the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
The sun queen stands in a ray of dying light filtered through the remnants of shattered windows; she still hasn’t gotten around to replacing the beautiful scenes that had once adorned the sides of the throne room. This is mostly irrelevance – they are hardly the most important thing she has to rebuild – and partially procrastination. Without the sun god to think of, she does not know what scenes to adorn the walls with. (She glances back, momentarily, at the scorched throne, and her eyes rest on the hole that once held the sun medallion she had left at Veneror when she disavowed her gods. She does not speak to him, now, as she used to. A part of her feels emptier for the loss.) She takes a breath, steps back, and moves towards the center of the room, hooves clacking rhythmically against the sandstone floors. She used to pace when she was troubled. Now, it is largely a matter of anticipation – a step that she wonders if she is prepared to take.
She needs another limb; Eik is well-suited to diplomacy and travelling, and she couldn’t have asked for someone better to fulfill her former role, but someone must still fill what was once Avdotya’s place. Someone who is not Avdotya. She has danced around the subject, for some time – she tells herself that the behavior is warranted, given the actions of her previous reagent. Even if she was no choice of hers, putting her trust in the viper was a mistake she would not be quick to repeat, and a Regent that appropriately satisfied what she needed from the role was difficult. She needed fire and blood, and she needed venom. That was not hard to come by, in a land with as short of a temper in Solterra. Genuine loyalty to the court, on the other hand, seemed to be in far shorter supply…and resilience. She expected no trouble in finding resilience in a harsh desert kingdom, but it was not merely physical resilience that she desired.
She’d settled on a candidate, eventually. She’d settled on sharp-toothed smiles and batted lashes, on honey and venom all laced up in a pretty, pretty golden form; more than that, she’d settled in a great gnarl of a scar, a testament. Oh, she was nothing like the darkness of the viper – but she was just as venomous and just as deadly. Seraphina was sure of it. She’d seen her smile.
And now…now it was about time to see if she agreed to the proposition. Seraphina glances at one of the guards stationed at the doors expectantly and takes a deep breath. “Bring me Bexley Briar,” She says, simply – and waits.
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
05-30-2018, 06:39 PM - This post was last modified: 05-31-2018, 07:40 PM by Seraphina
Violence has been visiting. Bexley sleeps in fits and bares her teeth, bursts awake at midnight, finds the edges of the known world and throws herself off them. Saltier is half-prison and half-ecstasy. Her scar lives in every silver mirror, and she hates the sight of it, and thanks Solis for all the shattered windows in the capitol, for the cool, swallowing darkness where glass, where the reflection of her face, once lay. Her heart is a swallow in her chest - loud, harsh, spastic. Violence has been visiting, and Bexley welcomes it like an old best friend. It might as well be.
She is thinking of violence, as she often is, when the guard comes to fetch her. Bex nearly flinches as his shadow spills over the doorway. What is he doing here, sneaking in like something evil - through the army she cannot even see his eyes, his hard expression, the curve of his mouth. Something about it gives her chills. Seraphina wants to see you, comes his voice through the still air, and before she can open her mouth to ask merely the first of many questions, he is gone, steps clattering down the staircase, disappeared as quickly as he came. For a moment she wavers in place, wondering: is this her punishment? Has Seraphina found out about the revenge exacted on Acton? Are they closing their own gates, fearful of the fire burning in the Arma Mountains? Bexley’s worries heighten until they are a whirlwind. And then, at the moment that her body cannot contain the speed of thought, she takes off toward the citadel in a blur of white hair and quick feet.
The Day Court passes by in a mirage. Sand and sandstone, broken glass, the smell of metal welding. She whirls through it all without a second glance, knowing with intimacy the steps she will have to trace to the citadel, sure in step, loud in movement, and all the time worrying and worrying. The guards at the tower open those huge wooden doors with nary a question - how strange is that? As the stairs rise ahead of her, she forces her steps to slow. The air in her chest seems harder to breathe. Bang-bang-bang - her pulse is strange venom. Be calm. Be calm. Easier said than done, of course, and as Bexley pulls herself up the last step, winding with unnecessary feline grace into the last room at the end of the hall, she feels the heat of the air like a living thing with teeth and claws outstretched just for her.
