Seraphina had risen with the sun that morning.
As she passed through the gaping halls of the sandstone fortress, she felt as though she could taste ash on her tongue – like a vulture, feasting on the dead, circling in wait to replace what was lost to the Solterrans. With nothing but the first, faint rays of dawn to guide her steps, the world felt disquietingly still and silent; the bustle of court life, something she had so slowly grown accustomed to, had felt like an aberration at first, but the capitol now seemed far worse for its absence. For a moment, she was a solitary figure, a shadow of silver cast against the dull brown-orange of the sandstone walls. She traced hallways and rooms that had now grown familiar. Seraphina only paused to linger in the library, throwing her eyes along the lines of shelves that had become her daily haunts in her time as Emissary. Deep, deep, deep beneath her skin, – so deep she barely noticed it – she felt something twist as she left, a quiet recognition that things were not the same as they once were, though she knew that they had not been for some time. Yet when she drew close to the windows, she saw the same desert that had always greeted her sprawled out far as the eye could see, a seemingly-endless ocean of golden waves that was reborn in its own image with each passing day. Solterra never changed, not really, and very little could be done to alter its landscape for more than the moment. (But with Maxence’s presumed death, she had remembered again that they existed in the moment. Somehow, she had let herself forget just how quickly the world could be turned on its head again.) She passed down to the lower levels of the fortress in perfect quiet, save for the rhythmic clack of her hooves against the stone floor and the slow rise and fall of her own breath.
Today she would shed her skin.
She did not expect the process to be easy - she expected to rake herself off in handfuls to discover what was truly beneath her polished, cool exterior. Her duty had always been to her country, and that had not changed. However, in the past, she had always been a cog in a far greater machine, subject to the push and pull of higher powers; now she swept the tide, though she was not so fool as to imagine she had all that much control over the way it would ebb and flow. (In fact, she was sure that she was more apt to possess its consequence.) A part of her was terrified. Another part felt nothing at all, even as she passed the threshold of the fortress and stepped into the hazy light of the courtyard. She would remain there for a time in solitary, silent consideration, still searching for the words that she had lost at Maxence’s funeral – she would have to find them quickly. Now she lingered in the realm of open hostility. The possibility of death had been imposed upon her as a child, but this sense of failure was a completely different stake; she had changed. She was changing again. And now she lingered on the precipice of something dark and vast, about to step onto a tightrope from which she could not return. (Sometimes she thought that she was far too young to take up the mantle of Sovereign, too uncertain, too cold, too, too, too-) Seraphina had not chosen the rank of Emissary, though she had not fought it, either. This crown was solely her volition, however, with a pinch of circumstance. Perhaps it was the first real choice that she had ever made in her life.
And now she stands in the center of the courtyard, the first, piercing rays of day heat pricking sweat from her skin; she raises her head to look up at the sky, and, for a moment, she remembers that blinding light, that sun that kept her from seeing the light, that light which obscured -
She prays to Solis, and, for a moment, she thinks that she finds the words, even if they are only in her mind.
Then, gathering all of her certainty, she draws to the blowing horn in the middle of the courtyard and breathes into it; the haunting, howling melody echoes across the capitol, across the deserts, to the very edges of Solterra.
She draws back. She waits.
Sera's formally stepping up. <3 Laws, the census, & a few other things will be posted up in the next few days! Day Court members are very strongly encouraged to attend, particularly if they're ranked! also, I know that I've already tossed up a reply in the thread w/ the dusk kids, but that's primarily in the interest of keeping that thread/related plots moving. and because I wanted this to be post 100 because I have a flair for drama.
@Avdotya first, please!
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
She lingered in the silence of her quarters as Solis took hold of Novus for another day, her gaze settled intently on the early morning bustle of citizens in the courtyard from her window. It drew a sour expression to the sharp features of the woman's face; she could not help but picture herself walking among them, another piece in the system that kept them all in line. Avdotya nearly felt a sense of shame in herself for ever having accepted Maxence's invitation into the Court, for betraying the Davke and essentially spitting in the dead tribe's grave. Her mother would be so disappointed to see her favourite daughter a focal point in the very regime they had antagonized for centuries... but would she be so blinded by her chagrin not to recognize the advantage Avdotya now possessed?
