☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
AND YET I SWEAR
I love this earth / that scars and scalds / and burns my feet / and even hell is holy
She doesn’t meet his eyes, and he doesn’t try to force her to; she has the feeling that they’re dancing around something because it’s too painful to touch, but he’s still here, and that’s more than the gods – or anyone else, she thinks, with a slight pang – have ever done for her. She’s stumbling, she thinks, even crumbling. For all of her composure in politics and paperwork, finding the right words to soothe a pain or even describe it, be it her own or someone else’s or her entire nation’s, has never come easily to her. Then again, she isn’t sure that the right words exist to express the things that they’d seen – how do you describe glassy eyes and burning corpses, starving children and cold-eyed gods, and how do you feel like your description does the reality any justice? It doesn’t. Some things are beyond expression.
Her words are met with a wry, twisted-up smile and a nod, and a part of her wonders how he can still smile after everything they’d just seen, but she knows that it isn’t really a smile – just something to fill the space. It feels like an offering. They’re still alive, he tells her, and she knows that he’s right; as long as they’re still alive, there’s still something left to keep fighting for. She still doesn’t meet his gaze, keeping her eyes pinned somewhere a bit lower, around the base of his neck. Out of her peripheral vision, she can still see the curve of his lips, and it seems more and more cynical the longer she stares at it. She wonders if he hoped for answers, like she did, or if he already knew that it would be futile. There’s a little bit of innocence to Eik, – she remembers him nibbling at that scroll so vividly it might as well have happened yesterday – but there’s something else, beneath the surface, and it lingers and bleeds like an unstitched wound. She doesn’t know what it is, and she has a feeling that he doesn’t want her to see it, so she keeps averting her gaze.
He’s quiet, then, and she lets the silence stretch out in-between them in a manner that isn’t exactly uncomfortable but holds an unusual tension. When she’s with him, quiet is usually comfortable, but this quiet feels like an encroaching storm; it looms over her head like a threat, or a promise, something that is ready to break and leave the shards all scattered across the cold marble that used to be a shrine – when god still lived there. It feels heavy, too heavy, and it sticks in her chest. He didn’t press her when she tried to come up with a response, she thinks, and he didn’t seem to begrudge her for hesitating. (She was always hesitating. If it bothered him, he’d never let it show.) However, there was something in his composure and something in his stare and something in that curved crescent-moon of lips that certainly wasn’t a smile that draws her eyes down towards his hooves, towards the ground. Don’t you trust me?
But – as with most things – the quiet cannot last. He sighs, and all of that composure comes crumbling down in a landslide of expression, and, gods, he looks so tired; frightened, too, and perhaps just a bit shocked, but every other emotion is tempered by a heavy coat of exhaust, like a layer of dust on a book. "I am afraid of what will happen when the gods become tired of this place and these people." The words come out stark, and clean, and painful, and she wonders what kind of gods – what kind of leaders - would tire of their own creations. (And then, of course, she remembers that they have been silent for hundreds of years.) Afraid. He’s afraid, and, deep down, she knows that she is too, but some childish part of her is still grasping at the hope that they’re wrong, that her eyes have betrayed her, that her memories have betrayed her, that her own experience was mere misinterpretation; she wants to believe that the gods still care, and that the gods are still good. She can’t really believe it, though, and that word hangs over her head like a noose. Afraid. Oh, she’s terrified.
(A faint buzz, at the back of her mind, that nearly meshes with the swirling breeze: I want to run, but where could I go that they could not follow? And how could I leave everyone, how could I leave you? )
For a moment, she’s sure that she imagined it, and maybe she did, but it doesn’t matter. She feels it. Seraphina steps forward – slow and reluctant, at first – and closes the distance between them, pausing only when she rests her muzzle against his shoulder, where she thinks that she can make out the faint outline of the scrape he’d obtained during the Davke attack. He’s warm and solid and alive, and so is she, and, for the moment, that would have to be enough. “…If the gods abandon us,” She says, and her voice is barely more than a whisper, but certain, “we’ll find another way.” A way to what? Who knows. Maybe her optimism – persistent, in spite of everything – betrays her youth, but- but Seraphina is sure that she has seen the worst that the world has to offer, and she’s seen the sun rise again in the morning in spite of it all.
When he speaks again, she feels him shudder, and the fury that is evident even in the softness of his voice is enough to make her turn to look at him. He’s angry, he admits. Angry. And it’s perfectly reasonable, she thinks, to be angry, after what they had just encountered-
But he isn’t done speaking.
“I met a god once, dressed in horseflesh.”
The ink-spills of his eyes go looking for hers, and she lifts her lips from his shoulder to meet his gaze. There’s something in it that she doesn’t recognize.
(And there it comes again, but sharper and clearer this time, fueled by white-hot flame: they are all different heads on the same body, monsters in the skin of saviors, dreams that we believe into being.)
“Nothing good comes of their meddling.” And his voice is certain enough to break a little piece of her heart.
She’s quiet, for a moment, staring into the dark, dark depths of those eyes. Seraphina had wondered about Eik, from time to time. Stable as an oak tree, she had told herself, but she’d never been very good at picking away at people until she found what lie beneath. Did he seem so stable now? She felt like they were standing on the edge of some vast, crumbling precipice, and the chasm that threatened was so dark and so deep that you couldn’t even see the ground-
“What happened, when you met the god?” She says, finally, and she does not look away.
