She has been hunting so long that she is no longer sure of what she hopes to find.
Raum? He is closer to her at home, in the sands. Surely, it could not be so hard to sneak into those sandstone halls – she is sure that she knows him better than he does – and slit his throat unceremoniously. He doesn’t deserve ceremony. She wants him to die in the most horrible, inconsequential, unloved way possible. (She wants him to die like she did, to hurt like she has; and she knows that he never will.)
Tempus? She has met him twice, and twice she has been rejected by him. She is no longer sure what she wants from god. When she was younger, the answer was easy. Now, without a crown, without any ambition beyond a dead body, she does not know. (If he can turn back time, perhaps he can take her back – back to the Steppe, back to her dead body, and maybe he can leave her dead, with her honor intact, while she still has something to live for. Now she has nothing.)
The relic? She is not sure if it would do her any good. She has magic of her own, now, even if her magic is cruel, and she doubts that the relic can do anything to make her more magical. Better to break the thing, so it couldn’t fall into the grasp of someone who would misuse it. Hiding wasn’t permanent enough. Was it cruel or foolish to reject the gift of a god?
(What was the worst thing they could do to her – kill her?)
Now she stands with her hooves carving sharp half-moons into the pale sand, salt-thick sea air dragging tangles of her white hair (unkempt and spilled from its braids) out across the shore, towards the sea. The sun settles, languid, on her spine. The sea is near her, but the foam does not bubble up high enough to reach her just yet; in a moment or two, or if an especially powerful wave rolls into shore, it will. But, for now, she is untouched and solitary, a ghost standing stock-still along the shore.
Ereshkigal is gone somewhere – likely to hunt. Seraphina knows that she prefers corpses, but she has claws enough to use when the opportunity does not present itself. She does not feel the vulture’s presence, even at the furthest edges of her mind, and, for the moment, she takes some comfort in the solitude.
Salt tongues lap her hooves. She draws back, turning her multicolored gaze along the shore, and lets it settle at the point where sand meets rocky crag. In the afternoon sun, the stone, simple and rugged as it is, glitters as though tiny diamonds are incased in the violet-brown, pocked surface. The ocean is deep and blue, even a few feet out from shore, as though the bottom drops off abruptly; it is nevertheless exceptionally calm and quiet, a lull to disguise a metaphorical tempest. This place makes her skin crawl.
She draws forward, across the sand. It is wet and clumpy, unlike the slick dunes of the Mors, and, though she had spent many an hour along the shore of the Terminus when she was still a soldier, Seraphina still can’t decide if she likes the texture. It does not take so many strides for her to step up onto slick, uneven rock, but, if she cares about falling, it does not show on her face, nor the unhindered draw of her steps; she stands on the edge of the rock face, staring out to sea, and she wonders if she will find god.
(She wonders if they will ignore her now that she is no longer a sovereign – no longer someone’s chosen, if she ever was at all. She supposes that it does not matter now; she is no longer queen. What does it matter if Solis wanted her?)
She wonders if there is any point to searching for the relic. Tempus had found the searchers, the first time she’d met him; less of prey than the hunter itself. Would he find them again? (If she looks over her shoulder, she can almost imagine him appearing from amongst the trees, too-old eyes in a too-young face, the trunks bending to accommodate his presence; she can almost imagine him coming to stand alongside her, with a stare that sees through her and pities her or finds her wanting, and she can never tell which.) If he did, would he come with another riddle, another question – and leave her without an answer, left to wonder?
She probably couldn’t understand, even if he told her.
Nevertheless – she has a list of questions. Why did you return and why are you doing this and, more selfishly, will this ever be over? (And, most selfishly of all, will I ever be happy? But she thinks that she already knows the answer, because she isn’t a child anymore, and she knows better than to believe in happy endings – at best, she can hope for a few happy moments, enough to make the pain worthwhile.) Even if she can’t find Raum, or the relic, she is somehow desperate to find him, and she doesn’t know why.
(She has always gone crying to god when she is lonely.)
Seraphina breathes deep of the sea. Stares out across the glittering expanse of the horizon.
Perhaps the relic is lost to the tides, buried deep on the ocean floor. Perhaps it would be better if it were – she is tired of troubles, and discontent with gods. Perhaps it doesn’t matter one way or another; she couldn’t take it last time, and she doubts that she will be able to succeed, even if she finds it, this time. Perhaps she should stop longing for some form of approval that she knows she will never receive; perhaps she should stop longing for some sense of importance. (She ruled a nation, once. She knows that she should not feel so insignificant, but her “death” feels like it was swept aside like sand – but perhaps it is cruel to long for recognition in such difficult times.)
