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[princessmacedon]

🌌!

It is dangerous to go out alone at night — this Maria has been told since long ago, the message as stern in each retelling as it was in the first. Night makes strangers of old friends and monsters of good men; it dilutes sense and repaves the roads of memory. To go alone is to face such frights with your back unguarded... But it is not for fear of the unknown paths and monsters in the dark that Maria seeks out someone to come with her. No, she seeks her out simply because she wants to show her the beauty at its heart.

“Marianne,” she whispers, one hand curling around her mouth; it is a secret meant only for her ears, an invitation from a bird who has flown the cage and wishes to share the sky. “Marianne, do you want to go on an adventure?”

She is not sure how she convinces her (is it the promise of caution? the excitement that shines from every syllable? is it... friendship?), but that many-storied thing called night sees Maria walk out beneath its sky with a smile on her face, so gently holding Marianne’s hand in hers. The snow crunches beneath their feet, and somehow, when nyx falls to the earth draped in gentle moonlight, it almost, almost looks the same color as her eyes. It’s pretty, she thinks. A smile curls her lips.

“Have you ever seen the aurora?” The question is punctuated by a syncopated step, snow kicked lightly into the air and filtering back down to the sound of a delighted giggle. “I heard some other students talking about it earlier! They said it’s really pretty, but you have to walk for a little bit to get somewhere you can see it all.” Something in her eyes sparkles as she raises a hand, pointing to a swath of green melted into the sky, hidden almost entirely behind nature’s spires reaching into the sky. “Oh—! Look! See? That’s just a tiiiiny bit of it!”