☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
my blood will fill the ditch // my blood will bury the mountain // but for now it sits still in my mouth // just waiting on the tip of my tongue
my blood will fill the ditch // my blood will bury the mountain // but for now it sits still in my mouth // just waiting on the tip of my tongue
Cordial as ever; he returns her bow with a deep one of his own. "My Queen." Not really, a part of her thinks, not at all. After all, she is the day and he is the night, and there isn’t anything that can shake that. However, she doesn’t mind it when he says it, even if she hears the hint of nerves in his voice, in the gentle curve of his smile, genuine as it is. They are in public, after all, and this is no moment to let down their guards – not when the gods loom over them, not when the regimes loom over them, not when the entire world seems to be tottering on the brink of crashing right down upon all of their heads. Uncertainty swims in her chest, but she can push it aside in favor of concentrating on the moment. It’s one she’s been looking forward to.
“You look radiant.” Sudden and abrupt, but low enough to go unheard. She straightens, slightly, gold-lined eyes widening fractionally; Seraphina is hardly accustomed to compliments, much less on her physique. There’s something genuine to the way his comment comes stumbling out, to the expression that he wears while saying it, and she doesn’t know how to interpret it, or exactly how it makes her feel, though she knows that it isn’t unpleasant in the least.
“I’ve been told that was what the artists were going for…” A hint of dry amusement, to smooth over her own uncertainty – radiant, like the sun she was meant to follow. (But she did not, and she wondered why she even let herself be called the sun queen anymore. She wondered if the god of day awaited her in the space between the trees; she wondered what he would have to say to her if he were. Nothing good, she imagined. Nothing at all, even more likely.) Certainly a task for the painters, but they were accustomed to it; there were only a few in the court that still practiced the traditional art, but they were dedicated to their craft. Glowing, light, flame - burning one. She dips her head, though, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and her tone was warm when she added a soft, “Thank you.”
He spoke, then, of his own displeasure with his adornments. Seraphina had never actually seen a peacock for comparison, but she had read more than one account of Zolin that described him as such. Renwick, she decided, looked nothing like Zolin, in more ways than one; his overall physique, was, of course, the polar opposite, but the outfit itself had none of the ridiculous embellishment that Zolin so adored. (She had only personally seen the former Sovereign once, at Viceroy’s behest. However, his vanity was far from the least of his sins, and he was quite happy to commission portrait after portrait of himself, though, in her own experience, their similarity to him was often debatable, at best.) With a quirk of her brow, she offered a thoughtful, “If that’s what you think, I should show you a painting of Zolin someday.” Most of them hadn’t survived the rebellion after Zolin’s death, much less the Davke attack; a few, small ones, however, still remained, ornaments to be kept in lockets on one’s person, though why anyone but Zolin himself would want them is beyond her limits of comprehension. “I think you look quite regal, personally.” That’s a good word for it, she decides. Like a proper knight, clad in rich greens and golds – she thinks that he could have stepped out of one of the curling, ornate illustrations in the scrolls in the library, the ones illuminated with a delicate hand and a brush tipped with liquid gold. (There’s a significant part of Renwick that she still can’t quite believe exists. The desert is harsh.)
But there isn’t time to linger on the fact that she is still vaguely convinced that Renwick wandered out of a child’s storybook and into Novus; he asks after her condition. “Not significantly different than when last I spoke to you,” She admits – the cycle of rebuilding and regrowing is always slow, “until now.” She pauses, turning her gaze from him to stare at what she can only assume is the meeting-place, letting out a soft sigh. “I’ll admit, I thought that very little could shake me, after the Davke attack…but I did not anticipate the gods revealing themselves again, after…so many years of silence.” She did not question that it was the gods; some part of her, buried deep inside, was utterly, devastatingly certain. And why? They had been quiet for so long, through so much. There was nothing about the moment that they lived in now that made it more valuable than moments past, but, then, she supposed that you rarely knew that history was being made as you lived it. She doesn’t contemplate that for too long, however – she isn’t sure that she wants to. Tilting her head, she turns the question back on him. “And you?”
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tags | @Renwick @Random Events theoretically I guess
notes | hi I love you and I'm sorry this took forever <3 <3 <3
“You look radiant.” Sudden and abrupt, but low enough to go unheard. She straightens, slightly, gold-lined eyes widening fractionally; Seraphina is hardly accustomed to compliments, much less on her physique. There’s something genuine to the way his comment comes stumbling out, to the expression that he wears while saying it, and she doesn’t know how to interpret it, or exactly how it makes her feel, though she knows that it isn’t unpleasant in the least.
“I’ve been told that was what the artists were going for…” A hint of dry amusement, to smooth over her own uncertainty – radiant, like the sun she was meant to follow. (But she did not, and she wondered why she even let herself be called the sun queen anymore. She wondered if the god of day awaited her in the space between the trees; she wondered what he would have to say to her if he were. Nothing good, she imagined. Nothing at all, even more likely.) Certainly a task for the painters, but they were accustomed to it; there were only a few in the court that still practiced the traditional art, but they were dedicated to their craft. Glowing, light, flame - burning one. She dips her head, though, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and her tone was warm when she added a soft, “Thank you.”
He spoke, then, of his own displeasure with his adornments. Seraphina had never actually seen a peacock for comparison, but she had read more than one account of Zolin that described him as such. Renwick, she decided, looked nothing like Zolin, in more ways than one; his overall physique, was, of course, the polar opposite, but the outfit itself had none of the ridiculous embellishment that Zolin so adored. (She had only personally seen the former Sovereign once, at Viceroy’s behest. However, his vanity was far from the least of his sins, and he was quite happy to commission portrait after portrait of himself, though, in her own experience, their similarity to him was often debatable, at best.) With a quirk of her brow, she offered a thoughtful, “If that’s what you think, I should show you a painting of Zolin someday.” Most of them hadn’t survived the rebellion after Zolin’s death, much less the Davke attack; a few, small ones, however, still remained, ornaments to be kept in lockets on one’s person, though why anyone but Zolin himself would want them is beyond her limits of comprehension. “I think you look quite regal, personally.” That’s a good word for it, she decides. Like a proper knight, clad in rich greens and golds – she thinks that he could have stepped out of one of the curling, ornate illustrations in the scrolls in the library, the ones illuminated with a delicate hand and a brush tipped with liquid gold. (There’s a significant part of Renwick that she still can’t quite believe exists. The desert is harsh.)
But there isn’t time to linger on the fact that she is still vaguely convinced that Renwick wandered out of a child’s storybook and into Novus; he asks after her condition. “Not significantly different than when last I spoke to you,” She admits – the cycle of rebuilding and regrowing is always slow, “until now.” She pauses, turning her gaze from him to stare at what she can only assume is the meeting-place, letting out a soft sigh. “I’ll admit, I thought that very little could shake me, after the Davke attack…but I did not anticipate the gods revealing themselves again, after…so many years of silence.” She did not question that it was the gods; some part of her, buried deep inside, was utterly, devastatingly certain. And why? They had been quiet for so long, through so much. There was nothing about the moment that they lived in now that made it more valuable than moments past, but, then, she supposed that you rarely knew that history was being made as you lived it. She doesn’t contemplate that for too long, however – she isn’t sure that she wants to. Tilting her head, she turns the question back on him. “And you?”
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tags | @
notes | hi I love you and I'm sorry this took forever <3 <3 <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
