisol offers her, but Elena would offer what she could again and again to Dusk, her skills, her labor, her energy, her thoughts, her heart, her prayers. Everything for her new home, even if no one knew her name, even if they forgot about her the moment they met, she would give them all everything she could.
She looks to the sun, she remembers when she thought she would never see it again, and now here it is, bleeding light against her face, so bright she closes her eyes for a moment before she looks at Marisol and is captivated once more by her leader, here, beside her, picking apples as if she has no castle, as if she has not risked her life for her people as one of its defenders. “Why not?” Elena asks her. She looks like polished gold under the sun, bright and warm. Her family was made of so many knights, brave knights, and Elena has always admired them. Had she not always been the one to befriend the dragon and dave the city when she and Lilli played make believe?
“Marisol,” she says, forging the titles because there is a quiet in this moment that would only be broken by such formalities. “We are all eternally grateful for you,” she says sincerely. “Dusk would be nothing without you.” She says and maybe it is because she has only known Marisol as its ruler, has only seen her command with a firm, yet quiet hand. Elena has only heard her name among the lips of the people, singing her praise.
Elena drops an apple just shy of basket in surprise at the woman. “Really?” She asks. The new title, the new position, it tries to settle against her golden skin, but Elena suddenly feels too warm and too cold all at the same time. Her nose twitches with an itch. “I…I accept,” she says, a breathless answer. She would give to fellow Terrastellans here, would give and give for them, if they support her, if they do not. She would still give. Her eyes tilt upwards, clouds have gathered without her knowing. “It looks like rain,” she says and takes her basket. “I hope to see you again, Commander. Perhaps another outing such as this,” she says and even she knows it may never be. Such days of play and innocence are not so generous on the grown. Elena shifts her weight to walk away, but not without a farewell, and just before she leaves she tips her head respectfully. “Stay dry, Commander.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
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.
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![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