But she has little time for longing, or for speculation. She stares down at the rippling surface, and perhaps she sighs.
open || one more island thread? "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
He isn’t sure anymore if he’s searching for the relic, or for the god who crafted it. Perhaps he isn’t searching at all - a part of him expects it will be left up to chance, that he will either stumble upon one or the other when he least expects it, or not at all. Wouldn’t the god of time have already chosen the perfect timing?
Perfect according to his own wishes, that is.
But for as odd and sometimes-fearsome as the island may be, it was also endearing. Some might find the brightness overwhelming, for everything was painted in the most vibrant of greens, blues, reds, and all other colors, a surrealist’s painted drenched in neon. The shadows were all wrong here, as if the colors themselves were a source of light, banishing away any darkness.
He did not find it unnerving. He found it exhilarating. This island - this strange, new land - was the most alive place he had ever been to, even putting Denocte’s dancing night markets to shame at times. It was alive in a quiet, terrifying way: the trees seemed to sigh as Ipomoea walked beneath them, their long vines parting ways for him to cross beneath. The flowers turned to meet him, reached their long and pointed petals out to him, and their touch was velvety soft against his skin.
There was always the sense of being watched here, but whether it was the eyes of the plants, the birds, or the shadowy cats that stalked him, he did not know. He suspected it was all of them.
Laughter echoed through the forest and the white-speckled boy stopped. His head tilted slowly to one side, ears swiveling towards the sound as the laughter swelled, reverberating all around him. He drew in his breath slowly, holding it close; and then when he released it, he let his tension go with it. Magic flowed from his body like a never ending spring, as the leaves of the forest shivered and reached out, surrounding him like a shield. Vines crawled like snakes across the ground, roots raising from the earth, tree branches sweeping low. A bird, disturbed by the movement, flew from the nearest tree - but it turned sharply, finding its way back to Ipomoea where it hung, shivering, just above him. Odet chattered happily at his new “friend”, as if unaware of the grasp of his bonded’s magic.
But slowly the laughter died away, and his magic evaporated like the water it pretended to be.
For a moment longer Ipomoea was still, as the trees righted themselves and their roots sank back into the ground. The forest sighed and shook around him, a dry rustling sound of leaves on leaves, and then all grew still.
He stepped forward, treading across freshly-torn soil.
Time seems to matter little on this island, he thinks to himself when he finally emerges from the treeline, squinting his eyes against the sun. It had felt like he had spent hours within the shaded canopy, it not days, chasing strange birds and smelling stranger flowers. And yet the sun was exactly as he’d left it, hung as if frozen in the sky, as if waiting for him.
Ipomoea stood there in contemplation with his head tilted back, eyes closed to the sky, ears turned towards the sea. Perhaps it was waiting for its god. Perhaps Solis had abandoned his post at last, and left his charge waiting his return in limbo. Maybe Tempus had called time to stop at last, and left them but a single moment in time.
He suspected it was nothing more than another riddle.
Ipomoea opened his eyes, cherry-red, and saw the lone figure on the beach. It should have been an ordinary sight - he hardly went more than an hour here without running into someone else, or catching glimpses of their shadowy frames in the forest - and yet, and yet, it drew his attention in a way he couldn’t explain, like his gaze had been reduced to a magnet and she were ferromagnetic. All the island is alive and vibrant and moving, yet she alone stands in stillness, with her back turned to the wonders.
The image of a grim reaper waiting for their charge comes to mind and he wonders, briefly, if someone has decided it’s his own turn to die.
But he shakes those thoughts off like a cloak, leaving them pooled at the forest edge. There’s no room for such morbidity in his mind, not when the island still has much left to offer. He leaves them behind himself and steps forward towards the beach, towards the sea, towards the stranger that waits at its edge.
When he comes alongside her, he does not look at her; his eyes are still cast towards the horizon, where the water stretches so far it kisses the sky. His wings reach out to meet the waves, as the ocean rushes forwards to claim his fetlocks as its own. It’s surprisingly cool against his skin - or maybe he’s running a fever, high off of the island’s mysteries.
