☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
holy water cannot help you now
see I've come to burn your kingdom down
Her lips are a curl of charcoal, dried lava left cracked and bloody after a volcanic eruption; she’s licked them enough to dry. They curve into a quiet snarl as she prowls back and forth across the dry, clear ground of the summit, steps so heavy – practically thunderous – that they leave deep gouges in the dusty earth as she drags them away. Her braids were falling out in tatters, ghost-white tendrils free-flying around her skull; haloed by the sunlight, they look like serpents, curved back and ready to strike. She is tired, she was so tired, she is always so tired. But she is not passive, defeated tired – she is not on her knees. She is outraged, she was betrayed, she was heartbroken, but she was not quiet.
She is needy and burning and filled with a hunger enough to swallow the entire world.
She has never been ambitious, save for when she took the crown. She has never been wanting, either, but for then. Want became an ugly thing too early to embrace it, but she never realized the gaping hole that it left behind until she stood too close to the edge and careened into it. She didn’t realize what want really felt like until she was trapped beneath heaps of stone and silt by a god that she had been fool enough to trust and she had wanted - she had wanted to rip and blaze and bite, to snap back at the hands that had claimed that they were feeding her.
(But the entire time, they were only ever eating her alive.)
And that was how she found the girl of sun and stars – burning. Her bird-boned frame and pale scarlet locks remind her of another fire, and another betrayal, and she wonders if she looks any less the banshee – the aftermath of tragedy, of disaster - than she did when they last met in the canyons. There is no little girl between them now, no mistrust to cloud the cool mountain air, and, as her eyes come to a rest on the other, older woman’s, the violent curve of her lips twists into something comfortably neutral, in spite of the latent flame eating its way out of her once-cold stare. She paces towards her, each long stride closing the gap between them until there is little space at all, until she can get a good look at her.
Rhoswen is older now, she thinks. She regards her in silence for what feels like a long moment, considering the right words to say, and she finally settles on a simple greeting. She has questions. She has time for them, too, divine-come-down-from-the-heavens or no.
“…Rhoswen,” comes her voice, still hoarse with ash and dust.
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tags | @Rhoswen
notes | <3
holy water cannot help you now
see I've come to burn your kingdom down
Her lips are a curl of charcoal, dried lava left cracked and bloody after a volcanic eruption; she’s licked them enough to dry. They curve into a quiet snarl as she prowls back and forth across the dry, clear ground of the summit, steps so heavy – practically thunderous – that they leave deep gouges in the dusty earth as she drags them away. Her braids were falling out in tatters, ghost-white tendrils free-flying around her skull; haloed by the sunlight, they look like serpents, curved back and ready to strike. She is tired, she was so tired, she is always so tired. But she is not passive, defeated tired – she is not on her knees. She is outraged, she was betrayed, she was heartbroken, but she was not quiet.
She is needy and burning and filled with a hunger enough to swallow the entire world.
She has never been ambitious, save for when she took the crown. She has never been wanting, either, but for then. Want became an ugly thing too early to embrace it, but she never realized the gaping hole that it left behind until she stood too close to the edge and careened into it. She didn’t realize what want really felt like until she was trapped beneath heaps of stone and silt by a god that she had been fool enough to trust and she had wanted - she had wanted to rip and blaze and bite, to snap back at the hands that had claimed that they were feeding her.
(But the entire time, they were only ever eating her alive.)
And that was how she found the girl of sun and stars – burning. Her bird-boned frame and pale scarlet locks remind her of another fire, and another betrayal, and she wonders if she looks any less the banshee – the aftermath of tragedy, of disaster - than she did when they last met in the canyons. There is no little girl between them now, no mistrust to cloud the cool mountain air, and, as her eyes come to a rest on the other, older woman’s, the violent curve of her lips twists into something comfortably neutral, in spite of the latent flame eating its way out of her once-cold stare. She paces towards her, each long stride closing the gap between them until there is little space at all, until she can get a good look at her.
Rhoswen is older now, she thinks. She regards her in silence for what feels like a long moment, considering the right words to say, and she finally settles on a simple greeting. She has questions. She has time for them, too, divine-come-down-from-the-heavens or no.
“…Rhoswen,” comes her voice, still hoarse with ash and dust.
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tags | @Rhoswen
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