Seraphina, she starts. Her voice is raspy with disuse, and the rarity of that makes her tone seem nearly disembodied. The Solterran forces herself to stop, and stand, a respectful distance away. Solis, please give me something good. Though her pulse still flutters like a hummingbird, she meets the Sovereign’s eyes with practiced calm, and finds a way to pretend the flyaways in her hair, the rapid flit of her gaze back and forth, is a chosen decision and not a human weakness. You called?
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
Seraphina, you called?
The sound of hooves against sandstone. She turns. “Bexley Briar.”
The name rolls off her tongue easily; it is familiar, like a remnant from a past era; a time before Seraphina was the sun queen, and a time before Bexley Briar was a girl marred by a pair of Denoctian spies. It was easier, then, she thinks. Simpler. Certainly, Maxence’s temper brought them their fair share of trouble, but, in the wake of flames, ancestral violence was quiet. She lets that name hang for a moment, wondering if either of them are still the same people they were at that time, then begins to climb down the stairs in front of the throne, head inclined to consider her. Bexley Briar. Solterra’s golden girl, once – and still their golden girl now, flawlessly beautiful save for the scar that knots her face in two. Seraphina doesn’t care much for beauty, however. In a land like Solterra, where it is ripped away with one wrong step in the desert sands, it matters very little in the grander scheme of things. (She has a feeling that it matters to the girl. It is something in the way she presents herself, like something to be seen – and girl! Bexley is older than she is.) Disheveled as she is, as though she has run to meet her (and she likely has), voice raspy (and wrong for it, too like when she found her broken and bloodied in the cave) and hair tossed out of place, she still moves to hide her rush. When her blue-eyed gaze rises to meet her own, it is calm, and the attention she pays to each and every little detail of herself is somehow admirable to the standoffish and statuesque Sovereign. Her Regime needs to accommodate for her weaknesses, the holes in her defense of Solterra, and who better to do that than this golden girl? She is the glamour and the merrymaking that she cannot quite wrap her mind around, all wrapped up in a burning ribbon of hellfire.
She has no doubt that Bexley Briar is no less dangerous than her last Regent – she remembers that banshee smile that she gave her, all sharp teeth and white fury, when she spoke of payment from Acton and Raum. She wonders if they are still breathing, and she knows she should ask - did they pay for it, Bexley? - if only because of Cynix’s words to her just days ago, but she doesn’t. In truth, she isn’t sure that she cares.
She climbs, still quiet.
As with Eik, she considers her words carefully, and, also as with Eik, she decides against a pretty turn of phrase. “I understand that this is often done with…more formality, or embellishment. I see no need to mince words.” She continues her descent down the stairs until she stands just in front of her, mismatched eyes staring coolly into her own, unreadable – best to make this proposition on even ground. “I want you to become Solterra’s Regent – so long as you are willing, that is.”
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
05-30-2018, 08:22 PM - This post was last modified: 05-31-2018, 07:40 PM by Seraphina
Seraphina burns bright silver in the near distance, and for the first time Bexley sees her as something beautiful, something dangerous and elegant, good-looking in a way that reeks of power, of self-control, that Bexley has never truly had. Where Bex is warm and soft and only sharp on the inside, Seraphina is something cool and regal and utterly unflappablele, and more often than not Bex nearly resents her for being so capable. Who gave her the right to be so lovely and dangerous - so always-right? Inadequacy is a rock in Bex’s stomach. As the Sovereign turns, she feels something sharp and fear-inducing move in a spasm up her spine, sinking anxious teeth into the spaces between her vertebrae, and she forces herself to stand still as the distance between the two closes, despite the fire that flickers just under her skin and the loud, insistent bang of her heart against her ribs.
Her necklace suddenly seems to weigh heavy. Does Seraphina’s too?
Of course not. Of course not, she reminds herself, she is not weak. Clack-clack-clack come steps on the sooty concrete, and Bexley watches the descent with cool bright eyes, a bird poised to fly and yet containing its wings. From behind that cloud of shining white hair, she registers the tiny dip of Seraphina’s head and returns it, struggling the suppress the curiosity that such a gesture inspires. When the sun queen speaks, Bex can’t help the surprise that flits across her features, an expression of genuine shock, as pleasant as it might be: I want you to become Solterra’s regent.