He waits there, for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, three. The waves sound like they’re laughing, filling the silence between them.
“Fancying a swim?” his voice is paper-thin when he speaks, barely raised above the roar of the sea. “It’s certainly warm enough for one.”
He doesn’t say anything about the monsters he’s seen crossing below the bridge, their massive, scaled bodies little more than a shadow in the darkness. He’s heard them roar in the distance, heard the hunger in their voices; he doesn't say how he suspects even his own magic would not be enough to keep them at bay.
There is a sound behind her, the soft brush of hooves against grainy white sand, then stone. She does not turn, at first; she does not even incline her head to observe whoever has come to join her from the corner of her eye. After all, there are plenty of passers-by and creatures alike on this island, and most of them do not seem to be hostile; if there were a monster barreling through, Ereshkigal should not be far. (She suspects that the vulture is watching, patient as a devil, from somewhere within the trees, hunting for something that is not just bones and meat.) When the steps grow louder, loud enough for her to be sure that the source is approaching, she turns her head a fraction – just enough to see who is coming out of the corner of her eye, though not enough to face them. When her gaze lands on a familiar figure, her eyes widen, and she drags her tongue along the ridges of her teeth, a sudden and foreign uncertainty finding a home in her chest. Ipomoea, and a little bird at his side. She had prepared herself to see him, or to be seen by him, when she had left for Delumine; but then the volcano had erupted, and she’d been forced to err from her plan to meet with Somnus and his court about the matter of Raum. Fear – she feels it every time she encounters someone who sees her and knows her for who she is – clenches up in her stomach, tangles itself into a knot. She barely knows him, beyond that she can trust his good intentions as much as she can any of the leaders of the other courts.
(Of course, it is always Solterra for evil,Solterra for terror. She hopes, when this is over, that their sister court remember who suffered the most from Raum’s reign; she hopes that they remember which land raised Raum, who nurtured his taste for suffering and blood. Even if his homeland escapes the brunt of his cruelty, she hopes that it cannot escape his reputation.)
When he comes to stand alongside her, Seraphina sucks in a long, reluctant breath, steeling herself. Even so far from Delumine, he smells like flowers – delicate, graceful boy. (When she thinks about it, he can’t be any younger than her, but they have always felt so different in age; of course, she does not know him well. Of course, Delumine’s citizens are all known for their wisdom. But he feels young and unburdened, even on this strange island, full of gods and magic and murderer-kings, even though she knows she is fully grown.) But he does not say anything that she might have anticipated – instead, he remarks on the sea. Asks her if she fancies a swim. She tilts her head to look at him, odd eyes trailing his face, and she realizes that he hasn’t looked at her to recognize her, yet. She exhales, forces a long breath from between her lips, and collects herself to speak. “It is,” she says, her voice soft and rough from disuse, “but I’ve never been much of a swimmer.” She tried to learn, once, after the last relic hunt, and she’d learned enough to keep her head above water; sometimes, in her nightmares, she still thought that she was drowning, though that felt like her most mundane fear nowadays. Even if she were, she does not think that she would want to swim in the sea while it is like that – when she crossed the bridge, she saw great coiling monsters, with claws and tendrils and too many eyes. She is no water-horse; even with her magic, and even with Ereshkigal at her side, she knows that she is helpless in the sea. (But what does it matter? If she still cared too deeply for her life, Seraphina would not have come to this island, with its precarious bridge and its strange magic, in the first place. There are more important things than living.) She looks up at him, then, training her multicolored stare on his cheek, and she wonders when he will lift his head to see who he is speaking to. (Or perhaps he would recognize her voice, first.) At any rate, she has looked up from the sea, she is watching him – hooded, shadowed, but not enough to hide the metallic glimmer of her scar, much as she wishes she could. It shames her; might as well be an open wound, still dripping tears of blood and pus. “Are you well, Ipomoea?” Still soft – ever so soft. She’s almost forgotten how small talk sounds, in the time that has passed since her battle with Raum; whenever she speaks with others, they speak of war and violence, of hunting. Anything less than copper-tang tastes strange on her tongue. (She is not sure if she is captive or obsessed, or if there is a difference. But, then, Seraphina has always been a creature of extremes, and she has always been driven by one consuming thing or another, and she has never been good at letting them go.)
