☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
and I'm faded away
you know, I used to be on fire
Seraphina is not in the business of chasing after ghosts.
She tried to, once. She tried to cling to her past – to what she thought she was, or what she thought that she needed to be – when it seemed that everything around her was spiraling out of her control, but she had drained through her own grasp like water out of a cup with a hole in it. She’d learned, very slowly and very unhappily, that she couldn’t remain stagnant in the face of a world that changed as quickly and viciously as the desert wind; she had learned that the only way to live was to find some way to change, to press forward regardless.
Ghosts. Little fragments; sometimes she still looks into a darkened hallway and sees Viceroy’s luminescent golden eyes peering back, twin lanterns in the shadows.
She hadn’t intended to return to Veneror, but she slips out of the bitter chill of Solterra in the darkest depths of a cloudless night, her charcoal lips pulled into a worried frown. (Would they find a way to end the strange, relentless winter that had swallowed her desert homeland like a voracious snake? It was hard to know – but the gods might, and if they would not come to her, she would go to them.) She ascends the mountaintop just as dawn, a dusky swath of violet paling to blush at its tips, begins to break the horizon. She moves quickly and mechanically, exertion breaking a cold sweat over her brow; her breath clouds in the cool of early spring as she climbs higher and higher, to where the statues of the gods were what felt like so long ago.
And, as she reaches the peak, her gaze catches on another figure.
She sees a lost woman, the red twines of her hair like fire in the pale blush of the dawn. She sees a woman who lost her brother to the night he served, a woman who lost her lover to flame, a woman who’d been homeless – torn between smoke and stars and sun and scald – for far too long. Rhoswen. There was something frantic and tragic and horribly, horribly lonely about her silhouette, a paleness cast dark against the rising sun. Seraphina takes one step towards her, tentatively, then another and another; she almost calls out to her. Where have you been where have you been where have you been. She hasn’t seen her since the gods returned; she hasn’t seen her since the Denoctian regime disappeared; she hasn’t seen her since her kingdom froze over. A part of her wondered if she, like her brother, was lost to the void.
But there she stands – solid as polished sandstone but hazy and flickering in the dusty light.
I am here. I have come.
She bridges the distance between them slowly, and she does not speak until she stands at her side. “Rhoswen…” She trails off. How many times has the red woman found her, torn asunder, a girl carved in the shape of a banshee’s wail? And now it is she that looks at her with a dreadful sort of quiet, the bright chips of her eyes gleaming in the haze of early dawn. “What are you seeking, Rhoswen?”
What do you hope to find here, on this holy mountain abandoned by its gods?
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tags | @Rhoswen
notes | <3
and I'm faded away
you know, I used to be on fire
Seraphina is not in the business of chasing after ghosts.
She tried to, once. She tried to cling to her past – to what she thought she was, or what she thought that she needed to be – when it seemed that everything around her was spiraling out of her control, but she had drained through her own grasp like water out of a cup with a hole in it. She’d learned, very slowly and very unhappily, that she couldn’t remain stagnant in the face of a world that changed as quickly and viciously as the desert wind; she had learned that the only way to live was to find some way to change, to press forward regardless.
Ghosts. Little fragments; sometimes she still looks into a darkened hallway and sees Viceroy’s luminescent golden eyes peering back, twin lanterns in the shadows.
She hadn’t intended to return to Veneror, but she slips out of the bitter chill of Solterra in the darkest depths of a cloudless night, her charcoal lips pulled into a worried frown. (Would they find a way to end the strange, relentless winter that had swallowed her desert homeland like a voracious snake? It was hard to know – but the gods might, and if they would not come to her, she would go to them.) She ascends the mountaintop just as dawn, a dusky swath of violet paling to blush at its tips, begins to break the horizon. She moves quickly and mechanically, exertion breaking a cold sweat over her brow; her breath clouds in the cool of early spring as she climbs higher and higher, to where the statues of the gods were what felt like so long ago.
And, as she reaches the peak, her gaze catches on another figure.
She sees a lost woman, the red twines of her hair like fire in the pale blush of the dawn. She sees a woman who lost her brother to the night he served, a woman who lost her lover to flame, a woman who’d been homeless – torn between smoke and stars and sun and scald – for far too long. Rhoswen. There was something frantic and tragic and horribly, horribly lonely about her silhouette, a paleness cast dark against the rising sun. Seraphina takes one step towards her, tentatively, then another and another; she almost calls out to her. Where have you been where have you been where have you been. She hasn’t seen her since the gods returned; she hasn’t seen her since the Denoctian regime disappeared; she hasn’t seen her since her kingdom froze over. A part of her wondered if she, like her brother, was lost to the void.
But there she stands – solid as polished sandstone but hazy and flickering in the dusty light.
I am here. I have come.
She bridges the distance between them slowly, and she does not speak until she stands at her side. “Rhoswen…” She trails off. How many times has the red woman found her, torn asunder, a girl carved in the shape of a banshee’s wail? And now it is she that looks at her with a dreadful sort of quiet, the bright chips of her eyes gleaming in the haze of early dawn. “What are you seeking, Rhoswen?”
What do you hope to find here, on this holy mountain abandoned by its gods?
----------------------------------------------------------
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
