[AW] in dreams of darkest creation

[Rhoswen]

Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have   She had not intended to sound self-pitying. It was a loathsome habit, pitying oneself. As useful as a bow without an arrow, her mother had always said with that lacustrine tone of voice which bore no prisoners within it's murky depths. Rhoswen could not have expected Seraphina to understand the horrors that masticated her thoughts come the ritual of the moon's ever-rising tide; no doubt the silver queen bore more monstrosities within her skin than most - the collar around her throat was a testament to that if nothing else. Sera was close enough now for the red woman to see her own reflection in the gleam of that foreign lariat, close enough to watch the near-stranger staring back at her through distortion: Rhoswen wished only, then, to denounce that red woman. She was unrecognisable, now. They stood close, and for Rhoswen it was the most intimate encounter since the day Raum had left her throat bruised and her heart poisoned.  There was a silence between them; a prelude, a postlude; a beginning, an end. And then -- "My father was a kind man. He had this way of softening even the sharpest of blades; including my mother's tongue," she could not abandon the brief smile that lived and died on her lips. "When I told him I was leaving for Solterra, he never once tried to stop me. There was no judgement, no penalty for the crime of breaking his heart. His parting counsel, a gift if you will, was a prayer: that his only daughter would never forget the secret of the heart."  Rhoswen paused momentarily, tearing her stagnant gaze away from the mountain to catch the light as it pooled upon the highest planes of Seraphina's face. "He told me that the heart is not all it seems: it is a liar wearing the faces of wisdom and of loyalty to conceal the blackness that lives beneath. For the fairytales we are told as children are falsehoods; warped and dangerous, they try to shield us from the terrible truth. The heart is not a moral compass - far from it, no, the secret is that it is deceitful above all things." There is thunder in the morning mist, it clangs from its home above the peaks of Veneror, but it does, cannot, stop the sun-girl, "It is wicked, Seraphina. It is a predator to devour and consume, stealing everything from us as time ebbs into eternity until we are left only with a wind to howl through our hollow bones. We search high and low for this thief, we spend a lifetime seeking that which butchers our soul until our minds run thin from the madness of it all; for never would we suspect the very author of dreams. The one we trust to guide us home when the last fire dies." It is almost as though she can hear Iscariot; his words leach the magic from her veins, for she feels quite suddenly a puppet strung up beneath an oaken bough. "You see, I promised him that I would never forget. It was the last thing I ever said to him. He forgave me for leaving, for casting shame upon my family, so long as I kept his prayer in my thoughts until I took my last breath. But you know my story, Sera, you know it better than anyone.  I..."  Her lungs hitch violently, her fire drowning in snake oil and guilt,  "I forgot."

@Seraphina

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