Darkness caressed the land with a slow hand, her breath slow and yet filled with a heaviness that echoed the oppressive atmosphere of the summit grounds. It had been this way since she had arrived, in a small group of other equines from Delumine. There was an uncertainty that tightened around the throats of everyone like a noose, threatening to strangle the very life that they had always known. As if some of them weren’t already dead. It had not helped any to feel the earth shake with such force that it had sent her to her knees, and to watch as the great doors that had closed their nation’s leaders behind them become blocked with stone.
She had felt the palpable panic that had surged with the realization that the four courts’ regimes were trapped, or in the worst case dead. The people had come in droves, watching with frightened eyes to behold the sight of the rubble. Even Soleil could not hide her fear, the concern clearly etched into her fine features. What did this mean? What had happened in there? She had waited, merely an observer -- watching as others tried to dig their way into the rubble. If their leaders were gone, what would this mean? Fear had kept her away from the small crowd beginning to form, flashes of the chaos that had followed Zolin’s death looping through her mind like a film.
It was when she was sure that she could smell the smoke, feel the very heat of flame against her skin that she had turned and fled. It was all too much, and she could not afford to be caught in the midst of another rebellion. She had only returned when word had reached them that the Sovereigns and their Regimes were unscathed, appearing out of the forest. Relief had filled her like a breath of fresh air, and the way that her skin had trembled could finally be still. Her weakness was so evident that she was disgusted.
She adjusted the ivory fabric resting against gilded skin, pulling it closer to defend against a particularly bitter wind. She could feel the sting of it in the scrapes that covered her knees and ankles, not quite yet healed over from her fall. Leaden-blue eyes were focused on her route ahead, coming back to the place she had abandoned hours ago -- her lip curling back in a sneer of contempt at her response. She wanted to understand why the terror had so easily gripped her. Would it not have been a good thing for the Sovereigns and their regimes to perish? Would that not help further her goals to see Solterra returned to its former glory?
No She thought, as she stepped up the crumbled rock that hid the place where the great doors had stood. Her teke brushed gently over the stone, it’s cragged edges continuing to crumble where she touched them. She wanted to know just what had occured in there, and if the gods were really speaking to the populace again. The blonde shifted her weight, tossing a glance over her shoulder to the darkness behind the trees. Someone was there. She thought quietly, though she couldn't be sure. Something though, an inner sense, warned her to be cautious.
Seraphina burns.
Unstable tremors still wrack the wire-frame of her body, palpable and violent as earthquakes; she drags her tongue along her sweat-stained, ashen lips, and, as she does, they curl up into a vicious mockery of a smile. She might have laughed – she feels like she could have laughed, and she thinks that it would have come out all twisted-up and bitter and crackling, because her lungs felt so dry and torn from the dusty air and the heave of pressure and exhaust. She is an ash-heap; all of her silver is coated in sweat and grime, and the gold streaks painted beneath her eyes feel more like a mockery than anything now that they are so nearly obscured by grit and salt-stain. Her legs are gelatinous heaps beneath her, dragged down and pinned to the forest floor like lead weights, but she presses deeper and deeper into the musty darkness of the woods with an urgency that belies none of her weakness; but still it feels like her body trails a thousand miles behind her mind, which stumbles urgently over the right words to tell her people. The kicked-dog darkness that eats at the back of her heart whispers hungrily in her ear: The gods have betrayed you. They have betrayed us all. Don’t waste your prayers on them. The rational part of her that stands resolute, like a thick – bent, beaten, breaking – iron clasp tangled round her throat reminds her: They have not told you anything yet. You cannot know why they have come, or what they intend…and if you are not careful, your words could further endanger your people.
She knows which voice is right – and yet – and yet – and yet -
Dry autumn leaves crunch beneath her hooves, and, caught amidst the pounding of her head, they might as well have been claps of thunder. She doesn’t know where she is - not really. Her mind is racing, and, even if she were paying any attention to the densely-forested landscape rolling alongside her, she’s sure that, in the homogenous darkness that stretches out under Caligo’s (she could have laughed) night, it would have made navigating no easier. Instead, she chases after little snippets of voices, rare, sharp clarities that break through the static fuzz of her own tumultuous thoughts. Noises. Life. When she closes her eyes – each little blink – brings her back to that falling rubble, to the howl of the gods over her head, to the sudden realization that they are not what she thought they were that none of them were what she thought they were that nothing is what she thought it was-
A glimmer of light through the trees ahead sends her surging forward; the noise is louder now, the distant hum of voices nearly enough to consume the cacophony of her own thoughts. Where is Eik? Where is Bexley? flickers through her haze, faintly. Somewhere behind her – outside of the rubble, and that is all that matters. They would catch her eventually. For now, she is a sleek shadow of silver, and, like a droplet of water wriggling free from a stream, she breaks out of the darkness of the forest and into the edges of the cleared ground for the Summit, her chest still heaving with exhilaration.
She is met with the wildflower tang of Delumine almost immediately, but she offers little more than a sidelong glance to the gold-painted woman that is its source before brushing on by her without even a word of greeting – her people need her, and she has no time to waste on pleasantries.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
