What kind of girl can say that she looks prettiest while she’s in pain? Well – me.

I don’t know what my mother thought of her firstborn child when she first came tumbling out of her womb. I imagine that she was horrified; I think that I would have been, if I were her. Instead of a daughter, she gave birth to a statue, riddled with the same terrible, brilliant gold that carves the scar across her cheek. The one that she doesn’t talk about, or won’t. I know who healed it – but she’ll never tell me who caused the wound.

(But her refusal tells me who split her face open, even if she won’t say it. I am not sure if her silence is meant to be for her benefit or for mine.)

My mother doesn’t tell me that I’m too strange, much like Ambrose doesn’t tell me that I’m too special. That doesn’t prevent me from knowing that they’re thinking it, no matter how much they’d like to keep it from me.

I think that I should tell you that it was not a choice. None of this – save, maybe, the spear, and I’m not sure about that, either – was a choice. Mother says she doesn’t want anything from me; she just hopes I’ll be happy, but she looks at me like she’s almost sure that I won’t be.

When I wasn’t even a week old, she found me curled up in a nest of rattlesnakes, completely unharmed and fast asleep. I think it broke her heart, in a way. What kind of child can sleep in a nest of poisonous snakes-?

Here’s a secret. One I won’t ever tell. I don’t want to be so special or so strange, either. It doesn’t matter if the sun god has some kind of predestined fate in mind for me, or if I want it if he does – when people look at me, they look at me like religion. Like I’m made for some higher purpose. Like I’m holy, almost. When they look at the gold that runs my statue-body like ribbons, when they see me standing alone among a swarm of teryrs, completely unafraid, they see the touch of god - His will brushing up, for just a moment, against the mortal realm.

Who says that I want to be that, least of all for any of them?

Sometimes I bite my tongue until it bleeds. So hard I can taste metal. It’s not reassuring in the least, because no normal girl bleeds metal, but the pain means - something.

Mostly - that the stone doesn’t go all the way through.

I’m only hard to the touch in places. I look like I should be hard all over, like I’m made of stone - but only the parts of me that are golden are metal. All the rest is flesh, a trick of the eyes.

But my skin feels to me like a carefully-concocted barrier, a way to keep what’s inside of me in; and what’s inside of me is gold. Gold cracks like veins of marble across my skin, gold hooves, gold horns, gold on the tips of my wings. When I cry, I cry liquid gold. When I bleed, it’s the same, and I scar gold, too. I’m not entirely sure what’s inside of me, but I worry, sometimes – though I’d never say it to anyone – that I have a statue dwelling under my skin, some pulsating metal object in the place of a heart.

(It would probably explain a lot.)

My brother resembles my mother, but in champagne – her, if you crossed her sooty greys with the pale sands of the Mors. I am significantly more of a divine joke.

I have been told, on occasion, that the only parts of me that look like living things are my eyes. (On rare occasions, I have bothered to raise opposition – my mane and tail are perfectly ordinary, albeit outrageously long, mingled black and white often interrupted by braids - but my protests are generally dismissed.) I do have my mother’s eyes, or one of them. Ambrose took after the gold, and, in stark contrast, I took after the blue; as sharp and cold, I’m told, as ice, though I’ve never seen it for comparison.

I am told, too, that my eyes would be better if they were like the rest of me; as they are, the way that they are indisputably alive is more unnerving than it is alluring, like the sight of someone trapped inside a layer of stone.

If I am a statue, I am a poorly-made one.

Half of me is the depthless, dark gloss of onyx, riddled with those violent golden veins; the other half is rougher, like polished marble, with that faint sense of grit to it. The illusion crumbles when I am touched, of course – but up to that point, it holds. This harsh divide might have seemed more reasonable were it perfect, more deliberate. However, though the majority of my right half is black, and the majority of my left half is white, the colors stumble across dips and blurred boundaries, dribbling into places that aren’t their own like spilled pots of ink.

I am taller than my mother, by fractions, and built slimmer. Not delicate – but slender, and longer, and less bulky. My mother is a honed weapon, the result of countless hours of careful training, a soldier through and through, and I am no such thing. In the place of armor, I wear a veil and silks.

This is not, of course, the same as being soft. (There is no way to describe me as a soft thing.) But I am not a soldier. I do not move like a soldier, and I do not fight like one, either; of course I would not possess a soldier’s physique. I am not such a regimented and diligent creature, and I am not sure that I could be even if I tried. (Of course – it does not interest me to try.) My mother’s training yields to the desert winds, and I do my best to emulate their fluid dance, not her harsh rigidity. I am faster, and more agile, and always oh-so-hard to catch-

unless I wish to be caught, that is.

