☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
if not by faith then by the sword
I'm going to be restored
It feels like it has been a very long time since the Davke attack; it feels like the Davke attack was only yesterday. Seraphina feels caught in-between times, as though she is floating in some great middle space from which there is no escape. Whatever tiny flicker hope she had of better things has been utterly extinguished, leaving her exhausted and ghostly, bleached like pearl-white bones in the desert sun. Nevertheless, she persists. She struggles to repair the Capitol with insufficient materials. She burns her dead, even though each flame she lights feels like a slap to the face – somewhere, high up above them, the sun god is laughing, and she still follows his rituals to send her dead to his side. He doesn’t deserve them.
He wanted them to die.
Ash clings to the shiny silver of her coat, leaving it dusted in charcoal; she smells perennially of the sickening combination of woodsmoke, incense, and burnt flesh. She moves without ever feeling like she is moving – anything she fixes comes with the constant, knotting fear that it will be undone the next morning. Seraphina knows that she is falling into their trap, into their pace. She knows that her response to their assault is almost devastatingly weak, and she knows that everything that they have stolen from her cannot be taken back. All she can offer is some paltry resistance, to force her head up high, to force herself into the mold of desperate composure that she knows so well, to swallow up the indignity and frustration and fury that burn on the tip of her tongue each and every gods-damned day because, like an animal caught in a trap, there is nothing she can do.
Already, she hears whispers. Already, she hears that she is no true queen of Solterra – just a false, shade-like silver creature, reduced to ashes in the radiance of the sun. Already, she hears that she is forsaken by the god to whom she once offered her life, her absolute obedience, her everything. Both of those things, she thinks, are true. Both of them are true, and yet she remains because she can do nothing but remain, even though her every instinct wants her to run. (But there is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. Everywhere she looks, snakes bite at her heels.)
She slips away from the wreckage of the Capitol, moving towards the Oasis. The sun beats down mercilessly on her back, and the suffocating, dry heat of summer burns her throat. This is nothing she is unaccustomed to, but it feels particularly oppressive as she slips like a shadow over the waves of the dunes, not halting in her mechanically even strides until her eyes are greeted by the distant sight of lush green.
As she draws under the canopy, palm leaves dappling shade across her coat, Seraphina realizes that she is not alone – in the water stands a rich bay with a tail like a whip and a powerful frame. She regards her with narrowed eyes, wondering if her own presence has been noted, yet; nostrils flare to catch her scent, and, though she remains as tense as livewire, she calms slightly when she catches the scent of the Capitol fresh on the mare. She doesn’t recognize this girl, but she is likely not one of the Davke, then. She advances onto the shoreline, making little effort to guise her presence. In spite of her stiff, cautious stance, there is no obvious hostility in her posture as she moves towards the water’s edge.
“And who,” She questions, advancing ever closer to the brilliant, lapping turquoise of the Oasis, “might you be?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Vanora
notes | <3
if not by faith then by the sword
I'm going to be restored
It feels like it has been a very long time since the Davke attack; it feels like the Davke attack was only yesterday. Seraphina feels caught in-between times, as though she is floating in some great middle space from which there is no escape. Whatever tiny flicker hope she had of better things has been utterly extinguished, leaving her exhausted and ghostly, bleached like pearl-white bones in the desert sun. Nevertheless, she persists. She struggles to repair the Capitol with insufficient materials. She burns her dead, even though each flame she lights feels like a slap to the face – somewhere, high up above them, the sun god is laughing, and she still follows his rituals to send her dead to his side. He doesn’t deserve them.
He wanted them to die.
Ash clings to the shiny silver of her coat, leaving it dusted in charcoal; she smells perennially of the sickening combination of woodsmoke, incense, and burnt flesh. She moves without ever feeling like she is moving – anything she fixes comes with the constant, knotting fear that it will be undone the next morning. Seraphina knows that she is falling into their trap, into their pace. She knows that her response to their assault is almost devastatingly weak, and she knows that everything that they have stolen from her cannot be taken back. All she can offer is some paltry resistance, to force her head up high, to force herself into the mold of desperate composure that she knows so well, to swallow up the indignity and frustration and fury that burn on the tip of her tongue each and every gods-damned day because, like an animal caught in a trap, there is nothing she can do.
Already, she hears whispers. Already, she hears that she is no true queen of Solterra – just a false, shade-like silver creature, reduced to ashes in the radiance of the sun. Already, she hears that she is forsaken by the god to whom she once offered her life, her absolute obedience, her everything. Both of those things, she thinks, are true. Both of them are true, and yet she remains because she can do nothing but remain, even though her every instinct wants her to run. (But there is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. Everywhere she looks, snakes bite at her heels.)
She slips away from the wreckage of the Capitol, moving towards the Oasis. The sun beats down mercilessly on her back, and the suffocating, dry heat of summer burns her throat. This is nothing she is unaccustomed to, but it feels particularly oppressive as she slips like a shadow over the waves of the dunes, not halting in her mechanically even strides until her eyes are greeted by the distant sight of lush green.
As she draws under the canopy, palm leaves dappling shade across her coat, Seraphina realizes that she is not alone – in the water stands a rich bay with a tail like a whip and a powerful frame. She regards her with narrowed eyes, wondering if her own presence has been noted, yet; nostrils flare to catch her scent, and, though she remains as tense as livewire, she calms slightly when she catches the scent of the Capitol fresh on the mare. She doesn’t recognize this girl, but she is likely not one of the Davke, then. She advances onto the shoreline, making little effort to guise her presence. In spite of her stiff, cautious stance, there is no obvious hostility in her posture as she moves towards the water’s edge.
“And who,” She questions, advancing ever closer to the brilliant, lapping turquoise of the Oasis, “might you be?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Vanora
notes | <3
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
