[P] the dark won't hide you [winter festival]

[Marisol]

but when the night has left us
will the spell remain?

He looks wild.

He looks the way Marisol feels when she is by the ocean, when the wind and the salt and the sweet, dark songs of birds combine in her chest to make a feeling like a cyclone. He looks the way it feels to strike a spear right in the heart of something. He looks like the rolling of the sea caught in a god-stricken storm, the white waves of his hair  so much like the foam spit up into the sky. Like a whole symphony played on one violin. Like bloodlust, and the revelation of teeth made for more than smiling.

Like (and it pains her to say so) flying.

He wears the expression of a boy—bright, exuberant, innocent. The smile that flashes over his face when he says thank you makes Mari’s heart skip in her chest like it has only just learned how to fall. Her body trills like a plucked string. 

She would do anything, she thinks, to see that expression again. (Daily would be ideal.)

All at once, the square seems far too warm, far too crowded. The bodies press in from every side; Marisol’s skin starts to burn, burn, burn, as if she is in the desert again, as if the sun is still out. Her breath is strained with the effort of not-wanting. But this not-wanting—it’s not working. Not at all. Still her muscles are tensed with apprehension. Still her throat is tight, and a little too dry. Still she feels as though she could be rocked from standing by the slightest breeze, and oh, the threat is only growing stronger: the dancers have broken from their circle to weave through the crowd, and they are brushing up against her with their ribbons and their laughter, and Marisol wants to fall.

She almost stumbles. It is not the kind of thing a soldier should do, and especially not a Commander. Two children rush by, bumping her legs like waves against the sand. Now the music is swelling, a dense, rich symphony in a major key. The notes in staccato bang around in her head like a drum. Tinsel glitters like glass where it’s strung over the walls, bright as gold, loud as the sun, and Marisol doesn’t know where to look. Briefly she feels like magpie, unable to choose between the gild of Orestes’ skin and the sheer volume of the courtyard’s decor.

“And would you feel better, if you had a king?” 

Marisol’s eyes find his and they are dark like iron. They shine with glittering gravity; they are too heavy to look away from, and too warm, and too intent; there is not a thing in the world that could possess her to turn away. She blinks at him in a way that is somewhere between slow and feline.

And she says nothing in response. She only grins, crooked and charming.

When she climbs to her feet she does not miss the way his eyes catch the bright flash of white on her back leg. Briefly, she is worried. Sharply her heart drops to her stomach and writhes there like a snake. 

Her mother had said, this is a sign. The midwife had said she will be unlucky (and was she wrong?). Neither of her parents had a speck of white of them, and Marisol had been born dipped in cream on one foot, her own proverbial Achilles’ heel; she was born to be a warrior, expected to be invincible, and as a child the thing had caused her so much grief that when she first joined the Unit she had gone to great lengths to make sure the then-Commander did not see it.

Terrastella could be a terribly superstitious place. 

Now she does not spend so much time hiding it, but it is part of the reason she wears her cuff—part of the reason, too, that her tail is so much longer than her mane. But it is glaringly obvious in this dim light, a pearl against the mud of her coat. Marisol watches him watching it. She confesses, unsteadily, “My family said it was bad luck.”

It is a thing she has never, ever, mentioned to someone else.

But the thought flies from her brain when he steps close. There is no attempt to resist. There is no real hesitation. One gentle tug at the braided leaves and they are so close that Marisol can feel the warmth he radiates, the soft movement of his hair, the rolling of his muscles—she shudders at the ghost of his breath across her neck, the way it grazes her ear (which flickers wildly despite itself). A sharp inhale. A breath so deep it makes her dizzy (or maybe that’s something else). 

“As close as you want.” It is a murmur, inaudible if he were not standing so close. And something in her is living, or it is dying, and the difference is negligible if it even exists; she feels light-headed, light-chested, barely conscious, and the noise of the world coming into sharper and sharper relief—the music, the blurred speech—the poem that Orestes recites, which makes her heart soar high she completely loses track of it.

I want my grasp of things to be true before you.

A ship that carried me through the wildest storm of all.

A ship that carried me.

A ship that carried me—

Marisol starts. He is looking at her—really looking, in a way she does not think she has been looked at in quite a long time. From here, she can see the innocent flash of his teeth. She can see the pale curl of his lashes, and the gentle curves of white hair like so much sea-foam, and the way the dim light catches on his tattoos like foil, like molten gold. 

He is beautiful. But he must know that. 

Marisol is not a dancer. She does not usually have time for such frivolity. But oh, how can she refuse him, this boy with the bright smile and kind eyes? And maybe fighting is like a dance. Maybe it will come easy to her, the quick steps and the elegant turns. 

For the first time, though, something coming easy might not matter.

She smiles at him, nearly shy. “Yes,” Mari says, and her eyes almost sparkle, “but not here.”

The Commander picks up two new drinks, steaming cinnamon and tea, and a plate of figs split like flowers, nuts and honey in the center. And she pulls him away from the courtyard.

There are more private places for two people to dance.

“Speaking.”

credits