I do not often wish to be caught, and you will rarely see my face unveiled – my form not trailing tender fingers of silk.

Though lovely, there is nothing unique to the draperies I wear most days, at least on first glance. The veil is black and transparent down to the edges, which are embroidered gold, and it covers most of my face. It is attached to my horns with two ornate golden clips, with moonstones on the left and right side; the gold is engraved like the burning rays of the sun, like light extending from the stones. This pattern is visible again on the collar coiled around the base of my neck, though far more evident. Black silks, of the same texture and transparency as the veil, are pulled tight through hooks on the collar, looping loosely under my front legs, then dangling again from the collar; when I move, they stream after me prettily, and, most times, even when I am still, they do not fall limp – disturbed, instead, by the wind.

What makes my adornments special, however, is the enchantment written into each dark fiber. As I wish it, they will obscure me. With the enchantment active, I am as indistinct and fleeting as desert wind – and, try as they might, anyone who happens to meet me will not be able to recall my features, visible though they might be for the duration of the conversation.

(Mother says that it is a “necessary precaution” for my reckless behavior. I regard it as a useful tool – and a pretty one.)

The spear, though – the spear is bonded to me like gold woven into my skin.

It is Solterran steel, technically, but the color is wrong. Mother calls it “sun-forged;” I am not quite sure what that means. All I know is that it looks far more like bronze than steel. It is long - still too long for me, but I’m sure that one day I will grow to match it - and well-polished, in spite of appearing quite old. The end of the spear forms half of a sun, complete with sharp rays. The name of the spear - Maghni Alnuwr - is written on the blade, in Solterran, and, when spoken aloud, it makes the spear shine blinding bright, too bright to be looked at directly by all but the one who spoke its name.

I have wrapped teryr feathers (and a few from Ereshkigal) and glass beads around the blade, tied tightly with thin leather straps; they clink, ever so softly, when it moves.

I inherited my mother’s singing voice. She doesn’t sing much to anyone else – not anymore, she says, in that way that tells me that there is another one of those stories beneath it, the ugly ones that she isn’t willing to tell (but sometimes I think, when I hear her mention it, that this one is just one that she mourns for, not one that agonizes) -, but she sings to Ambrose and I. Sings stories, in the way of the old Solterrans.

I sing, too. Like a bird. I sing my prayers, and my stories, and sometimes I just sing because I enjoy the feeling of the words on my tongue. I inherited Mother’s accent, her distinctly Solterran intonation – but my voice is softer, and higher. (I think that’s why people look surprised when they realize how quick I am to bite; my mouth doesn’t seem like it should be full of poison, but it can be, and it often is.) I sing along with the wind when it howls and howls at night, and sometimes I dance to the violent melody of it, too.

My mother looks at me like I am a wild thing. I move too much for my statue-skin. Take care, she always says, when I am not cautious enough for her taste - take care, my Diana, habibi – I have seen cruel men catch even the desert wind, and I do not ever want to see you caught. I look at my mother, and sometimes, when the light hits her features right, I think that I can still see little scars on her neck, tracing the outline of a too-tight collar she shed years ago.

Take care, she says, but I never do.

There is a sandwyrm – emerged entirely, rarely - curled around a great chunk of stone sticking up out of the sand. The sand below is moving in spirals, a telltale sign that there are more waiting just below the surface; I can’t tell how many have gathered, from where I’m standing, but I know that there are plenty enough to keep most reasonable people away. After all, most reasonable people don’t much want to be devoured alive by gigantic sand-snakes.

I’m not most reasonable people, and I know I’m not going to be devoured.

Mostly because – I know the spear dug into the top of the stone is supposed to be mine (else it wouldn’t be guarded like that; it’s probably the work of my not-father, but I wouldn’t dare to say I know his mind), and I know that nothing in this desert would ever devour me.

My mother has followed me out, for once, and she sees the glint in my eyes and grimaces. “Diana,” she says, pressing her muzzle to my forehead, “don’t you dare.” She knows I’ll do it, even if she tells me not to in that tone of voice, and that’s the problem – even if she leaves, she knows I’ll just find my way back out here later and get it out then, and she won’t be there to do a thing if I do.

I respect my mother. Love her, in the way that I can love things. (I think I’m bad at it, sometimes, like she is, but at least I’m better at saying it. Much better at showing it.) But I don’t always listen to her, especially when I know better, and, even though everyone says I’m too young for it, I know that sometimes I do.

