I CAN'T TELL IF IT'S WORSE TO WALK THROUGH a forest with a path or without (a path). / damage done and damage made. / can I be gentle? / I mean / can I be gentle☼
The realization is closer than anything to hell.
It is winter and it is dark. The night is not clouded; in fact, it is almost perfectly clear, and the moon is round and full in the middle of the sky, half-way through her nightly arc across the cosmos. The grass in the plain, which normally rises flaxen-gold to her stomach, is dead and flat. (She is trying not to think of her stomach.) The corpses of each blade crunch beneath her hooves, mingled with a fine coat of frost, as she walks the crest of a gentle hillside. Her magic is absent. When it stirs, she feels other things inside of her stir with it, and, and-
Her thoughts have been a cacophony of no no no for – she can’t put a name to the amount of time. It doesn’t mean anything to her, anymore, but she wishes that it did. Seraphina does not like to admit to it, but there have been many moments in her life when she has thought to herself, I cannot do it. She has never felt any of them so deeply, so sharply, as she does the one that she is standing in.
She did not think that she would live past a year. (In many ways, she was right.) She did not think that she could serve as a proper Emissary. (She was right.) She did not think that she would make a good queen, though she wanted to be one. (She was right.) She did not think that she would be able to defeat Raum. (She was right.) And oh, Seraphina did not want this. She would not have chosen this. When her gaze strays to the soft, silver swell of her sides, barely noticeable now (but not for long, she suspects), she knows that she would not have chosen this.
And: when she thinks I cannot do this this time, her worst fear is that she will be proven right all over again.
She stops beneath a gnarled and barren tree. Any refuge that she finds beneath its empty branches is pointless; it is either dead or sleeping, and probably dead, and the black arc of branches and thin trunk provide no shelter from the elements, or from the bite of winter cold. She barely feels it, though. She isn’t cold. She knows that she should be, that she always is, but she isn’t.
Seraphina doesn’t want to go home. She wants to be anywhere else. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go – so now she is here, in a place that she has scarcely ever visited, hoping to find some semblance of reassurance (or a distraction, at least) in the utter insignificance in the winter-crushed landscape.
Ereshkigal, her black form like a cloaked reaper in the branches above, whispers between her ears in a voice that is the upward curve of a sneer. “What are you going to name them?”
When she whispers a response, she speaks it aloud; her voice quakes, and then falters entirely. “Them?”
Ereshkigal smiles. In the sheen of pale light, the arc of her teeth puts her in mind of a crescent moon. “There are two.” She knows, of course. She would - the demon, the soul-collector, the judge. Somehow, Seraphina does not want her to look at her. Somehow, she does not want her to look at them.
She feels that her legs might give out beneath her weight, but, instead, they lock beneath her, going stiff and straight as oak. (They are quivering, and not from the cold.) Not one, but two. Of course. Of course - she cannot even bear the thought of one, but there are two. Seraphina feels like she could sob. She feels like she could weep, and she could collapse, and she could crumble. She longs for it, even.
She does not cry. She does not weep. No wordless sobs pass her mouth, or bubble in her throat; not even a silent tear tracks the charcoal curve of her cheekbone. The only thing that escapes her lips is a ghost-white exhalation, the pale heat of her breath against a vast and nebulous winter sky.
@ absolutely anyone || still working on figuring her out like this; bear with me || lily wang, "prayer" Sera||Eresh
The tips of Leto’s hooves tap over the heads of the tide-sunk mirrors. She is suspended by the sea, cradled in salted, autumnal waters. Her hair peels out darker than an oil spill. Through moon-wide eyes she watches how he cuts a lone, dark figure upon the shore of lead and glass. The sea whispers secrets into her lips as they tip into a smile. Starlight gleams white across the shed-star’s satin soft smile, it dances lively as a flea upon the water.
The tide carries her closer to the shore, pulled in, magnetised by his magic. Stardust gleams across her lashes, wet by the water when she blinks. The droplets gleam like crystals strung between her lashes. They roll like tears down the slender path of her cheek.
Tap, tap, tap, over and over the sharp, submerged edges of mirrors her feet drift. The sound is a symphony of strange, feral magic. Soon solid slick glass rises beneath her feet as the ocean grows shallow pushing itself up the mirror beach. Leto rises from the ocean as her Ilati kin rose from the fables whispered upon enchanted tongues. She is magic and myth ascending out of inky black. Over the mirrors she steps, nimble and predatory, lithe and celestial. Bells chime and bones clink in her hair, chants and spells breathe over her slender spine. Her movement is magic, her every step a beautiful, tribal savagery.
