[P] wash me in the riverside [fall]

[Marisol]

by sword
by salt

Perhaps—

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.

“Speaking.”

credits