what does the god of your childhood look like? a soft apparition pigeoned in the attic, / a wound eating you one year at a time?
☼
For some time, she simply lingers on the peak, eyes closed against the silence and the sharp, half-scalding press of the sun on her back; the breeze is still cool, and, at this high an altitude, far from soft. Somewhere above her, Ereshkigal is spiraling like a leaf on the wind, a smudge of ink against an otherwise perfectly blue sky. She feels like there should be clouds – there is this gnawing in her stomach -, but there is only sun and sky and sun and sky, and the cathedral is at her back. Her children are not here today, and Ereshkigal is being unusually nonconfrontational; the landscape feels quiet in a way that she has grown unaccustomed to without realizing it. It’s not unwelcome, though. It’s not unwelcome at all.
It is some time before she enters the cathedral; and then it is some time before she approaches the sun god’s altar.
She stands for a while in the middle, a window’s cut of light leaving the contours of her face half-cast in sharp angles of light and shadow. She looks to Tempus, first, and then she slowly draws her eyes to Solis, from the empty spheres of his eyes to the frozen fires that compose his mane and tail. As a child, stumbling meekly at the viceroy’s heels, the statue seemed grand and imposing, holy in the way that the gold and gems of the nobility weren’t; now, she isn’t sure what he seems to her at all. Lifeless, certainly, blank and still and impassive – even with the sharp downturn of his brow and the angry curve of his lips – in a way that is more man than divine, in a way that she knows he shouldn’t be. If she pressed her muzzle to his skin, she knows that it would be cold, but there was a god inside of it, once. She wonders where he’s gone now. She wonders if he is still listening.
There are all the ordinary rituals, disconnected for once from her prayers; she lights the candles like clockwork, stares a moment at the familiar spire of their ash-grey smoke. The incense is next, and she stands for a while and waits for the scent to drift, to permeate every stone inch of the cathedral’s empty space. She doesn’t pray. She knows plenty of prayers, written into the contours of her mind like words on a page in a book, but none of them are right; they crumble in her mouth.
Absently, she meets the statue’s eyes. “They’re growing well,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t know if you’ve been – watching, but they are. Ambrose is the cleverest thing I think I’ve ever seen; he has a mind like a steel trap. I wonder how he remembers it all.” (Even, she thinks, things that he shouldn’t.) “He’s sweet, you know. Quiet. Nervous. I don’t think I’ve….” Her brow furrows and her lips quirk; I don’t think I’ve done well enough remains unsaid, but it hangs in the air between them like a curse, nearly palpable. It’s true, though. She tries, she knows that she tries, but there is a part of her – large and dark and throbbing, like a growth turned hostile – that knows it isn’t enough, that knows he wouldn’t be so anxious if she had – done something differently, if she were better, if anything about all of this were better. “I don’t know if you ever intend to speak to us again, but I – I know he would like to see you.” She bites her tongue, runs it between her teeth. She doesn’t want him to, though. She doesn’t want him to – because they are hers, even if he was the one who blessed them into existence, and she doesn’t trust him enough to want him to touch them. She wants them to be freer than that. (There is a part of her that wonders why she is telling him this; there is a part of her that knows it is because there is no one else.) “And Diana, she’s…” She trails off, a half-bitter half-laugh catching in her throat. “She’s a…sharp thing, you know. Fiery. Restless. She always seems to find trouble, and she always gets herself out of it, but-“ but one day she won’t and that is the way of things “-I still worry. She thinks it’s silly. Rolls her eyes whenever I bring it up.” She pauses. Looks away. “She thinks things will be easy for her, right now. She runs with sandwyrms and sings with teryrs and sleeps in nests of snakes. I know they won’t be.”
Seraphina raises her chin, then, and she swallows a lump coiled up in her throat. “You know, I don’t think that what you’ve done to me was- fair. I don’t-“ She closes her eyes. Sighs. There’s no use in speaking to gods like men; they don’t understand the world in a blink at all. She tells herself that all those unfairnesses don’t really matter, because they’re said and done, but they still rub at her like a tuft of fur pushed up backwards, like shattered glass, like something she can reshape but can’t quite fix. It’s over, and there’s nothing she can do about it, and there’s so much that she finds herself regretting, but she wouldn’t change it, but she still thinks about it-
Her eyes open with a flutter of white lashes. The sun is in them, and, no matter how much you pray, you’re always left picking up pieces of something. There’s one she remembers, a relic from her mother instead of Viceroy, and she hums it under her breath like a song when she snuffs out the candle and leaves the altar without so much as a goodbye.