The world melts away. Blackness, at the corner of her eyes, threatens to infringe. All at once she is a child again, quiet and frail in the towering woods of Greer-Briar, and Una’s white-hot voice rings through her ears: power will only leave you if you let it. A whirlwind of floods and fires and crashing rocks comes speeding across her vision, and for a moment she stands silent, outwardly almost vacant, as she reminisces on just how goddamn long she has been without power over her life, her surroundings, even powerless over herself, beaten down by every irresistible whim, every fleeting urge, every sight of her gnarled face in a mirror.
No longer.
Yes. Of course. A sheepish grin flickers across those white lips, and Bexley does not bother hiding the excitement that lights like stars deep in her eyes. If you are the sword, I will be the smile. It is an honor to serve Solterra.
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
Her expression shifts from something that Seraphina cannot place to eager, burning excitement in the space of seconds; she’s pleased, Seraphina realizes. She knew that she would be. When she became Emissary, she knows that she did not feel the same anticipation, but the circumstances were so different then – when she took the throne, at least, she was eager for what she thought was the opportunity to make a change in the land to which she had dedicated her entire life. Her words bring a rare glimmer of warmth to the mare’s mismatched eyes. “Excellent – I am counting on it.” And she is. Seraphina can handle violence – much as she dislikes it, she is a violent creature by design. Smiling, on the other hand…
But there is a quickness to her response that gives Seraphina momentary pause, and, for a fraction of a second, she remembers Maxence, clutched in a teryr’s claws; she remembers the great beast’s wings blotting out the sun, and she remembers that she could not save him. (Perhaps the first great failure of her rule was becoming the ruler in the first place, she thinks.) She remembers how quickly she was willing to step up afterwards, too, without really knowing, and, with a soft reluctance, she continues. “But I have to ask…if something happens to me, do you know what this means?”You will be Queen is implied somewhere in the softness of her tone; unless Eik stepped up instead, as she did, but a substantial part of Seraphina doubts that would be the case. She is not sure that he has the same kind of ambition that she knows Bexley possesses. “This job is a cruel one, and so often thankless. I have no doubt that it is one that you can do – but are you sure that you want it?” She wonders if she would have wanted it, if she had known – so recently and yet so long ago – what it had meant, and she wonders if the question she was asking was even something fathomable to someone who hadn’t lived it.
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
Perhaps it is childish that Bexley looks to her station with such pleasure - that what crosses her face in a gilded glimmer is elation and not fear.
But then perhaps she is a child in matters of political prowess. Perhaps her idolization is that not only of a false god but a false happiness - trust misplaced in an idea that has followed her since birth, the idea that power will bring satisfaction. Perhaps Seraphina is wrong to trust her so, to put the fate of Solterra in the hands of a girl who burns and burns and burns when their land has already burned so many times.
When that thought comes to her, it sends a chill into her veins, one of pure ice that shocks her down into the bones. It is a strange feeling in a desert that burns so bright.
But - and later, walking the streets of Solterra after the sun has dipped, she’ll thank Solis for timing it with the perfect exactness to ensure Seraphina will never see her subsurface weakness - this is when the Sovereign speaks, and Bexley is saved from her own misgivings by a completely different sent of anxieties. Watching Seraphina’s mismatched gaze, she almost frowns. It is almost a softer voice than she has ever heard the Sovereign speak in, and that reverence, the unexpected gentleness, sets Bexley’s teeth to buzzing in the same way that catching someone in a lie would.
All my life I have gone unthanked, she comments dryly, and her lashes flutter in a languid blink. It seems to be my family’s curse. I may as well make use of my practice at it - a smile cuts at those white lips, and for a moment she thinks of the thanklessness of being born a woman, the thanklessness of forever wearing a chain around your neck, and thinks that Seraphina might be the only woman ever worthy of sitting on Solterra’s throne, but that she owes it to the silver to at least try living up to that legacy.
It is the first sense of duty she has felt in ages.
