☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
AS A GIRL, I WAITED PATIENTLY TO CATCH FIRE
as if it were something worth wanting
She rises with the sun.
They know where she is going, and they paint her for it. She is not so uncomfortable with the ritual as she was months before, when the sovereigns gathered at Tempus’s behest; when they paint long blades of gleaming gold beneath the curves of her eyes and draw an ornate, spiraling sun on her forehead, she allows it without hesitation. Her hair had been pinned up in tight rosettes to reveal the entirety of her face, normally obscured by wisps of white hair. It feels right to wear it to a battle, in a way that it felt wrong to wear it to what was meant to be a simple gathering – in the past, her tribe-leader ancestors and most ancient sovereigns, prior to the rise of the nobility as she had come to know it, had painted their skin to invoke the sun god and his blessings before a fight. It only seemed right that she wore it now, even if she had no need to invoke the god.
He is as beautiful and golden as she remembers him, and how he burns - even in the frigid cold of this accursed winter, she can see the heat radiating off him in waves. He is something radiant and divine and strangely childlike in his wildness and arrogance, but she is no longer so apprehensive of his presence. Her eyes run haphazardly across the gathered equines, and she makes note of them each in turn; the black and white patchwork stallion she knows, and the little firebird. She does not recognize the dark stallion who circles above them, save for, perhaps, in passing; he is a member of the nobility, is he not? The bay Teke, is, too, familiar, though none of them are terribly so…but then her gaze stumbles upon the final member of the gathered party. Bexley’s girl, and Acton’s – of course she would be trouble. Apolonia is clever and capable far beyond her callow years, but she is still a child, and the silver, while loathe to keep her from the battle, makes a mental note to keep an eye on her. The last thing that these sands need, she thinks, is more young blood spilled out across them.
She throws a glance at each of them, dipping her head in acknowledgement, and, smooth and fearless as desert wind, moves to keep pace with the sun god – she stands close enough to feel her skin prickle with heat, but she does not move away. (Better to burn than to freeze over; she does not like this cold.)
“Solis.” The god’s name is fire on her tongue. “Do we know what we are up against? How we might defeat it?” Brusque as ever, even in the face of divinity – but she tires of being the frightened girl in the face of something so vast and so bright that her mind can barely grapple with the concept of it, tires of being the girl reduced to tears of white rage and raw-throat screaming to a heaven that will never bend to her will. Besides. Besides, now they stand in the face of something like a war, and that is the only thing that she knows like the beating of her own heart; battle is worn into her skin like the rings on a tree, and she has the scars to prove for it. Perhaps she will die today, after all that she has seen, and the surge of adrenaline is something like a quiet exhilaration, because this is something far simpler than politics or matters of gods and mortals. This is the dance to a melody that she has not heard in many years, and, though she has never garnered any pleasure from bloodshed, she, like a knife forged for the slaughter, finds some strange satisfaction in adhering to her purpose.
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notes | I'm so glad that I didn't miss out on the last leg of this.
tag | @Random Events
AS A GIRL, I WAITED PATIENTLY TO CATCH FIRE
as if it were something worth wanting
She rises with the sun.
They know where she is going, and they paint her for it. She is not so uncomfortable with the ritual as she was months before, when the sovereigns gathered at Tempus’s behest; when they paint long blades of gleaming gold beneath the curves of her eyes and draw an ornate, spiraling sun on her forehead, she allows it without hesitation. Her hair had been pinned up in tight rosettes to reveal the entirety of her face, normally obscured by wisps of white hair. It feels right to wear it to a battle, in a way that it felt wrong to wear it to what was meant to be a simple gathering – in the past, her tribe-leader ancestors and most ancient sovereigns, prior to the rise of the nobility as she had come to know it, had painted their skin to invoke the sun god and his blessings before a fight. It only seemed right that she wore it now, even if she had no need to invoke the god.
He is as beautiful and golden as she remembers him, and how he burns - even in the frigid cold of this accursed winter, she can see the heat radiating off him in waves. He is something radiant and divine and strangely childlike in his wildness and arrogance, but she is no longer so apprehensive of his presence. Her eyes run haphazardly across the gathered equines, and she makes note of them each in turn; the black and white patchwork stallion she knows, and the little firebird. She does not recognize the dark stallion who circles above them, save for, perhaps, in passing; he is a member of the nobility, is he not? The bay Teke, is, too, familiar, though none of them are terribly so…but then her gaze stumbles upon the final member of the gathered party. Bexley’s girl, and Acton’s – of course she would be trouble. Apolonia is clever and capable far beyond her callow years, but she is still a child, and the silver, while loathe to keep her from the battle, makes a mental note to keep an eye on her. The last thing that these sands need, she thinks, is more young blood spilled out across them.
She throws a glance at each of them, dipping her head in acknowledgement, and, smooth and fearless as desert wind, moves to keep pace with the sun god – she stands close enough to feel her skin prickle with heat, but she does not move away. (Better to burn than to freeze over; she does not like this cold.)
“Solis.” The god’s name is fire on her tongue. “Do we know what we are up against? How we might defeat it?” Brusque as ever, even in the face of divinity – but she tires of being the frightened girl in the face of something so vast and so bright that her mind can barely grapple with the concept of it, tires of being the girl reduced to tears of white rage and raw-throat screaming to a heaven that will never bend to her will. Besides. Besides, now they stand in the face of something like a war, and that is the only thing that she knows like the beating of her own heart; battle is worn into her skin like the rings on a tree, and she has the scars to prove for it. Perhaps she will die today, after all that she has seen, and the surge of adrenaline is something like a quiet exhilaration, because this is something far simpler than politics or matters of gods and mortals. This is the dance to a melody that she has not heard in many years, and, though she has never garnered any pleasure from bloodshed, she, like a knife forged for the slaughter, finds some strange satisfaction in adhering to her purpose.
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notes | I'm so glad that I didn't miss out on the last leg of this.
tag | @Random Events
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