closed. || 400?!?!?!?!?! || main quote from "outhouse," rachel mckibbens; title from danez smith, "I'm Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense"
Speech || Ereshkigal
☼
For some time, she simply lingers on the peak, eyes closed against the silence and the sharp, half-scalding press of the sun on her back; the breeze is still cool, and, at this high an altitude, far from soft. Somewhere above her, Ereshkigal is spiraling like a leaf on the wind, a smudge of ink against an otherwise perfectly blue sky. She feels like there should be clouds – there is this gnawing in her stomach -, but there is only sun and sky and sun and sky, and the cathedral is at her back. Her children are not here today, and Ereshkigal is being unusually nonconfrontational; the landscape feels quiet in a way that she has grown unaccustomed to without realizing it. It’s not unwelcome, though. It’s not unwelcome at all.
It is some time before she enters the cathedral; and then it is some time before she approaches the sun god’s altar.
She stands for a while in the middle, a window’s cut of light leaving the contours of her face half-cast in sharp angles of light and shadow. She looks to Tempus, first, and then she slowly draws her eyes to Solis, from the empty spheres of his eyes to the frozen fires that compose his mane and tail. As a child, stumbling meekly at the viceroy’s heels, the statue seemed grand and imposing, holy in the way that the gold and gems of the nobility weren’t; now, she isn’t sure what he seems to her at all. Lifeless, certainly, blank and still and impassive – even with the sharp downturn of his brow and the angry curve of his lips – in a way that is more man than divine, in a way that she knows he shouldn’t be. If she pressed her muzzle to his skin, she knows that it would be cold, but there was a god inside of it, once. She wonders where he’s gone now. She wonders if he is still listening.
There are all the ordinary rituals, disconnected for once from her prayers; she lights the candles like clockwork, stares a moment at the familiar spire of their ash-grey smoke. The incense is next, and she stands for a while and waits for the scent to drift, to permeate every stone inch of the cathedral’s empty space. She doesn’t pray. She knows plenty of prayers, written into the contours of her mind like words on a page in a book, but none of them are right; they crumble in her mouth.
Absently, she meets the statue’s eyes. “They’re growing well,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t know if you’ve been – watching, but they are. Ambrose is the cleverest thing I think I’ve ever seen; he has a mind like a steel trap. I wonder how he remembers it all.” (Even, she thinks, things that he shouldn’t.) “He’s sweet, you know. Quiet. Nervous. I don’t think I’ve….” Her brow furrows and her lips quirk; I don’t think I’ve done well enough remains unsaid, but it hangs in the air between them like a curse, nearly palpable. It’s true, though. She tries, she knows that she tries, but there is a part of her – large and dark and throbbing, like a growth turned hostile – that knows it isn’t enough, that knows he wouldn’t be so anxious if she had – done something differently, if she were better, if anything about all of this were better. “I don’t know if you ever intend to speak to us again, but I – I know he would like to see you.” She bites her tongue, runs it between her teeth. She doesn’t want him to, though. She doesn’t want him to – because they are hers, even if he was the one who blessed them into existence, and she doesn’t trust him enough to want him to touch them. She wants them to be freer than that. (There is a part of her that wonders why she is telling him this; there is a part of her that knows it is because there is no one else.) “And Diana, she’s…” She trails off, a half-bitter half-laugh catching in her throat. “She’s a…sharp thing, you know. Fiery. Restless. She always seems to find trouble, and she always gets herself out of it, but-“ but one day she won’t and that is the way of things “-I still worry. She thinks it’s silly. Rolls her eyes whenever I bring it up.” She pauses. Looks away. “She thinks things will be easy for her, right now. She runs with sandwyrms and sings with teryrs and sleeps in nests of snakes. I know they won’t be.”
Seraphina raises her chin, then, and she swallows a lump coiled up in her throat. “You know, I don’t think that what you’ve done to me was- fair. I don’t-“ She closes her eyes. Sighs. There’s no use in speaking to gods like men; they don’t understand the world in a blink at all. She tells herself that all those unfairnesses don’t really matter, because they’re said and done, but they still rub at her like a tuft of fur pushed up backwards, like shattered glass, like something she can reshape but can’t quite fix. It’s over, and there’s nothing she can do about it, and there’s so much that she finds herself regretting, but she wouldn’t change it, but she still thinks about it-
Her eyes open with a flutter of white lashes. The sun is in them, and, no matter how much you pray, you’re always left picking up pieces of something. There’s one she remembers, a relic from her mother instead of Viceroy, and she hums it under her breath like a song when she snuffs out the candle and leaves the altar without so much as a goodbye.
closed. || 400?!?!?!?!?! || main quote from "outhouse," rachel mckibbens; title from danez smith, "I'm Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense"
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
