☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
in the dark yes / trouble is a gray word / not yet solidified in the black space of a mouth
tastes like smoke / campfire hushed by rain / ash / the softest powder i sift through / like a crowd / with no one i love inside //.
It feels like it has been a very, very long time since Seraphina was last in Terrastella. The memory is hazy and dream-like, and the more she tries to grasp at it, the farther it dances out of her grasp. She doesn’t know why she is here now, of all times; there are no obligations that have brought her to the Dusk Court tonight, no crown on her head or duties to bear. She doesn’t even like parties. They are crowded and loud, and there is dancing and drinking – none of those things appeal to her. She has always been a reserved, severe creature, though she learned a few courtly mannerisms during her tenure as queen. Now that she has no such requirements or restrictions, she has the feeling that she is simply drifting, good as an awkward shadow on the wall.
Ereshkigal, her only companion for the night, perches between her shoulderblades, hunched over and grinning; her yellowed teeth glisten in the torchlight. (It has crossed her mind, a time or two, that she should have asked her – no, the - raven to accompany her, but she didn’t want to bother him, and, even if she did, she isn’t sure that she’d know how to ask. She was exactly well-versed enough in social mannerisms to know that there would be implications to that.) She is hardly good company, more prone to raucous hissing and mocking words than pleasantries or cheer, but Seraphina isn’t much in the mood for those either. She tells herself that they would feel hollow. If she is happy for a moment, lately, it sits oddly in her stomach the night after, like a nauseating lead weight. Like guilt. She longs to feel differently than she does, longs to have a head full of something other than statues and ghosts and a persistent, throbbing sense of loneliness, but the longing makes her feel disgusted with herself. There are so many people – dead, now – that would have known exactly what to long for. How to do it. How to be at this party, to take up this space, to wander through it without their skin crawling. It wasn’t fair.
Still. She was the one who was left.
(She doesn’t want to admit it, but Ereshkigal is as much of a barrier as she is a companion. It isn’t as though many passing strangers would approach her, but they are even less likely to come up with the demon between her shoulders, grinning evilly at anyone who takes a step near her. Seraphina supposes that it is a kind of affection, keeping them at bay…but any affection given by a demon is bound to cut like a double-edged blade.)
So she drifts among the crowds. She glances into the room full of revelers and dancers, and she stares up at the massive, trinket-adorned cedar tree, perhaps the biggest she has ever seen. It should be a magical sight, particularly for the silver; she has seen more of the world than she had before she left Novus, but, even on the continent, there is still so much new to the world. But it doesn’t matter where she looks, and it doesn’t matter why she looks at it. She doesn’t – quite – understand why the sight makes something knot in her stomach. All those smiling faces – and all those happy people, delighting in the radiance of the celebration, in their limited time together, in the magic of one night, one night where they can forget their grief and their stress and the rest of the world and simply be together-
Terrastella is so peaceful, so bright. It just makes her ache for Solterra – for what she did to Solterra – all the worse, her failure all the more evident when juxtaposed against something so soft. For a moment, as she stands under a bough of leaves, she wishes that Asterion were here to see it. She wishes that Asterion were here in general, or Florentine; they weren’t close, but she could speak to them. She wishes that she still had Bexley at her side, or Eik, or Teiran, or El Toro, or Jahin, or any number of the other Solterrans. She wishes even for Isra, or for Somnus, or for Renwick, or for Acton, or for Torstein, or for Maxence, or for any number of the other figures she’d met in her time as Emissary, then as Queen.
Seraphina didn’t think much of the figures in her life until they were gone and making lives for themselves, and she had no excuse to chase after them. Were any of them friends to her? She didn’t know. She’d never been much good at discerning something like – that. And it wasn’t as though most relationships were meant to last anyways. People came and went.
People came and went, but she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d found herself alone at a winter festival, a vulture perched on her shoulder. Really – really, she had just come here for the Vigil. To light a candle and say a prayer and mourn in a way that, at the very least, felt acceptable. It is for that that she ignores the passing stares that train themselves on her scarred face. It is that which forces her to ignore the sound of her name in conversation. She wonders how long it will take for her to disappear entirely – how long she will remain the subject of cruel curiosity and repellant wonder, how long it will take for Novus to forget her face. Surely, it is already beginning. Surely, it will not be so long now until she can fade into the desert like a ghost.
(He was a ghost, too. It is only fair that she takes his name, after he stole hers.)
Ereshkigal shifts on her shoulder, her beady red eyes gleaming in the torchlight. “This is boring,” she says, aloud – loud enough for a few passing strangers to look up in panic and cringe away immediately. “How long do we have to stay here?”
Seraphina glances out the window, at the night sky. “Not too much longer,” she murmurs. Once she could see the moon through the glass, she decides, she’ll go to the vigil. It is night, but not late enough yet. She should – stay. It’s better to stay.