She does not look at the mirrors who bear for her a never ending number of Letos, each from another world, another time. She does not care for what could have been. Not any more. Star magic alights within her veins. The cold of the ocean falls away and steam rises from her skin. Its idle mist rises like prayer from the black of her skin. Ancient religion and sacrament breathes across her painted skin. Sigils, Ilati and shed-star and ocean-born alike gleam silver and gold over the curves of her slim body.
She was made for chants woven in magic, for dances tribal and savage, she is made a creature of the sea and she moves celestial, enchanting, a siren born, a priestess forged. She might be the wildest thing the sea has yielded that day and she slinks after him with her hair tousled, bangles of bone, strings of pearls, the bells, the unwinding plaits, the moon-limned leaves, they all chime, they all toll their achingly beautiful warning. She knows how wicked she has become, how her beauty has turned feral and ever more enchanting. Leto knows too how her hot, white star-blood is no longer the most dangerous thing about her. I am coming Those bells warn her once king. Do you remember me? They sing. Come, beautiful boy, let me drag you out into the sea. They enchant.
Her siren song sings, and if he does not hear it, if Asterion does not feel the way her gaze presses like fingertips up the curve of his spine, then he will know she has come when at last she touches her lips to his flank. I am here. She trails the constellations of stars that draw across his sides. She knows his every one, Leto counted each of them as he too counted the feathers in her hair. Within her, are the names of every constellation that finds art and life across his skin. Oh, beneath her touch he is again, so real, and the constellations, even drowned by his water magic and choked by his sadness, still they sing as pearls gleam from the bottom of the ocean.
Leto laughs, low, expressive as a poem, that presses its words of holiness and desire into his skin, into his bones. They are each made of stars, made of the sea, the earth of Terrastella once bound them and now they are each free. You left again. I was so angry with you. I was so hurt. She might have said if she had not been changed between Anandi’s teeth. Unmade, remade, rekindled, reborn.
Instead, the kelpie breathes, “I always wanted to paint you,” lightly, longingly, her gaze trailing moonlight like paint across his skin, drawing out his constellations in the wake of her lips. His magic trembles beneath her mouth, it beckons her as the sea calls her back wild and wicked and open. “You are a free man now, Asterion.” Leto says, at last drawing away from him, the salt of his skin upon her. “So why do you still walk like Atlas? Have you not learned how to share?” And then, oh then, how wild her smile turns, how wicked and delightful. She laughs, as her teeth gleam with tribal starlight. Her gaze tips down to the mirrors at their feet and the thousand pairs of mahogany and nebular eyes that gaze back. Oh, Asterion, the Ilati-girl thinks, do you let yourself be tortured so in every single world?
Sometimes he liked to come to the edge of the world, and wonder what it would be like —
It’s winter on the island; and in winter, all things die. He had come too late to see the stars (but he had heard the way they all sank into the ocean one day, and how all that was left of them were the crystal skeletons he now walks over.) He was too late, and now he walks through a graveyard of stars and wonders how many wishes had died with them here, how many more had sank in the sea. Each one he passes makes his heart feel like it is both speeding up and slowing down, as he counts all the things that might have been.
He wonders if it says more about the stars or him, that he sees himself watching from every jagged reflection. Or not him, but someone like him — someone with the same smile, the same spots, the same rosy cheeks. But there, he thinks, is where the similarities end, skin-deep, like the stranger is wearing his to hide what lies beneath. Maybe it’s only a lie he tells himself, to pretend that other-Ipomoea is more like himself than he wants to believe. Because he knows, even when he turns away from that first mirror and presses on, that the island is only showing him who he is, beneath his bones and muscles and blood and magic. The orphan in the desert.
Each reflection is the same, that trapped self stalking after him as he makes his way through the fractured maze. It follows him all the way to the cliffs, where the star skeletons form an edge sharp enough to cut, a dam by which to hold the dreams at bay.
He listens to the ocean breaking itself against the glass-cliffs of the island as he stands there on its brink, watches as it throws itself upon the ice and the crystals with such a frenzy he begins to wonder what the waves are trying to escape from. Saltwater slicks his skin from the spray, adds another layer of frozen brine to the ground. He watches the waves rage as far out as he can see, and it feels —
Oh, it feels like watching himself.
He watches the snow fall and disappear beneath the water, watches the waves reach up like so many hungry mouths to consume them.
