[P] . more than skin deep

[Seraphina]

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

pulled flowers at my feet
lost in the wind

The girl’s golden-eyed gaze greeted Seraphina with an almost unnatural amount of excitement; as she took her in, however, she saw the anticipation disappear from her stare like a splash of water on the desert sands. She mistook her for someone else, Seraphina realized. It wasn’t surprising. Although the silver had developed something of a reputation among the residents of Novus, she wasn’t nearly as unique or outrageous as some of Novus’s inhabitants. (In fact, she thought herself quite simple – it seemed, off the top of her head, that most of Solterra’s inhabitants were, save, perhaps, for Torstein.) She tilted her head very slightly, wisps of white hair falling in front of her eyes, and waited patiently for a response.

The red girl – woman, she corrected, woman - was silent for a long time, as though she was contemplating her words. Seraphina supposed that she would be too, under the circumstances. She was a stranger, approaching her, and her comment probably sounded a bit invasive. When she did finally reply, her words were more philosophical than the silver anticipated, and it took her another moment of contemplation to formulate a response. Whatever she anticipated from the cake-stained little red creature, it was not such abject contemplation on death. “So it seems,” She agreed quietly, with a subtle nod of her head. In the back of her mind, she could hear the dull cacophony of screams; for a moment, her vision seemed to blur, and she could see glassy eyes, flesh slowly overtaken by flames. The smell of burning skin filled her lungs, but then she blinked – and she was back again. Those dead were the furious dead, and some part of her was sure that their loathing haunted the desert like a ghost, like a vengeance; like Avdotya to her dead family. She wasn’t sure that they slept soundly – she wasn’t sure that they slept at all. “Though I wonder, sometimes, even about them.” But she didn’t have time to think too deeply about the dead; not when the living were so constantly on her mind.

The red woman smiled, then, luminously; it was startling, when compared to the twitch of sadness she’d worn before. She felt her gaze drift along the silver of her sides and the crown of white lilies on her head, and, in a voice so scarcely audible that she at first assumed she imagined it, the woman called her beautiful. It was a strange compliment, for the warrior woman – though she knew that they were largely unseen and unnoticeable, a great snarl of scars coated the skin beneath her coat, and she was far from delicate or effeminate in build. Nevertheless, she was not impolite, so she offered a faint, “Thank you,” but was quick to add, “although I believe that you are the far lovelier creature.” From a strictly objective standpoint, it was true. She was as dainty as they came and red as blood, with great wings and dark lashes and long curls of hair, and, in spite of the faint tragedy that seemed to linger heavy across her features, she seemed light – but perhaps that was just the wings. Those that weren’t bound to the ground always felt freer, to her.

But, then, Seraphina did not know that the woman at her side was just as grounded as she.

"What's your name?" She asked, then - if they were to speak, it seemed best to get introductions out of the way.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags | @Moira
notes | soooorry for the wait.

@