Worship headlights - Printable Version

I'M READY FOR THE FIGHT & FATE

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If Seraphina were to imagine what divinity felt like, it would be warm and fluid, like bathing in the Oasis in the heat of the afternoon; or perhaps it was more like silk, quicksilver sleek and smooth, or a pile of roughly-hewn coins. (Or maybe that was more of the sound of divinity – sharp chinks, metal on metal, a clamor of motion.) It would smell like sandalwood and myrrh; it would gleam so brilliantly that she couldn’t allow her gaze to linger on it, for fear that her eyes couldn’t handle what they would see. That was divinity for Seraphina, for those who toiled in the heat and warmth of Solis’s light – something burning.

She faces down her god, a gift of teryr feathers and burning incense – a flicker of white light under a cloudy night sky - laid as sacrifices at his altar. She thinks of hundreds of questions to ask, important questions, deliberate questions, but all that manages to pry its way free of her lips is a single word, almost cracked, tongue fumbling: “Why?”

She has always gone to Veneror when she needs to find herself, and this is no exception – she’s always told herself that it is to find her god, but, somewhere deep inside of her, she knows the truth. (She’s never lost Solis; she chases his steps every day.) Her eyes creep up the statue that rears in front of her, finding the golden stones of his own eyes; there is no fire in them. All her prayers are whispered to a pale imitation. She knows this, and yet…

“Why?” The question finds its way free of her lips again, a bit fiercer this time. It seems simple enough, at first – childlike. Why do bad things happen? Why does anyone have to die? Why do you sometimes wake up to find the ground tugged out from underneath you? Why? And why does it hurt? It does hurt, even though she keeps telling herself it doesn’t – a subdued, throbbing pain that she tries to keep choked by the silver noose around her throat.

(And a very small, quiet part of her is terrified. She has forgotten what it felt like. She had thought that she would surely never feel it again, but here it is, nipping at her heels like a pack of hungry wolves.)

It’s only now, now that she’s out of the throne room, now that she’s out of the fortress, out of the desert, out of the heat that she feels the sudden weight that has been laid across her shoulders like a thick mantle. Seraphina has always been rational and collected – there’s never been much room for anything else inside of her, and, even if there was, Viceroy made sure that it never slipped through the cracks. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling, now; she fluctuates between white-hot panic and the familiar, icy embrace of apathetic confidence.

(In the midst of this all, she remembers how young she is, barely out of her youth; she has no experience making choices, even for herself. This is stumbling, stumbling, stumbling-)

Abruptly, her eyes find the shrine to Tempus. It’s overgrown with a wild collection of vines, somehow present despite the high altitude. (She thinks again of the maze, the ink-colored monster, the strange man who might not have been a man at all.) When Solis gives her no answer, she moves gingerly to the shrine of the greatest and eldest of all the gods, cold wind breezing through her unkempt locks. Seraphina stares up at his shrine in an absolute silence, save for the wail of the gales through the jagged crevasses stretched out below. She feels like she should ask him something, but no words come out.

She always liked to believe things happened for some divine reason, but, greeted by nothing but silence from all the gods of the world (insofar as she knew, anyways), Seraphina wonders if that wasn’t just another convenient lie that was told to help children – and tragedies – sleep at night. It is much more terrifying to think that there is never a reason for anything, that all of life is only a collection of celestial mishaps. Worst of all, she’s not sure if it matters; she doubts she’ll be sleeping tonight, regardless of the answer. (Maybe that’s the important thing, though.)

She presses her muzzle up against the ivy-covered walls for a quiet moment, eyes fluttering to a close. For a moment, she’s quiet inside.

She draws back, her eyes finding Solis again. “I can’t promise…” She says, quietly, “…not to fail you, but I certainly promise to try.” There is no answer. She does not expect one.

With that, she is gone, a wisp of silver smoke dissipating into the cold wails of the wind.