Behind him his flowers are growing overtop the mirrors. From the glass and the frost and the bone-white star-skeletons, color blooms shy and slow and spreads like spiderwebs across the surface.
And he does not turn to look. Ipomoea never sees the way the frost creeps along their petals like a funeral veil, or the way they grow stiff and cold beneath its weight. He never notices his reflection staring out at him like a ghost, with blood and bones replacing the flower wreath on his brow and eyes that are far too sharp and hungry to belong to him. And he is not watching when that other Ipomoea’s lips peel back and his teeth flash in the winter-gloom as he laughs.
He sees only the sea, and the way all those snowflakes sink into it like so many dreams that ran out of the hope that kept them alight.
There has always been a monster inside of me, gnawing at my heart like a wolf at a bone. I can feel it now, hollowing out my chest like it's making a den of me. Sometimes I wonder if I have ever been anything but a temporary skin for something terrible.
The swamp was full of dead things.
She could smell them all rotting, could feel the way the air hung thick and stagnant against her skin like the breath of some terrible beast. She could feel the way the swamp was pulling everything apart, bit by bit, bone by bone, drawing out the marrow and the sap and the life. It curls around her, as tangible as the vines that creep across the sodden ground.
Each time she steps over them she hears the soft death-lament singing softly in her wake. It chants in time to her own poison heartbeat, each throb, each step, each lyric a new death. The fog gross thicker, sickly-sweet, hanging like a funeral veil she drapes over the swamp. And she, she is the grim reaper, the shadow, the beast moving between the trees and wading deeper into the tangled wild.
And yet —
For each leaf that falls like a sinner bowing at her feet, there are dozens more whispering overhead. For each flower that wilts and blackens against her lips there is always another that brightens once her shadows moves past. Everywhere she looks Isolt sees only the trees sucking up the poisoned swamp-water like wine, growing tall despite the way their branches sag and their bark turns sallow and soft.
Everything in her is screaming at the sight of it. The wolves in her bones are howling and screaming and begging for her to devour, begging for to consume the forest whole so she might sate her hunger with it. Her tail lashes like a whip behind her, gouging scars into the nearest water-gum trees.
Her reflection, when she looks into that rotten black water, does not look like a blood red unicorn. She looks like only a shadow of a girl with a bit of bone weighing heavy on her brow. Every day it feels more like a weapon than a weight, every day she aches to see the hollow curls of it filled.
And today, like every other day, she swallows down her heart when it leaps into her chest.
And she turns away, and presses deeper into the swamp. She presses on, until dead leaves and moss tangle in her hair and mud stains her cheeks. She presses on, and with each step she feels more and more like a wolf wearing the clothing of a sheep, the grim reaper wearing the life of the swamp and pretending she is not strangling the life out of it as surely as the rotten water is drowning it. She presses on, until she sees the form of another moving like a ghost between the trees (and everything in her blood begins to sing at the sight of it.)
And with the silent forest pressing in all around her, she follows after him like a wolf following the scent of blood.
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
S
he bleeds not blood, but wanderlust.
It pours from her veins in vivid colors, as if it were a rainbow stuck inside her chest and not a heart, as if she were only comprised of other places, other lands, instead of organs, bones, muscle. Elliana is an accumulation of the world. She has heard the people of the world and she has heard their stories whispered in her ear at night in the dark. Elliana has heard so many stories and yet when she closes her eyes every night she only wishes to hear more. They have told her the stories of mountains they climbed, they have told her stories how evil is a strong force still in the world, they have told her stories of dragons, they have told her stories of water horses. Adventure, bravery, sorrow, cowardice. She hears story after story and wonders where hers fits in, or if she would be destined to walk among the pages, dancing on the words traced in ink, remembering them to one day speak them. To speak the stories of others that have lost their chance to tell them.
Those awestruck doe eyes gaze at the world of mirrors around her. They reflect back at her, showing her dark face looking back at her. There are two too-blue eyes on her face that look like her mother’s eyes, like the godmother she has never met, or the grandmother that sleeps six feet under. There is a heart on her brow, like her mother. The curious look to the crook of her smile is like her father, but the moon marking, her mother tells her it is Caligo’s marking. Elliana asked if any others had it. She said yes, but she did not say who and so Elli did not ask. That single pale leg, that reaches forward, sometimes Elliana dreams that it belongs to someone else. She thinks it must be a spirit, but they have never asked for it back and so she keeps it. She sees something else in herself too. Shadows. They pass over her face like a passing raincloud. She wants them to stay as much as she wants them to leave.