“Oh, I dare,” I say, looking her dead in the eyes, and she grits her jaw. Grinds it, I think. I know she can stop me. Easily. She barely even needs to think about it – but Mother knows me better than anyone, and I know she’s trying to stop me half as a formality. Like a good parent, trying to keep her child out of trouble.

(She still scolds me about the sandwyrms, tells me that one day my good luck might run out – but I know that she’s not nearly as scared of me getting into trouble with them as she is of me getting into trouble with other people. Mother won’t say it, because she knows that she shouldn’t, but I know she doesn’t like it when I stray too close to the court, or speak a few too many words to passing strangers. But I don’t blame her, really. I know how much blood this desert has spilled, and most of it has not been the work of sandwyrms or teryrs.)

I brush right past her and up to the rock. As I pass through each ring of sand, the sandwyrms raise their heads and stare right at me with their half-useless eyes, and I stare right back when they do. The one that’s coiled around the rock bows its head down to look at me, and I stride right up to it until I’m less than a foot away. Its hot breath blows in my face; it smells like rotting meat.

There are stairs up, carved right into the stone. I could fly, but it feels better this way. I brush against the sandwyrm on the way up, and neither of us flinch away; in fact, I can feel its eyes following me until I reach the top of the stone, and the spear embedded within it.

I grab the hilt with my teeth; it slides out easily, just like it was made for me. Of course – I knew it was already.

There is a sudden shifting from beneath my hooves. The sandwyrms dive back down with such exertion and relish that the ground seems to shake from it. When the sand they stir up clears, I am standing atop the rock, the spear balanced at my shoulder while I stare up at the sky.

“See, Mother?” I look back at her slowly, over my shoulder. “I told you that it was meant for me.”

Mother just sighs and turns her head. “Diana,” she says, just loud enough for me to hear – more tired than angry, “sometimes, obedience is a virtue.”

“You’re the one who always says that you should never be obedient when the thing that you are being told to do is wrong.”

“That isn’t what I meant, and you know it.” Mother’s gaze, slowly, turns to align with the spear. The twitch of her lips is complicated. “Blessings have a price, habibi. Power is never without consequence – and the gods rarely grant gifts without reason.”

My lips twist, almost unpleasant. Just a flash of my teeth, near the edges. “The spear doesn’t matter, then.” If a gift from a god means that it is my fate to serve some greater purpose, then I am already, inescapably, caught in the spiderweb of god’s plan.

But I am not quite like Mother. I am not particularly afraid of fate, or much of anything else. I don’t know how to possess that kind of tenderness, that kind of concern. Ambrose is always cautious, always careful, and Mother is, too; they try to think two steps ahead so that they are never caught up in someone else’s designs.

(That never saved Mother from anything. I don’t see the point.)

I am not so cautious. Mother says that it is recklessness, and I am willing to entertain the idea that she is right – but, if fate must come for me, in its terrible, toothy way, then I’d rather face it than try to run from it.

If it wants to ruin me, like it ruins all of the people in the stories that Mother tells by the fire at night – then I will make it bleed for it, first.

I’m not the child of the sun god, technically speaking, but Mother says I might as well be, for how much I resemble him. I have his sharp temper, she says, and his oversized ego, and his brazen overconfidence, and his horrible, horrible sense of humor.

(And then, as usual, she heaves a tired sigh.)

My mother was a queen, once. She’s spoken with gods and sovereigns (who are, to me, about as distant as any god) and monsters, and, according to most reasonable sources, she should be dead. She wields a flaming sword with a magical name, and, the first time I saw her kill a man with it, I wasn’t even a month old. (That’s not to mention what I’ve seen her do with her magic.) I’ve grown up under the red-eyed stare of an demon who tells me, quite often, that one day she’ll take my mother’s soul, and mine, too, just maybe – and I tell her she’d better not take Ambrose’s, or I’ll kill her for it.

(That always gets a laugh out of Eresh; she always claims to like me best.)

It’s probably no wonder, then, that people look at me, and they say that I’m just a little bit off.

But as long as I have Ambrose – who is the only person who comes close to understanding me, really -, and as long as I have Eresh, and as long as I have Mother, I don’t really need anybody else; and sometimes I think they need me a lot more than I need them. After all, I’m not like them. I’m never really alone.

Deserts aren’t supposed to love anyone. Deserts are supposed to be scalding hot and completely merciless; they are supposed to kill without a hint of warning or remorse. Deserts aren’t supposed to love anyone – but Solterra loves me, probably in a way that it shouldn’t. Mother doesn’t trust it, but Mother doesn’t trust anything or anyone, and she doesn’t feel the way that I feel when I’m out on the dunes. She chides at me for sneaking out, sometimes practically growls, but I don’t care. I spend my days running with packs of jackals, flying with elder teryrs, dancing with sandwyrms, sunbathing with rattlesnakes. I don’t meet many people, and I don’t often stray near the court, but I’ve never felt particularly lonely for it. The people in the court are unbearably stuffy, and I don’t much care to bother with them.

