[AW] Of electricity and hurricanes

[Seraphina]

As his gaze turned to face her, Seraphina froze for a fraction of a second, sucking in a breath and narrowing her eyes at the lump on his forehead – she thought that it looked a bit like a closed eye but quickly dismissed her suspicions as ridiculous. She confronted trespassers on what felt like a daily basis lately, but most of them didn’t fall out of magical, reality-warping portals in the walls of the Elatus Canyon. (And most of them weren’t so large, and, frankly, warlike.) When he spoke, she couldn’t place his accent. She already imagined that he was foreign, by virtue of his unusual entrance, but there were magic users within Novus, so she hadn’t ruled out the possibly that he was another native. Her response was short and sharp, though slightly unsure, “I see. Good.” She did not sound especially convinced that his present state was actually favorable.

He moved, then, and it was all that she could do not to dart back behind the wall from which she’d emerged. As he turned to face her, she noted the bizarre set of spines on his chest, clamped together like a set of teeth. He meandered towards her, and she gritted her teeth together, wiry muscles tensing. There wasn’t any aggression in his stance, and she sensed no violence in his gaze; she was left with the distinct impression that in spite of his slow – almost predatory – approach, he had interest in hurting her. For her part, Seraphina stood her ground as he ambled towards her, pulling together the tatters of her somewhat frazzled composure and stiffening to her full height, chin raised in some small gesture of dominance. Not that it mattered; she could have stood on the very edges of her hooves, and he still would have dwarfed her. A flash of red from the stallion’s forehead drew her gaze momentarily, and she found herself staring at another eye. She locked gazes with it for little more than a second.

That second was long enough for Seraphina to feel like the ground had just been pulled out from beneath her hooves. If you were to ask her why, she likely would not have been able to tell you, but she felt a prickling sense of familiarity – something that was not the same, but similar – when that eye stared her down. Her gaze flickered down to look into the stallion’s eyes, purely on what she wanted to imagine was instinct – but the collar around her throat felt like it should be burning, or maybe it was. Thoroughly disconcerted, she felt an unintentionally panicked shiver run the length of her spine and quickly averted her gaze, blinking furiously at the ground in front of her hooves. It was rude to stare.

He moved ever closer, and she didn’t budge an inch, even as his hooves slipped into her field of view. Just how close did he plan on standing to a complete stranger? Seraphina wasn’t willing to give him any ground, but she did wish that he would stay a bit further away; she braved another look up at him, practically craning her neck to meet his gaze, which seemed to have found its way to her collar. Red sclera – it was far from the strangest thing about him, though. (She didn’t look up at the other eye. She didn’t want to.) He proceeded to ask her where he was.

“You’re in…” Her mouth felt dry, and the skin around her collar was still prickling. “Novus. More specifically, you’re in the Elatus Canyon, on the border of Solterra, the realm of the Day Court.” Her mismatched eyes narrowed as she took in his stance. For someone who had just stumbled into another realm entirely, his posture seemed bizarrely confident. Seraphina realized, rather abruptly, that she needed to maintain control of the direction of their conversation, and quickly added, “How did you get here? And who are you?” Her tone remained largely neutral, but it held an uncharacteristic hint of curiosity. Then again, after what she’d just witnessed, Seraphina imagined it would be stranger if she weren’t curious about this stranger’s origins.

She waited patiently for his response. The sun beat down on her shoulders, red-hot and scalding; she barely noticed it.



@Torstein <3