[P] honey & ichor

[Seraphina]

The sunset draped the metallic silver mare in hues of blood red and violent orange, casting odd, jagged shadows along her snaking form as she wove her way through the tangle of spiny underbrush and gnarled date palm, hips just grazing leaves brittle and nearly-dead from heat and dehydration; but it was bearable now, unlike the heat of midafternoon, the heat that left her sides sweat-soaked and heaving. Sand and grime clung to her legs like a second skin, just brushing the length of her stomach and chest, and her limbs heaved with adrenaline and exhilaration; she had been out since dawn. Her tongue felt heavy and dry in her mouth, and her lungs and throat felt impossibly dry – a breath was like being cut with a knife. For some reason or another (the familiarity, she told herself, the familiarity) she found the sensation pleasing, even comforting, a concrete sign that she was managing to get something done, even if it was somewhat irrelevant to her new position. Seraphina told herself that she couldn’t afford to slack, regardless of whether or not her job actually entailed of bashing skulls together. The Day Court’s very essence was intertwined with warfare and violence, and, if she was to be its representative, she’d best entailed what it was meant to value.


The last rays of light are fading on the horizon when she clambers to the bank of the Oasis, head dipped to take hearty gulps of cool water – perhaps it isn’t really cool, but anything to quench her thirst is suitable. Telekinesis eagerly unwinds her hair from its braids; it clumps against her skin, sticky and heavy with sweat, and she strides out into the depths of the pool to wash it clean. She splashes clear blue sky, tainted silver and black with the arrival of night against her skin and relishes in the sensation, muddying the water about her slender form. When she finally feels clean again, she retreats towards the shallows, but finds her way to one of more secluded sections of the Oasis, sheltered by the rocks that led up to the waterfall and low-hanging palms. She plucks a few dates that dangle dangerously close to the water’s surface in her teeth on her way into the small, sheltered enclave and deposits them neatly on the bank for later; for now, she droops down into the water, allowing it to ebb and flow gently against her sides as her legs buckle beneath her.



@Rhoswen - <3

[Rhoswen]

MY SOUL IS AN EMPTY CAROUSEL AT SUNSET

Rhoswen had always found the death of sunlight to be morbid and ominous. Where others admired beauty in lavender apricot skies she could only feel the familiar prickling of sad and delirious unhappiness. For what could be seen in the dark? - stars, planets, the steady orbital movement of the moon? There was nothing within the darkness that could enamour her anymore; she'd seen every notorious secret the night could offer and had been left feeling bleached - all the colour and life drained from every inch of skin, every portion of bone. Yet still she endured the onslaught of eventide, watching the circadian rhythms with an isolated virulence; knowing the crepuscular light would always come crawling across horizons vast and infinite. There was no escape in this life, only fortitude.

Even in midsummer the desert froze at nightfall, and as Rhoswen sailed across oceans of gold she began already to miss the encasing heat of a day that was leaving her far behind. She'd tried once to chase it: the sun - her chest near-breaking with the hopeless endeavour to keep up with the fading light, of course to no avail. So now instead Rhoswen pursued sunlight in her dreams, setting down her head of wild auburn curls so that she would not have to withstand the long stead of night. It had become something of a routine to visit the Oasis before turning in to her chambers; she'd traced the journey on the palm of her hand so many times she knew it now unconditionally. Tonight, however, Rhoswen found that she would not be bathing alone - the briny fragrance of a woman tempered upon her tongue, accompanied shortly by the very silhouette of Day Court's emissary. Rhos drew nearer, sand and dust clinging to the inordinately sharp curves of her avian frame, eyes of volcanic ash resting upon Seraphina as she came to a standstill.

"Great minds think alike."

 @Seraphina c: 

[Seraphina]

There is a flutter of motion from beyond the shield of palm leaves, drawing the mare’s eyes from the brilliant reflection of red-gold sunset flecked across the water in mosaic; she catches the scent of another, a mixture of desert heat and familiar femininity, so carefully disguised by clear water and fresh dates only moments before. A dainty, bird-boned commoner girl who strikes Seraphina as vaguely familiar stands in dark silhouette against the fiery apricot dream of the Oasis, the downy red-grey of her coat desaturated and darkened in the harsh shadows of dying light. (She imagines it would be like pale fire in the brilliant sunlight of the day.) She’s a pretty girl, Seraphina thinks, one of the many that she’s seen in the Court – in a way, she reminds her of the golden girl, Bexley. She wonders if this one has as much fight in her, for all the daintiness implied by her structure. (Where the light hits it, her hair gleams bloodred, and her eyes are like the sea before a storm, and there is, she thinks, a violence in that. Sand still clings to her flanks, sweat to her soft skin – she is fresh from the desert, and it has not been so long since the light has begun to fade.)


Seraphina’s odd eyes meet those of the girl with the eerie, aloof calm that seems omnipresent on her face. “It would seem so.” Her voice is lighter than usual; perhaps there is a hint of humor there? (She’s getting a bit better at socializing, she likes to hope, what with all of this new diplomacy and power that she’s stumbled into headfirst.) There might even be a ghost of a smile just barely twitching at the corner of her lips as she tosses her head, tugging the slickness of her mane off of her skin, and adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever caught your name, Miss…?” She was nothing if not polite.


@Rhoswen - <3