(It is why I rarely feel stirred to help travelers, even when I see them hopelessly lost during the hottest part of the day or followed by stalking teryrs or walking into a sandwyrm’s nest. I’ve already said: I’m not good at loving anyone. I think I should add: I don’t love anyone but my brother, and my mother, and sometimes Ereshkigal, and I don’t love anything but the desert. Mother says that I could “afford to be more altruistic.” I tell her that she’d have nothing to do, if I were.)

Some people inhabit the desert. I have always been a bit more of a part of it; not something juxtaposed against the landscape, but the landscape itself. Does that make any sense? I don’t suspect it does – but maybe what I should say is that I burn white-hot, and I change quick, and-

I don’t think I’d put it past me to kill something, no matter how much it loves me.

BORN TO SERAPHINA IN SPRING 506

HERE IS A STORY ABOUT ME: in my first coherent memory, my mother is guiding my brother and I up to the peak of Veneror, to the chapel. She pauses in the doorway, a shudder running the length of her spine, and she looks at Ambrose and I.

In the dusty light of the chapel, I think that she almost looks frightening, like something possessed by a creature who is not-quite Mother. Her lips purse at a stiff angle, and her gaze seems to harden, like polished granite. “Come inside.” I follow her eagerly; my brother, my Ambrose, always so cautious, so thoughtful, less so.

I see the golden statue first. It catches my eye like a ringing in my ear, and I find myself stumbling up to its base almost immediately, a mass of too-long legs and ungainly wings; I have just met the carved eyes of the statue when I feel my mother’s stare on my shoulders. When I look back at her, however, I find her gaze trained on the statue, and I bite back something that is almost fear. That was the first time, I think, that I ever saw my mother angry – there was a cold and simmering rage woven into the downward twitch of her iron-hewn lips, though, for long, silent moments, she said nothing at all. There was the faint crack of her tail, loud as a whip in the silence of the chapel, and then the clink of her sword at her hip as she strode up to the statue, and she whispered something low and Solterran. I did not understand her words, at the time. Now, I don’t remember them to translate.

My mother looks down at my brother and I, and she tells us, calm as a grave, that we were created, not conceived.

--

HERE IS A STORY ABOUT ME: the night that we returned to Solterra, after my mother told me about the sun god, she found me asleep in a nest of rattlesnakes, unbitten.

For a child so awash in blessings from the sun, Diana’s magic might at first seem unusual, or even unnatural.

Here is a question: what is the sun, really?

And here is another: what happens to a star when it dies?

Diana’s magic is not brilliant, or nurturing, or even scalding. It is the opposite of every bright thing, the manifestation of a crushing blackness that can devour anything, even light itself – for her magic allows her to create black holes, unnatural regions of spacetime with such a strong force of gravity that they absorb anything that passes their event horizon. While Diana herself is immune to the pull of her magic, the same cannot be said for most anyone or anything else, and, as a result, her powers are immensely destructive and violent, with limited functional use. Due to their magical nature, unlike black holes in nature, the event horizon of Diana's magic is escapable, with suitable force and skill; until an object or entity reaches the singularity at the center of the black hole, a region approximately a tenth of the size of the hole itself, it is possibly to free yourself from the magic's pull, though the region inside of the black hole tends to be dark, disorienting, and rather painful, due to its gravitational force and immense pressure. Only objects that can fit within the singularity of the hole can be absorbed and eliminated - anything else will simply be battered, warped, or otherwise exhausted by its influence.

Diana will never gain full control over her magic, and, in many ways, it will only grow more indiscriminately destructive as she grows in power.

Discipuli : At this stage, Diana can summon extremely small black holes with event horizons that are only a foot, maximum, in diameter; she can maintain them for about thirty seconds with relative stability. If she is especially angry or otherwise emotional, she might be able to summon more than one at once, though only for a few seconds at a time; these black holes tend to flicker, as though they are constantly on the verge of collapse, and, should she summon more than one at once, their appearance will often be accompanied by bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose, fatigue, heavy breathing, and, if especially strained, full body collapse. When her magic lapses, these holes tend to spit out anything that they've absorbed, providing very limited use.