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tags | @Eik
notes | did you request a novel? well, you got one anyways, because I have a lot of feelings. anyhow. played around with the telepathy just a bit, because his thoughts are too pretty to keep to himself. ;~;
AND YET I SWEAR
I love this earth / that scars and scalds / and burns my feet / and even hell is holy
She doesn’t meet his eyes, and he doesn’t try to force her to; she has the feeling that they’re dancing around something because it’s too painful to touch, but he’s still here, and that’s more than the gods – or anyone else, she thinks, with a slight pang – have ever done for her. She’s stumbling, she thinks, even crumbling. For all of her composure in politics and paperwork, finding the right words to soothe a pain or even describe it, be it her own or someone else’s or her entire nation’s, has never come easily to her. Then again, she isn’t sure that the right words exist to express the things that they’d seen – how do you describe glassy eyes and burning corpses, starving children and cold-eyed gods, and how do you feel like your description does the reality any justice? It doesn’t. Some things are beyond expression.
Her words are met with a wry, twisted-up smile and a nod, and a part of her wonders how he can still smile after everything they’d just seen, but she knows that it isn’t really a smile – just something to fill the space. It feels like an offering. They’re still alive, he tells her, and she knows that he’s right; as long as they’re still alive, there’s still something left to keep fighting for. She still doesn’t meet his gaze, keeping her eyes pinned somewhere a bit lower, around the base of his neck. Out of her peripheral vision, she can still see the curve of his lips, and it seems more and more cynical the longer she stares at it. She wonders if he hoped for answers, like she did, or if he already knew that it would be futile. There’s a little bit of innocence to Eik, – she remembers him nibbling at that scroll so vividly it might as well have happened yesterday – but there’s something else, beneath the surface, and it lingers and bleeds like an unstitched wound. She doesn’t know what it is, and she has a feeling that he doesn’t want her to see it, so she keeps averting her gaze.
He’s quiet, then, and she lets the silence stretch out in-between them in a manner that isn’t exactly uncomfortable but holds an unusual tension. When she’s with him, quiet is usually comfortable, but this quiet feels like an encroaching storm; it looms over her head like a threat, or a promise, something that is ready to break and leave the shards all scattered across the cold marble that used to be a shrine – when god still lived there. It feels heavy, too heavy, and it sticks in her chest. He didn’t press her when she tried to come up with a response, she thinks, and he didn’t seem to begrudge her for hesitating. (She was always hesitating. If it bothered him, he’d never let it show.) However, there was something in his composure and something in his stare and something in that curved crescent-moon of lips that certainly wasn’t a smile that draws her eyes down towards his hooves, towards the ground. Don’t you trust me?
But – as with most things – the quiet cannot last. He sighs, and all of that composure comes crumbling down in a landslide of expression, and, gods, he looks so tired; frightened, too, and perhaps just a bit shocked, but every other emotion is tempered by a heavy coat of exhaust, like a layer of dust on a book. "I am afraid of what will happen when the gods become tired of this place and these people." The words come out stark, and clean, and painful, and she wonders what kind of gods – what kind of leaders - would tire of their own creations. (And then, of course, she remembers that they have been silent for hundreds of years.) Afraid. He’s afraid, and, deep down, she knows that she is too, but some childish part of her is still grasping at the hope that they’re wrong, that her eyes have betrayed her, that her memories have betrayed her, that her own experience was mere misinterpretation; she wants to believe that the gods still care, and that the gods are still good. She can’t really believe it, though, and that word hangs over her head like a noose. Afraid. Oh, she’s terrified.
(A faint buzz, at the back of her mind, that nearly meshes with the swirling breeze: I want to run, but where could I go that they could not follow? And how could I leave everyone, how could I leave you? )
For a moment, she’s sure that she imagined it, and maybe she did, but it doesn’t matter. She feels it. Seraphina steps forward – slow and reluctant, at first – and closes the distance between them, pausing only when she rests her muzzle against his shoulder, where she thinks that she can make out the faint outline of the scrape he’d obtained during the Davke attack. He’s warm and solid and alive, and so is she, and, for the moment, that would have to be enough. “…If the gods abandon us,” She says, and her voice is barely more than a whisper, but certain, “we’ll find another way.” A way to what? Who knows. Maybe her optimism – persistent, in spite of everything – betrays her youth, but- but Seraphina is sure that she has seen the worst that the world has to offer, and she’s seen the sun rise again in the morning in spite of it all.
When he speaks again, she feels him shudder, and the fury that is evident even in the softness of his voice is enough to make her turn to look at him. He’s angry, he admits. Angry. And it’s perfectly reasonable, she thinks, to be angry, after what they had just encountered-
But he isn’t done speaking.
“I met a god once, dressed in horseflesh.”
The ink-spills of his eyes go looking for hers, and she lifts her lips from his shoulder to meet his gaze. There’s something in it that she doesn’t recognize.
(And there it comes again, but sharper and clearer this time, fueled by white-hot flame: they are all different heads on the same body, monsters in the skin of saviors, dreams that we believe into being.)
“Nothing good comes of their meddling.” And his voice is certain enough to break a little piece of her heart.
She’s quiet, for a moment, staring into the dark, dark depths of those eyes. Seraphina had wondered about Eik, from time to time. Stable as an oak tree, she had told herself, but she’d never been very good at picking away at people until she found what lie beneath. Did he seem so stable now? She felt like they were standing on the edge of some vast, crumbling precipice, and the chasm that threatened was so dark and so deep that you couldn’t even see the ground-
“What happened, when you met the god?” She says, finally, and she does not look away.
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tags | @
notes | did you request a novel? well, you got one anyways, because I have a lot of feelings. anyhow. played around with the telepathy just a bit, because his thoughts are too pretty to keep to himself. ;~;
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