She walks still, watching her reflection break apart and form back together. She thinks she could walk through this place for eternity, just looking to her own reflection, discovering more pieces to it, finding more hidden secrets in every delicate curve of her face or tilt to her head.
And the mirrors here start to look a less like mirrors and more like clocks.
One year falls away and her limbs begin to lengthen buried in the snow.
Two years fall away and the roundness of her cheeks gives way to angles and planes.
Three years fall away and she is grown, a moonflower sits in her hair, her eyes are still blue.
He almost ran into it, the lake that lay in front of him. There was an eagerness in his eyes as he cantered towards it, his muscles rippling like the wind on the sands. Fresh and clear. Stunningly cerulean, almost blindingly so when the light brushed her sweet rays over the surface. Galileo would never have known it was there, or even the direction to go in to find any source of life, if it hadn't been for the mare he had met by the shores. And now, here he was, leaving in his wake nothing but deep-buried memories and footprints on the dunes.
The first touch of water on his lips was sweet, and he savoured it until he could enjoy it no more; he rushed forward, splashing the water as he went. This was so different to being at sea -- he felt protected, enveloped in the arms of the mountain herself. Behind him, floating like a twig on the water, his tail created capillary waves as it moved left and right. Submerged up to his stomach, he threw his head underwater whilst holding his breath, hoping to clean off his ragged mane. Blinking as he reappeared and the sun glinting off his golden eyes, he blissfully took his time bathing in the lake.
When he finally chose to get out (his thoughts and worries put to rest, for now), Galileo turned to the rocks, brown and cracked from the ebb and flow of the lake tides. Lifting a hoof out the water and placing it on a low rock, he coaxed his huge frame upwards in one motion, allowing the rest of his body to join. For a moment, he was stable, but there was a false sense of security as the world suddenly clattered into motion. The hoof that had been last to join slipped, dragging him back down into the lake. With a sharp but deep cry, he landed heavily back in the water. What was once clear blue was now mixed with the red of blood, and though he couldn't see his legs in the murky water, he could feel the pain creeping upwards.
For the second time entering this new land, he had put himself in danger, and this time he had suffered for it. Grunting as he shifted through the water towards a lower section of rock, he gently stepped out, wobbling on his injured leg. Moving towards the flatter part of the lake, he pulled himself out with effort. Standing there, helplessly bleeding on the shore, he once again cursed the lands they called Novus; the first chance he could get to leave, he would.
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "AND MY MOTHER / SOBBED EACH DAY AT FIRST; HER SWEET FRIEND / GONE AIMLESSLY CAUSTIC. AND FEAR / opens the body the way of a fist / through teeth. the chicken wire / one morning blown open, mouth / of strewn feathers and jagged space. Probably coyotes / in the coop, but his tenderling body / was never found, and we who know / the way of once-gentle boys think maybe / he ripped a hole in leaving and just left."
I would kill my brother, if it were the kindest thing I could do for him.
I would make it quick – I would snap his neck, or I would slit his throat, or I’d inject him with something that would put him into a sleep that he would never wake from. It wouldn’t hurt, and I would make sure that he wouldn’t suffer. If it were the kinder thing to do – if it were the kindest thing to do -, I would kill my brother.
I don’t think that I would feel any remorse for it, either.
I spend most of my days around the dying, in emergency care or the hospice ward. (It is because dying does not trouble me quite like it should.) I see patients, sometimes, and I know that they are not being kept alive for their own sake. I know that they are suffering, and I know that they are too far gone to recover through any means short of divine intervention. (Of course, their friends and family always hope for divine intervention. Sometimes the patients do, too, but most of the time they don’t – and that just means they’ll deteriorate more quickly.) I know that they are suffering, and I know that they can’t be saved, and I know that they are being kept alive for the sake of the people who love them, not for themselves.
I have professional ethics, of course. I watch them slip away slowly, like sand from the hourglass, until the inevitable overtakes them. I do my best for them, in the time that they have, and I try to shake the feeling that I am being cruel with my complacency.
I don’t doubt that my siblings could kill each other, sometimes.
I doubt that any of them but me could do it quick. (Even Corradh, and he spills blood for sport.)
When I go looking for my brother, the party is already over. The halls look ghastly; the guests have left them a mess that the servants are already struggling to clean up. (My siblings will want them pristine by the morning.) The lights have gone dim, and the entertainers have already left – the painters fled out to the desert, the living statues to the city streets. My hair is unbound, and all the pink flowers that adorned it at the start of the evening have fallen out.