But – she does wonder. It is small talk, but her inquiry is genuine. She wonders how far the horrors she has experienced in Solterra have expanded, if, like terrible, branching little roots, they have come to infect the entire continent. (The whole world, as far as she knows it.) She wonders if he has been impacted by what happened in Dawn; she heard stories of a monster, a murderer, some blood-spilling thing. In fact, when she went to Delumine, she hoped that she could help them hunt it.
And now she is here, massaged by a soft wash of sea and salt-filled breeze. She’ll have to apologize for her absence later, but the island and the volcano seemed urgent at the time. Now, she isn’t sure what to think; she can’t shake the feeling that it would have been better to remain on the mainland, like a fly who has realized that they are caught in a spider’s web a moment too late.
@Ipomoea || ah, I adore him ;~; "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
It’s her voice, that he first recognizes. He knows it: from Solterra, from Veneror, from the few times they had spoken. Her voice brings up images of rolling dunes and golden sand castles, of the relief of an oasis and a sky that was impossibly blue, impossibly far away.
Her voice makes him remember what it was like to soak up the sun like a flower, how the warmth felt on his skin as a child. In his mind he can see the sprawling streets of the city again, can hear the clattering of hooves on sandstone as the traveling merchants came once more into the Court. He closes his eyes, briefly, and watches it play out like a scene in his mind. The memories fluttered past like dry parchment, hazy and indistinct, but slowly they gain clarity. He had been only a boy when he had left; all he remembered from those days was the harshness of the desert, the pains of an empty stomach, and the vibrancy of those strangers.
"Neither have I."
The admission is surprising, how readily it falls from his lips, a halfhearted smile vanishing as quickly as it had appear. His wings flutter open and closed, open and closed, as if yearning to reach for the sea yet too afraid to properly do so. Wings never did mix well with water - Ipomoea had spent most of his life longing for the sky, hardly giving the dark depths below a second thought. It was the curse of being a pegasus who would never know what it felt like to be airborne, the instinctual need to ride the wind at odds with the inability to do so.
Still, he had made peace with that fact. One couldn’t miss what they never had to begin with, or so he told himself when he watched Odet glide effortlessly overhead. There would always be that subtle tinge of envy that made him feel sick with guilt, that sense of needing something he could not have. He supposed everyone had something like that, some secret jealousy they harbored when they compared their lot in life to another’s; still, the thought did not bring him peace.
He drops his gaze to the beach, to the white sand that sparkles around his hooves each time the waves pull back.
For a moment they’re both silent - and he wonders if Seraphina is as engrossed in her own thoughts as he is with his. The crash of the ocean is constant, filling the gaps their words had left, stretching endlessly out to sea. Out there, somewhere, was Novus; but he couldn’t help but wonder if there were more islands like this one. How many worlds were out there, waiting, begging to be explored? Florentine had seen some of them, and the traders that docked in Denocte each had a foreign home to speak of.
But Ipomoea’s entire life had been spent on Novus and, until now, he had yet to see any other land with his own eyes. How many others were there in the seas surrounding his home, just out of sight?
Seraphina’s voice brings him back to the present. He tilts one ear towards her, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of the sea, not yet.
"I should be asking you that, I think," he tells her, and only then does he tilt his eyes to look at her. He looks at the fallen queen, her silver hair loosed from her braids, multicolored eyes peering out at him from beneath a golden cowl.
But it’s the golden eye that captures his attention first - and the shimmering, metallic scars the pass just underneath it. He stares into her eyes for one long, tense moment, unable to look away - and he realizes just how much of her he had forgotten. Her face, her features, the color of her eyes, all of it had faded away slowly once he had heard of her death, like the wind blowing ashes across a field. Seeing her now was like putting a torn picture back together, and her scars marked the places she had been torn with gold.
He isn’t surprised, although he knows he should be. Ipomoea just smiles sadly at her, his cherry eyes falling away in time back to the ocean before he speaks again. "I’m as well as I can be, all things considered." He had certainly drawn an easier lot in life than she had, but he wasn’t about to point it out. It was already obvious - a passerby had only to look at the way they stood, the differences in their carriage, to know the privilege he had enjoyed, and the hardships she had endured.
"Have you come for him?" he asks quietly then, and this time when he turns to face her he does not look away. There’s a solemness to his eyes that seems out of place, an emotion he does not have practice using (but one he thinks he’ll have reason to use more often, in the coming months.)
Have you come to kill Raum?
He isn’t sure why the thought makes him feel both relieved and all the more sad.