It was in the midst of her thoughts that Seraphina took to the horn outside, breaking the mare's focus and capturing her eye. Ah, yes, she whispered, it was the Emissary's day of ascension. A smile, venomous in nature, twitched the corners of her velvet lips as she spun away from the window and slipped out the door.
The many halls of the fortress were already noisy with the incessant chatter of curious civilians, all in wonder of the purpose of their summons. Many could assume what it was for- Maxence needed replacing, after all, and their new queen now awaited them in the morning light.
The viper skulked past the crowds with relative disinterest. Many of those she passed seemed to bear questions for her while the hurried to keep pace, but they were only met with an irritated glance and flattened ears. She held no desire to sate their hunger for details, particularly now as they made their way to the very courtyard where the answer stood. Like gods-damned children, they are. Avdotya hissed to herself.
She took a heavy breath when she stepped out into the open air and then paused. Seraphina already had herself an audience in the minutes it took for her to reach the courtyard, and it was steadily growing with each passing moment. The Regent herself did not wish to be any part of the focus in this coronation of sorts, though she also supposed she had little choice. Meddlesome minds would surely make unnecessary presumptions if she were to keep out of this matter, and so, Avdotya found her way to the silver woman. She placed herself just behind her, off to side and certainly not the spotlight. "Choose your words wisely," she commented idly, just loud enough for Seraphina's ears only, "lest you wish to kill a teryr to earn your crown."
It was time. Dawn was breaking on a new day – on a new era. Time was a funny thing, and it marched on whether those who lived within it were ready or not. Sure, they were still in mourning – but Voltaire understood the mentality of a warrior tribe. They must move forward, lest they be left to rot in the desert sun. They were vulnerable without a leader, even with all of the Type A warrior personalities here – for without leadership, they would turn against one another, and fight at odds until one ended up on top of the bloody heap. This was more civilized. Maxence would have wanted them to move forward.
He was one of the first to arrive, but shrank back from the foreground to see what would happen. The blue stallion would support whoever ended up being the leader here – he had no dog in the fight… but it was a curious thing when he watched @Avdotya step from the shadows and join @Seraphina. There was no malice here – at least not outwardly. At the moment, it seemed the world of Solterra was at peace with her decision to step up.
The healer watched in silence, bowing to the queen presumptive, a clear sign of loyalty to her as he’d been loyal to Maxence before her. And beneath the burning sun, today they would crown their next. Today, life would march on. He knew the others would come – some in agreement with this decision, and likely others who apposed the grey mare’s rise to the throne. But this was part of life too – for there could be no affirmative decisions without the voice of contrast. And so, Voltaire waits, to see what would unfold in the crucial moments before Seraphina’s coronation.
He feels the call of the horn reverberating in his bones. It reminds him of the way the earth would sometimes shake, back at home.
(The word makes us ache, and how we would love to explore the idea of home and what it once was, and what it is now, but that's not what you're here for)
The shaking would start with a tiny tremor, almost imperceptible, and would always be followed by something greater, something terrifying and inescapable, that would seem to last forever but was really just a few moments. Looking back, maybe they should have taken it for a warning. The earth, or the gods, or whomever did not want them there. But of course, most things seem much clearer in hindsight, given enough time.
Naturally, this feeling in his bones is different from the earthquake. It is accompanied by sound, low and menacing and heavy. If Eik were standing before the great horn he imagines it could bring him to his knees. After a moment of thought, he approaches, although the sound could just as well be a warning to stay away. For this reason, his attention is half turned to the sky. Coming to the court from the sandstone walls of elatus canyon, a sizable crowd is already formed by the time he arrives. He looks over the large group and is surprised that there are a number of faces he is familiar with, some he would even consider friends. How different this all feels than the last time the court was summoned, when he was a complete stranger to this dusty world.