As I stalk the halls, I see one or two littering the floor, crumpled and blackened beneath the hooves of passers-by. They were expensive, I think, to end up so utterly wasted. (But, then, most lovely things are wasted on me.) Ishak is on my heels like a shadow, sweat-slick and watchful. I don’t know where my brother is, but I doubt that he has moved far from the hall where he spent most of the party. (He is practically a statue himself, nowadays.)
I sidestep broken glass, a fallen and half-concave vase. I try not to pay attention to the chagrined expression of a maid in the corner, tasked with cleaning a particularly grotesque stain.
When I step into the hall, which was one inhabited by just as many living statues as inanimate ones, I find that he is still there. I nod the servants out of the room, and Ishak, though I am sure that he will linger on the other side of the door. (It is probably for the best – it isn’t as though I keep anything from Ishak, and he will prevent anyone else from listening in on our conversation.)
It feels strange, hiding in my own home. Still – Adonai is sick, and not through natural means, and I can never be sure of who is listening.
I look at Adonai without flinching. I should probably feel horrible, seeing him so utterly deteriorated, nauseous, but I don’t feel anything at all. The only thing that I think is that he will be dead soon – that he is dying. I’m not sure if he can be salvaged. I know that the most talented medics from most of the courts have been gathered, at one point or another, to examine my brother, and I know that they have found no cure for what ails him. I am not so sure that I am the most talented of medics, or the most practiced, or the most valuable; I simply possess a unique set of skills.
(And – an ugly insight. And – certain, ugly suspicions.)
I would prefer to salvage him. I would prefer, at least, to have the chance to. “Adonai,” I say, softly, without bothering with pleasantries (there would be no point), “would you like me to take a look at you?”
@Adonai || ruth, starting this thread: yeah I'd commit an ethical violation if I thought it was ethical, and what about it || erin slaughter, "all the gentle boys grow spurs"
Link to the required Amare Creek "Fade to Black" thread: There is no fading to black here, but...
How many total threads have they interacted in? To absolutely no one's surprise, this is for Solis. These are incredibly out of order, but here they are :: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
What is the current IC season? Winter
Are you using any items? Twins, Choose Gender (x2), Healthy Pregnancy
If the parents are of separate Courts, what parent will the foal live with? n/a
If the conception is successful, do you have an RPer for the foal(s)? Yes, Kat & I – here’s Diana & Ambrose
Is there anything else you'd like us to know?only that, should this be successful, I'd probably sell my next firstborn for a Solis appearance, &, ideally, a full thread <3
my mania becomes / a metaphor / the word kindling / the way a small burning thing becomes a fire / the way that this makes the fire / once again / a small burning / thing / after all what is a sun / but every possible thing / burning?
It’s cold.
The creekbed has not gone dry in winter, but much of the creek has frozen over; a few deeper eddies swirl beneath icy overtures, here and there, their sound reduced to a whisper, but the creek seems strangely silent and strangely still. The waterfall has frozen entirely and frozen foam-white, less like ice than a jutting rock formation grown on the side of the ledge. The grass is dead and brown, bent over beneath its own weight, and the trees have lost all their leaves, bare-bone branches reaching up towards a near-white sky. (There are clouds, but they are thin; she can see the sun through a haze. It will snow, soon.) During the spring, Seraphina knows that Amare looks beautiful. Now, it looks ashen and dead. There is no wind. Nothing disturbs the grass, or her long white mane, or the empty branches.
Only the water moves, and, even then, only barely – strangled by jutting river-stones and thick sheets of ice.
It’s cold. She is unarmored and unarmed; she isn’t sure if she even needs weapons, anymore. Sometimes she thinks that she could simply fling someone and crush their skull, but she tries not to think about it. (It reminds her too much of her own skull, crushed.) She resents the sound it makes in her mind.
Ereshkigal is gone, today. She is not sure why, but she was not at her side when she woke this morning. She has not called for her, but she imagines that she is hunting. Prey is scarce during the winter; she works harder, and longer, to find something to devour, particularly when they are not in Solterra. Seraphina is not sure that the demon needs to eat, but she certainly seems to enjoy the taste of blood in her mouth. (She cannot sympathize.)
It feels strange to be without her. She loathes the demon, and the demon loathes her – but, in all her lonely wanderings, she has trailed after her like another limb, an extension of herself. Her presence is a barrier against being all alone – terribly alone – with her thoughts.