Vexillum : At this stage, Diana can summon black holes possessing event horizons of a foot without much of a struggle at all. She can maintain them for several moments at a time, and, when in otherwise good health, she can summon multiple, albeit for shorter periods of time and often with limited adverse physical impacts. She has developed the capacity to summon black holes up to ten feet in diameter, but she can only maintain them for a minute at a time, and she cannot summon more than one at once.

Periti : Diana can summon small black holes of a foot in diameter or less for extended periods of time, and she can easily summon more than one at once. She has cultivated her ability to summon larger black holes, and she can now maintain them stably for several minutes; she can summon up to two at once, and she experiences limited adverse physical impacts when she does. Diana can begin to summon extremely massive black holes, with diameters of up to one hundred feet. However, attempting to do so usually results in extensive damage to her body, from substantial amounts of bleeding to exhaust that lasts for several days, and she cannot maintain them with any degree of stability.

Dominus : At this stage, Diana can summon small black holes and medium-sized black holes with ease; she can summon several at once with very few physical reactions. She has developed the capacity to summon black holes with diameters of approximately one hundred feet and to hold them stable for several moments at a time, but this requires extensive effort, and it cannot be maintained for any substantial length of time.

PARVUS MAGIC :: When using her magic, the golden veins in Diana’s skin glow with brilliant, golden light, as though all the brightness that her black holes swallow has manifest inside of her – as though there is a second sun buried beneath her skin. As she grows stronger, more parts of her will glow: the tips of her wings, her hooves, her horns, even her eyes, her nostrils, and even the inside of her mouth.

Against a landscape of ceaseless, swelling, pulsating darkness, she is the only bright thing.

The desert loves Diana, probably in a way that it shouldn’t.

Under the bright glow of Solis’s light, she has very little to fear. She is never lost in the Mors, never hungry, never thirsty – she is never without food or water long enough for that. When she grows hot beneath the midday sun, she will soon find shade, and she never stumbles across the sands or loses her balance when she picks her way through the canyons in the middle of the night. The creatures of the desert tolerate her, as though she is one of their own; she can stand alongside teryrs without fear, or keep the company of sandwyrms, or sunbathe with rattlesnakes, or run with packs of wild jackals. She possesses no particular control over them or their whims, but she knows, innately, that they will never hurt her.

To put it simply: Diana is blessed. Her luck in Solterra is unnaturally good, as though the landscape itself adores her. This fondness, however, does not extend to all the other lands in Novus; in the territories of the other courts, her luck is unnaturally bad, and she finds herself in danger more often than not. In Ruris, she is neither protected nor resented – and sometimes, she finds this neutrality preferable even to being loved.

Her protections do not extend to magics that manipulate the desert, of course, or bondeds; her luck also seems perfectly neutral in the Colosseum, as though Solis himself would prefer that she prove her worth as a matter of her own mettle and no one else’s.

ENCHANTED OUTFIT :: Diana is almost always seen with a veil over her face, suspended from her horns, and a golden collar – embedded with bright white stone - around the base of her neck, which trails thin, translucent black silk in its wake as she moves. Although these adornments are rather simple in design, they have a powerful enchantment woven into their fibers; when she adjusts them just so, they will obscure her identity from anyone she interacts with. When she leaves, anyone she might have spoken to while the enchantment was active would be left with little more than a dull, unrecognizable sense of her identity, even if the details of their interaction itself remain intact.

ENCHANTED WEAPON ::

Maghni Alnuwr: A spear, approximately six feet long and crafted of sun-forged Solterran steel, fitted with a white, elongated blade. The name of the spear is carved into the blade - مغني النور - and, when spoken aloud, causes the spear to glow with a light so bright as to be blinding, like staring directly at the sun. Teryr feathers, along with a few from Ereshkigal and one from Ambrose, and straps of beaded leather are wrapped around the base of the blade, bits of decoration that Diana has added herself.

MUTATIONS ::

- The golden parts of Diana’s design are made of metal – the veins running across her skin, the half-moons of her hooves, the curl of her horns. Unlike normal gold, however, the gold that composes her frame will not melt under high heat, and, if chipped, it will grow back, like skin after a cut.

- Diana’s skin appears to be cut from stone. The black half of her body has the glossy sheen of polished obsidian, and the white half of her body seems to be carved from polished marble. Although she is warm and soft to the touch, and it can be cut with the same ease as the skin of any ordinary being, the contrast is uncomfortable at best, as though she is made of living rock.

- Diana bleeds and cries molten gold. It is no warmer than ordinary blood or tears, though it does dry and harden after being in contact with air for long enough. When she scars, she scars gold, and, were you to theoretically cut her open to reveal her internal organs, you would find them curiously golden as well, albeit fleshy.