☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
I drink in the air like holy wine, like my last salvation
tomorrow may burn, but I'll be ready for it.
She is spilled out – spilling out. A flood. Torrents held back by broken gates, seeping out through cracks and then plunging holes into the walls until there is no wall left at all, no stone, nothing; it’s all swept away. She doesn’t know how to swim. She knows enough to not drown, under most circumstances. On rare occasions her dreams are of that night in the maze and the ink-monster that chased her through Tempus’s creation, that river of black that tasted like ink and clung like tar when she managed to drag herself out and onto the banks, and sometimes she wonders if any of that ever really occurred or if it was just another nightmare, her mind struggling to fill spaces where something else should be. It grasps, sometimes. Seeks little threads. What was her name? (The real one, not that pale mockery, not that burning one.) Did her mother have a face? (She must have.) Her mind is not inventing any fictions for this particular overflow. It tastes too familiar, and it hurts too badly for her to mistake it for anything else, and, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t forget Raum, and she couldn’t forget what she had let him do.
She was never quite strong enough, never solid enough, never crafted of the right concoction of parts to be charming or intimidating or charismatic or powerful or tactical or ruthless or merciful or any of those things that leaders were supposed to be; there was always something carved out in her chest where those things should have been. Now, she is very tired. Now, with the taste of ash and blood and the scalding bitterness that she has come to associate with a particularly humiliating form of failure caught on her tongue, her feverish mind struggles to come up with a reason to grapple with the floodgates. She can’t patch them. She won’t win; she’s fighting a battle she knows that she will lose. She probably deserves it – Solis only knows how many people are dead because of her. She’s condemned them again, now. There is a river swarming down the canyon, and she can’t get out of the way of it, and she can’t hold it back. All of her stones are swept away, and, even if they weren’t, she can’t build anything with them before the water will hit her. There isn’t the time. She can only watch, suspended, helpless, flailing in the muddy riverbank as the water crashes closer and closer, the sound of its froth against the banks growing to a deafening crescendo-
but there is something else.
She has felt it before, faintly. Deep down. Deeper than she likes to look, and it flickers like a lantern or a tiny sun, even in the midst of this- overwhelming darkness. She feels it occasionally. A prickle. She is ashes, smoke – a dash of grey. She is not fire, just what comes trailing after it, but, sometimes…
sometimes it wants to burn.
She grasps blindly at this little ember, this spark, and she begs it to flame. She is a Solterran. She should burn, shouldn’t she? There is no honor in a body dragged beneath the waves, only one reduced to ashes atop a funeral pyre. But the water comes as a rushing darkness, and she doesn’t even have a candle, and-
She is dying, and she wonders if dragging it out is worth the fight.
Nevertheless, she can’t let go of that little light – she can’t let it go, or she will lose more than her life, she will lose…
She doesn’t know. She clings to it anyways, a solitary flicker against the black.
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tags | @Isra
notes | hello, I have no idea what's going on here, but there's a lot of delirious imagery. fun fact, the opening line of "Woman King" was the tile of the thread in which Sera became sovereign.
I drink in the air like holy wine, like my last salvation
tomorrow may burn, but I'll be ready for it.
She is spilled out – spilling out. A flood. Torrents held back by broken gates, seeping out through cracks and then plunging holes into the walls until there is no wall left at all, no stone, nothing; it’s all swept away. She doesn’t know how to swim. She knows enough to not drown, under most circumstances. On rare occasions her dreams are of that night in the maze and the ink-monster that chased her through Tempus’s creation, that river of black that tasted like ink and clung like tar when she managed to drag herself out and onto the banks, and sometimes she wonders if any of that ever really occurred or if it was just another nightmare, her mind struggling to fill spaces where something else should be. It grasps, sometimes. Seeks little threads. What was her name? (The real one, not that pale mockery, not that burning one.) Did her mother have a face? (She must have.) Her mind is not inventing any fictions for this particular overflow. It tastes too familiar, and it hurts too badly for her to mistake it for anything else, and, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t forget Raum, and she couldn’t forget what she had let him do.
She was never quite strong enough, never solid enough, never crafted of the right concoction of parts to be charming or intimidating or charismatic or powerful or tactical or ruthless or merciful or any of those things that leaders were supposed to be; there was always something carved out in her chest where those things should have been. Now, she is very tired. Now, with the taste of ash and blood and the scalding bitterness that she has come to associate with a particularly humiliating form of failure caught on her tongue, her feverish mind struggles to come up with a reason to grapple with the floodgates. She can’t patch them. She won’t win; she’s fighting a battle she knows that she will lose. She probably deserves it – Solis only knows how many people are dead because of her. She’s condemned them again, now. There is a river swarming down the canyon, and she can’t get out of the way of it, and she can’t hold it back. All of her stones are swept away, and, even if they weren’t, she can’t build anything with them before the water will hit her. There isn’t the time. She can only watch, suspended, helpless, flailing in the muddy riverbank as the water crashes closer and closer, the sound of its froth against the banks growing to a deafening crescendo-
but there is something else.
She has felt it before, faintly. Deep down. Deeper than she likes to look, and it flickers like a lantern or a tiny sun, even in the midst of this- overwhelming darkness. She feels it occasionally. A prickle. She is ashes, smoke – a dash of grey. She is not fire, just what comes trailing after it, but, sometimes…
sometimes it wants to burn.
She grasps blindly at this little ember, this spark, and she begs it to flame. She is a Solterran. She should burn, shouldn’t she? There is no honor in a body dragged beneath the waves, only one reduced to ashes atop a funeral pyre. But the water comes as a rushing darkness, and she doesn’t even have a candle, and-
She is dying, and she wonders if dragging it out is worth the fight.
Nevertheless, she can’t let go of that little light – she can’t let it go, or she will lose more than her life, she will lose…
She doesn’t know. She clings to it anyways, a solitary flicker against the black.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Isra
notes | hello, I have no idea what's going on here, but there's a lot of delirious imagery. fun fact, the opening line of "Woman King" was the tile of the thread in which Sera became sovereign.
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