He waits towards the back, with no particular sense of anticipation or intrigue. Murmurs and whispers flow in one ear and out the other, as they say. Gossip is pointless to him. The drums of the world beat on without hesitation, and no matter what happens today he knows they will not stop.
- - - There is no better way to know us
E I K than as two wolves, come separately to a wood
The call of the horn goes loud and dims and blares again, and Bexley sheds hours of sand and sleep to rise at once, body burning with unhinged anxiety, lashes flared against the incoming sun: in the space of a few seconds she molts and reconstructs, turning nimbly from the innocent figure of a sleeping girl to a standing woman rife with anger and energy. The horn. Blown from someone else’s lips, while the commander’s body rots and soils. Not that it can be helped - but still Bex faces the noise with a kind of disgust, a sense of guilt that they have buried him so quickly, brows furrowed, smelling copper in the back of her throat. She exits her quarters with an expression ratcheted on high and pulse blooming in her jaw.
The dawn is watery and sickening. Bexley passes through the hallways in a blind haze, curls bumping against the sandstone, head bent in depressive determination; the world around her is strangely cold and the quiet unsettling, interrupted only by Bex’s short breaths, her steps on the rock, everything silent in bated breath of an unspoken shift. Chills erupt across her skin. In its seemed omniscience, the building looks back at her stoically, as if it has not even missed the disappearance of its sovereign.
When she emerges into the courtyard, she is unsurprised to see Seraphina and Avdotya, and although Eik is an unexpected addition, she gives him only the slightest sideways glance before drawing to a stop and turning her gaze on the other women. She arrives just in time to witness Voltaire’s bow and has to hold back a scoff - Solis in heaven, these people and their loyalty - is it not smarter to wait and calculate, to listen at least a little, before throwing one’s body on the pyre? With an idle smile she turns away from him.
Good luck, comes a quiet comment, nodded toward Seraphina, and surprisingly sincere. If Bexley’s suspicions are correct, she’ll need it.
11-22-2017, 12:41 PM - This post was last modified: 11-22-2017, 12:42 PM by Bexley
Rhoswen hadn't slept after accompanying the moon and the stars until upon the pale morning sky they dimmed and faded like forgotten ghosts. Ballerina hooves beat over the cascading dunes, her body a sanguine jewel capering across sand and hot air as she flickered back toward the castle. The horn had pierced her solitude with crashing ambivalence, tearing down the walls she had so rigorously designed and constructed - it's low, demanding sound echoed on in her head, bouncing off her luminous thoughts. She swam through memories, swatting them away with an organic assurance that she had perhaps lacked in recent weeks; there was now only a thought of the future, for herself, for Solterra.
Licked by a fine sheen of sweat, Rhoswen glides up the great stone steps, dancing on ice, and appears from a russet shadow into the courtyard. Her cyclonic gaze fractured and cracked, splintering across the figures standing like statues beneath Solis' dawn. Eyes of iron and lead and dusty brilliance, sharp as arrows, find their mark: Seraphina. For a moment the red-haired woman merely stares, absorbing, her blood undulating. A silent bird, was that ashen woman, a silent bird of prey. A shift in the air snaps Rhoswen's attention in two, "good luck" - the words lift and hang in the cool of morn, their creator standing as ravishing as ever. Bexley, to whom Rhos sends a fleeting grin; she had not seen the blonde in many weeks, what had changed in her own little world? Her gaze moves on now, easy and unassuming, noting the faces of Avdotya, Voltaire and someone who brought her to pause. Eik. The sight of him filled her with a small, gentle warmth. With a nod in his direction, Rhos turned to face Seraphina once more.
The crackle of a power-shift buzzed in the air, electric and alive.
To Kijazza, it was a day like any other day. She spent her early morning idly fiddling with an abacus, the beads swished back and forth at her telekinetic demand. Today, she was particularly interested in the value of sand. Given that there was pretty much an endless supply of it all around them and that there was no current market for sand (what could it be used for, after all), the answer probably should have been that it was absolutely worthless.