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
Solterra is fighting - a constant push-and-pull between a desert determined to swallow the measly civilization that sprung up on its outskirts whole, a constant push-and-pull between the factions of hellfire personalities that occupy every nook and cranny and city street, a constant push-and-pull between the sun and moon in the sky above. To be Solterran - to be Queen of Solterra – is to fight an unyielding battle against elements to which you will inevitably succumb, be it by a well-placed knife between the ribs, the red-hot grasp of teeth on your throat on the battlefield, or time, weathering you away like sandstone until nothing remains. Nothing is permanent; steps in the sand will disappear in a day. Everything is a struggle.
She thinks, though, that Bexley Briar can understand struggle. Maybe not that one, – not yet – but she’s had to struggle for her life, and she did not succumb in spite of the best efforts of the elements to kill her, and that is the most inherently Solterran thing that Seraphina can think of. A scar is a survival, and she’s earned hers.
She speaks of going unthanked, and Seraphina fixes her with a contemplative, though not doubtful, expression. “Then you’re well-prepared for what is to come,” She says, simply; no need to speak of the political landscape that she will be baptized into come the morning. Her family - Seraphina hadn’t grown up with one, and it doesn’t always dawn on her that others most often do. She wonders what kind of a family created Bexley Briar, what kind of a mother birthed a wildfire girl with a thorn for a tongue. The briars. Sounded about right. “…Your family. Your homeland. It occurs to me that I’ve never asked about them – what were they like?” If Bexley is to be her Regent, Seraphina has the sneaking feeling that she should make some sort of attempt to get to know her on a personal level, and she’s curious besides. The silver has never left Novus, although she’s always wondered what lies beyond the sea that borders it on every side; the curiosity is freeing, even invigorating. She knows that she will never see them, but she can hear of them – and hearing would have to be enough.
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
When Seraphina speaks again, in the same cool, even tone as always, expressing what as much muted support as Bexley could ever ask for, she thinks that must be it. Every interaction she’s had with the Sovereign has been brusque and business like, finished with exactness and done away with as soon as it outlived its use. She’s come to associate the silver with clipped words and conversations. It is because of this - their past experiences coming to mind like bubbles on the surface on a pond - that Bexley dips her head after those words and turns to exit through the arching doorway, expecting nothing more. Satisfaction glimmers quietly in her chest.
But then the silence is broken. The Sovereign’s voice reachers her again, floating silver through the air. Bexley pauses mid-step. Unsure, blinking in quiet surprise, she realigns herself to face Seraphina completely, and for a moment thinks about where to even start.
The tale of the Briars is as long as it is grisly, as Bex knows it by heart, could repeat it word for word as her mother told it to her, even, but she gets the nagging sense that Seraphina might not want to know everything she does, that her question comes from a place of forced politeness rather than real interest.
Still - when it comes to someone as stoic as the silver, Bexley will take what she can get.
She blows out a cool exhale, as if in thought, before speaking. The sun makes its own white halo behind Seraphina’s head. Horrible. But Bexley's voice is warm, affectionate, even, in its absent-minded casualness. Not to me, of course - never horrible to me - but still ruthless. So you see where I get it from. Bex flashes her a caustic smile. My grandparents were gods, or something like that, and they made their own corner of the world to rule. The place itself was - is - beautiful, completely green, all untouched. It worked, the monarchy, until it didn’t -
Bexley lifts her chin, showing off the sparkle of that tight gold chain. And most of us died in the revolt that followed. My brother was the first. I escaped - slippery, I guess - for a moment she lapses into painful silence, salt building in the curve of her throat, eyes flickering to the sandstone as she attempts to regain herself.
And she does, with relative quickness.
I don’t know if that’s what you wanted to hear. I had two cousins - that’s easier to swallow.
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
Bexley speaks of her family without reluctance; in all honesty, Seraphina wasn’t sure how she’d respond. Horrible, she says, but not to her. The granddaughter of gods. (It suits her, Seraphina thinks.) And her brother, dead – her, escaping a rebellion. That golden chain around her neck. Seraphina’s eyes flicker to it, and linger, then flicker back up to Bexley’s face. A moment of watery blue eyes, then a snap, and she was composed again and making light of the situation. Two cousins – two cousins, but she answered the question properly the first time. She wonders if she ever would have left – if she ever intended to leave – if that sudden rebellion hadn’t knocked her out of whatever life she was living before.
