☼ fia the crownless ☼
throw the ashes to the wind
sun sinking like a stone
The little click-clack of motion behind her – quiet, at first, then faster, an echo against the high canyon walls.
“Please ma’am…do…you have any food?”
Before she so much as turns, Seraphina’s mind grasps the hilt of her sword, but does not pull it from its sheath; her neck arches, serpentine, and she first throws her gaze over her shoulder. A child. A year or two old. She turns altogether, then, the thick gold of her scarf twining around her features; she is hooded, at first, but turns it down as she moves, fixing the girl with the full force of her multicolored eyes and horrible, gleaming golden scar.
The girl smells of death.
She is a delicate, birdlike creature, too dainty for this desert by far – perhaps she would grow into something with the feral grace and compact strength of the Davke, but, for now, she is but a girl, a little slip of rose and deafening violet. She is too small, too thin, defeated by the all-consuming might of the desert, but there is still a little something feral to her movements. She wonders if she is a wild child. She wonders if she is alone.
It occurs to her, like a dull echo, that this would be just what Raum would send to infiltrate her defenses. A child used as a weapon of war would be apt to train children as a weapon of war; she had heard of his fondness for orphans, like all the king’s crows. (She could have killed Reichenbach right now, killed him - for his spies and his dragons, for his crows. What did he think would happen, taking in those children and raising them as knives? Oh, but he loved them. Or so he had said. Or so she had always been want to believe. But no matter how he had loved them, he had always loved them to be used, and that was his crime. Love, she thinks, should not be a matter of use.) But Seraphina is not Raum, and she is not Reichenbach. Even if this child were some infiltrator, taken under the wing of a tyrant, she would not turn her away – because she has been in the service of a tyrant before, had his metal pressed around the curve of her throat.
Besides, she thinks. They have not had time to gain notoriety yet; their presence is likely unknown to the tyrant king, clever as he would like to think himself – as much as he would want to think that he has won, that the silver’s body lies broken and rotting on the pocked fields of the Steppe.
“Not here,” she answers, the foggiest hint of something gentle or soothing lining the deep lilt of her voice, “but I can take you to food.” There is plenty of food, she thinks, in the caves – baskets of dates and figs, cactus fruit, sliced-up and dried root vegetables. She cannot, of course, expect the child to follow her on goodwill alone; she has the looks of an untamed thing, a passing spirit. Seraphina plucks a leather waterskin from the buckles of her armor and holds it in the air between them, carefully unscrewing the cap. “My name is Fia. Are you thirsty?” She offers it to the girl. Dehydration kills faster than starvation in the desert, she knows, and, while what water she had would likely do little to quench her thirst, it would be enough to ease the journey back to camp.
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tags | @Evangelina
notes | you're beautiful <3
throw the ashes to the wind
sun sinking like a stone
The little click-clack of motion behind her – quiet, at first, then faster, an echo against the high canyon walls.
“Please ma’am…do…you have any food?”
Before she so much as turns, Seraphina’s mind grasps the hilt of her sword, but does not pull it from its sheath; her neck arches, serpentine, and she first throws her gaze over her shoulder. A child. A year or two old. She turns altogether, then, the thick gold of her scarf twining around her features; she is hooded, at first, but turns it down as she moves, fixing the girl with the full force of her multicolored eyes and horrible, gleaming golden scar.
The girl smells of death.
She is a delicate, birdlike creature, too dainty for this desert by far – perhaps she would grow into something with the feral grace and compact strength of the Davke, but, for now, she is but a girl, a little slip of rose and deafening violet. She is too small, too thin, defeated by the all-consuming might of the desert, but there is still a little something feral to her movements. She wonders if she is a wild child. She wonders if she is alone.
It occurs to her, like a dull echo, that this would be just what Raum would send to infiltrate her defenses. A child used as a weapon of war would be apt to train children as a weapon of war; she had heard of his fondness for orphans, like all the king’s crows. (She could have killed Reichenbach right now, killed him - for his spies and his dragons, for his crows. What did he think would happen, taking in those children and raising them as knives? Oh, but he loved them. Or so he had said. Or so she had always been want to believe. But no matter how he had loved them, he had always loved them to be used, and that was his crime. Love, she thinks, should not be a matter of use.) But Seraphina is not Raum, and she is not Reichenbach. Even if this child were some infiltrator, taken under the wing of a tyrant, she would not turn her away – because she has been in the service of a tyrant before, had his metal pressed around the curve of her throat.
Besides, she thinks. They have not had time to gain notoriety yet; their presence is likely unknown to the tyrant king, clever as he would like to think himself – as much as he would want to think that he has won, that the silver’s body lies broken and rotting on the pocked fields of the Steppe.
“Not here,” she answers, the foggiest hint of something gentle or soothing lining the deep lilt of her voice, “but I can take you to food.” There is plenty of food, she thinks, in the caves – baskets of dates and figs, cactus fruit, sliced-up and dried root vegetables. She cannot, of course, expect the child to follow her on goodwill alone; she has the looks of an untamed thing, a passing spirit. Seraphina plucks a leather waterskin from the buckles of her armor and holds it in the air between them, carefully unscrewing the cap. “My name is Fia. Are you thirsty?” She offers it to the girl. Dehydration kills faster than starvation in the desert, she knows, and, while what water she had would likely do little to quench her thirst, it would be enough to ease the journey back to camp.
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tags | @Evangelina
notes | you're beautiful <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