Kijazza found herself unsatisfied with this answer. No, she was sure there could be some use for sand, a way to tap into a new, potential market and boost Solterra's economy. It just warranted further study. Sand had a lot of unique properties; surely, there was some way to make one of those properties marketable.
Her concentration on this matter was interrupted when the sound of a horn echoed throughout the court's sandstone walls. The zonkey pegasus looked up from her abacus, confusion written on her face. What in Novus was that? She peered about, noting others had taken note of the sound. Some of them were starting to move (some slowly, some quickly) in the direction the sound had come from. She trotted behind a couple of them, straining her long donkey-like ears to hear what she could hear. There was no better source of information than the local gossip.
Unfortunately, it seemed that most were in a quiet and somber mood, and those that were chatting were so infuriatingly quiet, she could barely catch a word. She thought she heard the word "sovereign" tossed around a few times, but she could not be sure. She HATED being out of the loop. She continued to follow the other equines until they arrived in a courtyard. There, she could see a mare in the middle of the courtyard near the horn.
She frowned in thought. All right. So, obviously, this was some call to meeting or something, right? She took in the sight of the other equines, seeing that some were waiting around, a few were bowing (for some reason?), there was a mixture of expressions all around. The atmosphere seemed thick, tense, and suffocating like something monumentally serious was about to occur. It made Kijazza uncomfortable.
She leaned near to the equine closest to her. "Psst."
She tried again, just for good measure. "PSST. You... yeah, you. Hey. Uh, you got any idea what's going on here? Why does everyone look like someone died?"
11-26-2017, 12:01 PM
Played by
Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81 Signos: 100
”Peace I do not find, and I have no wish to make war; and I fear and hope, and burn and am of ice; and I fly above the heavens and lie on the ground; and I grasp nothing and embrace all the world.”
A few words for her – Avdotya’s left a chill on the back of her neck, even in the scalding heat of the sun, while Bexley’s offered some small, cold comfort. Solterra was a court of knives; now she had to appeal to it.
Seraphina stood rigidly straight and still, her gaze lingering on each and every familiar face in the crowd; the sunlight caught on the silver scars knotted beneath her coat, reminders of foolish wars waged by foolish men. Whatever ruler she would become, she thought, she would not be Zolin. She was no grandstanding fool, no coward content to languish in the grandiose halls of his fortress while his soldiers met their death on the battlefield, no monster that would send children to their deaths to extend a war that they could never win. She was not a sentimental woman – this was simply her nature. However, her ruthlessness was tempered by her pragmatism, and, though she could be cruel and detached as a winter storm, she held no particularly bloodlust. She was still uncomfortable with her freedom, with her will, with power. (She wanted to hope that was a good thing.) She masked this discomfort, as she did with all things, and maintained an air of calm that was perhaps disconcerting as she waited, patient as the grave, for silence.
Seraphina had never, in all her years, wanted to run. What many would consider horrifying was accepted with increasing ease, accepted and accepted and accepted over and over again – the taste of blood, the crack of a whip, rolling eyes, rolling eyes, rolling eyes, all pointed up towards a sun and a god they could no longer see. She should have wanted to run many times, she thought, but a sense of powerlessness had lulled her into a haze that had crept through her blood and her bones and her mind until she was absolutely sure that nothing remained of her at all, save a quiet, burning desire to survive, even if she no longer knew what she survived for. Maybe, she thought, apathy was the only way to survive it. There was no escape from what she had endured; no tears would wash it away, no screaming or kicking or fighting would have freed her from what she was made to become. It was easier that way, and perhaps no other way was possible. She did not care to linger on it; no matter the past, no matter her powerlessness, no matter how much she’d like to shake her mentor’s influence altogether and the acts she’d committed under his command, the weight of a bloody history – the court’s, if not her own - would hang as a mantle across the blades of her shoulders. (Caustic thoughts pricked at the back of her mind like thorns. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.) Now she faced a dark, consuming cloud of uncertainty, and the shadows that lurked in the path she knew lay ahead – twisting and indiscernible, laughing - made her stomach turn.