But that was how those things went, wasn’t it? Seraphina remembers the capitol the day before and after Zolin’s death – one day, all marble, all heat, all embers. The next, ashes stoked to fire, fire, fire everywhere. Zolin wasn’t even a functional monarch; his land wasn’t beautiful, much less all green, and he hadn’t a hint of divinity on his side. He was horrible, bloated, and monstrous, an amalgam of years upon years of corruption, violence, and passivity. Even in those horrible, horrible conditions, rebellion had seemed unthinkable. Maybe it was simply her programming – to be passive and simply take everything that was thrown at her – that made her think that the land was so stagnant and change was so impossible, but she had been blindsided. They had been hopeless and angry for so long, but a single flicker of hope (in the form, she thinks bitterly, of Avdotya) was enough to incite them to the violence that could have set them free so long ago. There were more people suffering than people satiated; they had the advantage of numbers.
Solterra was flame. She wonders, sometimes, why it took it so long to ignite. “What I wanted does not matter – I only care about the truth. And…it’s easier to swallow,” She says, still in that strangely soft tone, “than you might expect.” She doesn’t know if Bexley knows about the rebellion; she doesn’t know if she’s asked anyone about the history of the land she inhabits, or if she spent any time in the now-scorched library to pour over the accounts of the rules of the previous sovereigns. What’s harder to swallow, she thinks, is the implication that Bexley’s family was horrible, as she said, and probably horrible in the same sort of way that Solterra’s nobility was horrible – but she loved them. They were her family, and they loved her, and they were family. Seraphina didn’t have much in the way of family, and she didn’t particularly understand love; most emotions were foreign, but for a dull ache, and that one might have been the most incomprehensible of them all. What’s harder to swallow is that all of those who she’s thought got what they deserved for the suffering that they caused had families, too, and loved ones, too, and they left behind little golden girls – chained, but with a different kind of collar – to stumble over their passing.
But she doesn’t linger, and she doesn’t force Bexley to linger – on this topic, that so clearly hurts – or in this place, either. Tomorrow would be an adjustment for the both of them. “Thank you,” She says, with a dip of her head. “Meet me here when the sun rises, and we’ll go over your duties.” With that, she brushes past her, towards the great double doors at the end of the room, and she disappears out into the halls.
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
It’s too late, now, for her to change any of it - to rework the story and shutter her weaknesses, especially too late to turn back around and do everything differently, to fight instead of flee this time, as she’s wanted to do since the moment her homeland disappeared behind her. Too late to pretend it doesn’t hurt. It all seems so stupid to be overwhelming her now, only moments after Sera places so much responsibility in her hands, but too late, now, she reminds herself, too late for anything and she’ll just have to deal with it -
She feels Seraphina’s gaze weighting down on her necklace and swallows. The cold metal bites, just barely, into the curve of her neck; it is a reminder of a time long gone, but not so far gone it doesn’t still hurt.
Easier to swallow than you might expect. Of course - Bexley watches the collar at the Sovereign’s throat and is hit with an almost-searing sense of guilt, of shame, as she realizes just how much Seraphina might resonate with the pain and the fire and everything hard to swallow, more than anyone else Bex can think of. Of course she can accept the savagery of the Briar family. She knows it intimately. It’s almost certainly the same passed-down brutality that ran rampant in Zolin’s own line, when they ruled Solterra with a bloodied fist - and for that Bexley feels almost guilty, though it’s no fault of her own.
Thank you, she answers as Seraphina leaves, startled from her reverie by the pinprick of excitement that comes with the mention of tomorrow morning and everything that comes with it. For a moment after the Sovereign disappears, she remains, glancing out the still-shattered windows to watch the incoming flood of low, dusty light; then she blows out a cool exhale and turns back toward the door, descending the steps in quick strides.
@Seraphina <3
06-27-2018, 05:22 PM - This post was last modified: 06-27-2018, 05:23 PM by Bexley