Now she is alone. The world is silent, and the world is still, and she cannot help but feel like she is frozen, like the mottled creekbed, but frozen in a time and a place that no longer exist. She isn’t even sure why she came here, on the slow walk back from Veneror. She didn’t have to. (The answer, though she would not admit it, is that she is never quite sure how to return home.) She didn’t have to, but now she is here, and she is cold in a way that the desert never is, and she is sure that it will snow soon.
Her breath trails behind her like fog. She walks on the bank, but, as she approaches the white arc of the frozen waterfall, she steps out onto the ice, her steps tentative although she hovers above the ground. (There is no danger of falling in, and the water is shallow, but she dares not look down regardless.) She takes one step, and then another, and then another, and finally she finds herself standing at the center of what would be the pool the waterfall feeds into, somewhat deeper than the rest of the creek. (Fish collect here, in the spring – fish and snakes, and frogs.)
She stands, white cloud of her breath collecting in front of her face, and, ever so slowly, her magic seems to dribble out of her like water, and, for the first time in what must have been quite a while, her hooves press down on something solid.
The ice creaks beneath them, unyielding and entirely unlike sand.
She looks up – towards the frozen spray of waterfall, and the rocks leading up the cliffside, and the clouds collecting snow, and the sun.
<3 || time for.....an attempt............................ || torrin a. greathouse, "self-portrait as a kindling model of hypomaniac symptoms" "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
a terrible angel song / only the dead / or nearly dead / can hear
She can’t seem to pray properly, lately.
Oh – she goes through all the motions. She lights the candles, and the incense, and she bows her head to the altar, and she keeps it bowed until she has recited the prayers that she was taught as a girl, words so familiar that she doesn’t even have to think of them to say them. But not thinking to say them is as good as admitting they no longer mean anything at all; she is sure that they used to, when she was younger, when she wasn’t doubtful. Her childhood was cruel, and violent, and reprehensible.
(It was easier, though. It was easier being the victim entire than- whatever pitiful and terrible thing she has become. She wasn’t allowed to choose. Maybe that was why she was never prepared for choosing, much less choosing wrong.)
She can never pray in silence, because, if she is silent too long – like she is silent most days, when Ereshkigal no longer bothers to speak with her because she knows that she will not respond -, she will begin to think of things. Seraphina will begin to think of terrible things, like dying, or a city of stone, or a battlefield as a girl, or Zolin/Raum/Viceroy (their faces all blend together, most of the time), or flowers, or drowning in a maze or in the sea, or pressed flowers in a letter, or the capitol when it was her city, the only city she had ever known, or everyone that she has ever, even for a moment, loved, and then will come the desperate longing, like black water crashing through floodgates. It’s vile. It’s terrible. She resents it nearly as much as she resents herself, and she knows – and she knows - that, if she lets herself think too much, too long, she won’t ever be able to recover. It will eat her alive. There will be no turning back.
She could cry. Weep. She is sure that she could, but she doesn’t, not often. She can’t remember the last time that she did, though she thinks that she does most nights, in the ugly, marred darkness of her dreams.
In her dreams sometimes she-
She stands in front of the altar, and she is slapped across the jaw. She stands in front of the altar, and it comes to life, and sometimes it is Solis, but sometimes it is quicksilver and blue-eyed, and-
Seraphina stands in front of the altar. There is a lit candle beside of Solis’s golden hooves, and three sticks of sweet-scented incense in a jar of green blown-glass. Ereshkigal is outside, her feathers ruffled as a shield from the biting cold, and she is silent. (Her silence is nearly a punishment, nowadays.)
She looks up at Solis, gold and hard and empty, and she feels like she could sob. (She did sob, when the gods appeared. She thinks it might have been the first time her heart broke, the first time she was ever truly disappointed in anything. She was resigned to the world being cruel, to Solterra being cruel (but always capable of growing better; what a terrible irony), but not the gods. The gods were meant to be – more.) She looks up at Solis, her lips falling half-open, and she doesn’t know what to ask for-
(There is a haunting image of her in the back of her head, in third person, unscarred, collared, hair in tight braids, ordinary but for her title – trailing in the steps of Solis as he spins gold from thin-air and grants little wishes. He asks her what she wants. She doesn’t have an answer.) “Can’t you…tell me what to do?” Her voice comes out quiet. Barely a whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
closed. || making it 10 for...good luck? || Nicole Connolly, "I Don't Know Why My Internet Algorithms Suggest Articles About How to Keep Teens in the Faith" "Speech!"||"Ereshkigal!"
The swamp was full of dead things.