She had never wanted to run, but, for a fraction of a second, she could picture herself flying across the dunes like a slip of silver wind, gone when daylight fell; for a moment, she pictured freedom and wondered what it would taste like if she left her shackles in the courtyard where she stood, pried the silver collar from her neck and left it the only reminder of her presence, until the sands buried it, as all things. For a moment, she imagined walking away. Solis protect me.
And then she spoke. “Citizens of Solterra, I am sure that, by now, you are well aware of the fate of King Maxence. He gave his life to defend our people against a Teryr, the fate of a true warrior – I imagine he would have had it no other way. I will not linger on our loss, however. We cannot afford to languish in uncertainty, disarray, and factionalism, as we did before he arrived; we will not waste his efforts to unite our people once more. Avdotya and I have discussed his successor. Should no one choose to challenge me, I will take up the mantle of Sovereign and rule in his place.” Her gaze remained utterly cool, clinical – and her tone dared anyone to challenge her claim to the throne. Seraphina had never wanted anything before. Much as it scared her, she knew that she wanted this. “Solterra has spent far too many years entrenched in our past glories, fighting meaningless wars as we struggle to maintain our reputation and refusing change at every opportunity. Our stubborn desire is all that keeps us alive among the treachery of these sands, but we mustn’t let it hinder our progress and growth, confine us to outdated mentalities and stagnation. We will not survive by brute force alone, much less grow from it. We have always prized its strength, and we will need the diverse strengths of all of our citizens to prosper in the days to come. If you are here, you already know the struggles that come from toiling among the dunes; I will waste little time describing them. I suspect you also know why we choose to stay, even in the face of brutality and tragedy. There is a beauty to this land that few recognize unless they see the glimmer of Solis’s light across the dunes, hear the whispers of the desert winds as they wind through the twists and turns of the Elatus Canyon, feel the pure satisfaction of surviving and persevering where so many others would falter. This is our home, and we would not have it otherwise.” Her gaze swept the crowd again. Seraphina was used to being entirely self-reliant. No longer could that be the case; she would have to learn to trust. “I will not lie to you - the unexpected loss of Maxence has left us with many problems that I do not yet know how to solve. I also know that we have many bright minds among us that are more than capable of finding solutions. I rarely make promises, as I have heard far too many empty ones, but I promise you that your voices will be heard, be they cries of agreement or vehement disapproval; they must be heard. If they are not, then we have truly lost our way.” She would not be Zolin, she repeated to herself – she would not smother her people, not silence them, not throw them to the wolves to fund golden palaces and gladiator fights and grandiose parties. “So I ask of you, Solterrans, to help me make this nation thrive. I do not expect it will be easy, but I have complete confidence that it is possible, because I know that none of you would still be here if you were content with easy.” Her words – an honest request – were left hanging in the air.
Perhaps her words would sway the Solterrans – perhaps they would not. She was still young, terribly young, terribly uncertain and unprepared. Even if they did, she was left with the distinct impression that her position, if she could even hold onto it, would be a battle. Her eyes swept the crowd. Solis protect us all.
wow remember this thread
also I spent like two hours just messing with that speech and I still have no idea how I feel about it but uhhhh you know
ft. a quote from Petrarch because I'm feeling extra pretentious, wow
Anyways, I did want to at least move this thread along a little further; no pressure to reply if you don't want to, particularly given how long it's been since this was posted. If you do, feel free as well.
I have a reply to Lament coming soon, and those should wrap up the major threads surrounding Sera's succession. I've actually been planning things, believe it or not, so the Day Court should hopefully have some events upcoming to help bolster activity a bit - I sincerely apologize for my (lengthy) absence.
Also, please expect the laws, the updated census & ranks, and a couple of other things to be up soon, ideally sometime this weekend. I know I've been saying that for a while, but hopefully I'm actually catching up on stuff now.
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
![[Image: rhosbyspace2_by_outofthefurnace-dbkwvw7.png]](https://orig15.deviantart.net/7f0b/f/2017/234/b/6/rhosbyspace2_by_outofthefurnace-dbkwvw7.png)