Whether or not she wants to stay is another matter entirely.
tags | @Corrdelia
notes | I am sorry that she is so a.) sad and b.) ridiculously long
"speech"
"ereshkigal"
in the dark yes / trouble is a gray word / not yet solidified in the black space of a mouth
tastes like smoke / campfire hushed by rain / ash / the softest powder i sift through / like a crowd / with no one i love inside //.
It feels like it has been a very, very long time since Seraphina was last in Terrastella. The memory is hazy and dream-like, and the more she tries to grasp at it, the farther it dances out of her grasp. She doesn’t know why she is here now, of all times; there are no obligations that have brought her to the Dusk Court tonight, no crown on her head or duties to bear. She doesn’t even like parties. They are crowded and loud, and there is dancing and drinking – none of those things appeal to her. She has always been a reserved, severe creature, though she learned a few courtly mannerisms during her tenure as queen. Now that she has no such requirements or restrictions, she has the feeling that she is simply drifting, good as an awkward shadow on the wall.
Ereshkigal, her only companion for the night, perches between her shoulderblades, hunched over and grinning; her yellowed teeth glisten in the torchlight. (It has crossed her mind, a time or two, that she should have asked her – no, the - raven to accompany her, but she didn’t want to bother him, and, even if she did, she isn’t sure that she’d know how to ask. She was exactly well-versed enough in social mannerisms to know that there would be implications to that.) She is hardly good company, more prone to raucous hissing and mocking words than pleasantries or cheer, but Seraphina isn’t much in the mood for those either. She tells herself that they would feel hollow. If she is happy for a moment, lately, it sits oddly in her stomach the night after, like a nauseating lead weight. Like guilt. She longs to feel differently than she does, longs to have a head full of something other than statues and ghosts and a persistent, throbbing sense of loneliness, but the longing makes her feel disgusted with herself. There are so many people – dead, now – that would have known exactly what to long for. How to do it. How to be at this party, to take up this space, to wander through it without their skin crawling. It wasn’t fair.
Still. She was the one who was left.
(She doesn’t want to admit it, but Ereshkigal is as much of a barrier as she is a companion. It isn’t as though many passing strangers would approach her, but they are even less likely to come up with the demon between her shoulders, grinning evilly at anyone who takes a step near her. Seraphina supposes that it is a kind of affection, keeping them at bay…but any affection given by a demon is bound to cut like a double-edged blade.)
So she drifts among the crowds. She glances into the room full of revelers and dancers, and she stares up at the massive, trinket-adorned cedar tree, perhaps the biggest she has ever seen. It should be a magical sight, particularly for the silver; she has seen more of the world than she had before she left Novus, but, even on the continent, there is still so much new to the world. But it doesn’t matter where she looks, and it doesn’t matter why she looks at it. She doesn’t – quite – understand why the sight makes something knot in her stomach. All those smiling faces – and all those happy people, delighting in the radiance of the celebration, in their limited time together, in the magic of one night, one night where they can forget their grief and their stress and the rest of the world and simply be together-
Terrastella is so peaceful, so bright. It just makes her ache for Solterra – for what she did to Solterra – all the worse, her failure all the more evident when juxtaposed against something so soft. For a moment, as she stands under a bough of leaves, she wishes that Asterion were here to see it. She wishes that Asterion were here in general, or Florentine; they weren’t close, but she could speak to them. She wishes that she still had Bexley at her side, or Eik, or Teiran, or El Toro, or Jahin, or any number of the other Solterrans. She wishes even for Isra, or for Somnus, or for Renwick, or for Acton, or for Torstein, or for Maxence, or for any number of the other figures she’d met in her time as Emissary, then as Queen.
Seraphina didn’t think much of the figures in her life until they were gone and making lives for themselves, and she had no excuse to chase after them. Were any of them friends to her? She didn’t know. She’d never been much good at discerning something like – that. And it wasn’t as though most relationships were meant to last anyways. People came and went.
People came and went, but she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d found herself alone at a winter festival, a vulture perched on her shoulder. Really – really, she had just come here for the Vigil. To light a candle and say a prayer and mourn in a way that, at the very least, felt acceptable. It is for that that she ignores the passing stares that train themselves on her scarred face. It is that which forces her to ignore the sound of her name in conversation. She wonders how long it will take for her to disappear entirely – how long she will remain the subject of cruel curiosity and repellant wonder, how long it will take for Novus to forget her face. Surely, it is already beginning. Surely, it will not be so long now until she can fade into the desert like a ghost.
(He was a ghost, too. It is only fair that she takes his name, after he stole hers.)
Ereshkigal shifts on her shoulder, her beady red eyes gleaming in the torchlight. “This is boring,” she says, aloud – loud enough for a few passing strangers to look up in panic and cringe away immediately. “How long do we have to stay here?”
Seraphina glances out the window, at the night sky. “Not too much longer,” she murmurs. Once she could see the moon through the glass, she decides, she’ll go to the vigil. It is night, but not late enough yet. She should – stay. It’s better to stay.
Whether or not she wants to stay is another matter entirely.
tags | @Corrdelia
notes | I am sorry that she is so a.) sad and b.) ridiculously long
"speech"
"ereshkigal"
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
