☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
and I'm faded away
you know, I used to be on fire
She listens to her silently. Patiently. She tries to linger, for a moment, on the red woman’s every word, because she feels like she does not really know the creature in front of her, though she has a feeling that she is opening her heart up for her to see; she tries to piece those little details together into something that resembles a person, because she has never known Rhoswen well, and she certainly does not know her well now. A loving father. A mother with a tongue like a blade. Denocte – she visualizes stars and woodsmoke, the clink of coins, a night sky, the treachery of the Arma mountains. (She knows, in a distant way, that people have grown up differently than Solterran children, choked by sand and heat and raised up to battle the monsters that lurked within their desert home, but she still struggles to visualize it. Perhaps she should go out more, if she has the time.) A heart that lies and lies and lies, a compass that leads you astray; a will-o-wisp, bright and burning, a guiding light that leads you over a cliff to your doom. Seraphina has never been a trusting thing, herself, and she has been quick to realize that loyalty is a fickle thing, at best, but there is something in Rhoswen’s words that sears.
(Perhaps it is because Seraphina still thinks of love as some distant, far-off thing. It is relegated to fairy tales and fables, a mythical and utterly pure concept that she associates with the courtly stories her mother told her as a child, before she had ever even heard of a Zolin or a Viceroy. It is a softer thing, and now, looking at Rhoswen, she is forced to grapple with the horrible truth that sometimes love doesn’t work – sometimes there is not a happy ending.
Sometimes love doesn’t even matter at all.)
And, as she approaches her last words, her voice seems to hitch, as though she is caught in some great tangle – of guilt, or emotion, or memory. Some fatal mixture, she supposes. “I forgot.” Like some fatal condemnation. I forgot. Seraphina lets it hang in the air between them, unsure of what to say. She has never been good at consolation, and she is somehow certain that attempting to console Rhoswen will only make her feel worse anyways; she has made up her mind to punish herself for this, perhaps more than she deserves, and it would be wrong to take the burden of guilt off her. In Solterra, a scar is not such an awful thing to have – a burden is not such an awful thing to bear, so long as you can bear it. The things that hurt, the pricks and bruises and gashes that cut like chasms, are the things that force one to move forward; a content life is a stagnant one.
So, instead, she turns to look at her again, those strange eyes catching in the pale, burning light of dawn. “What will you do now, Rhoswen?” Because that, she hopes, is what really matters. It is not the fall – the fall is inevitable. What matters is standing back up.
(She does not think that Rhoswen will forgive herself. Well, Seraphina knows what it means to do something unforgivable, and she does not think that she will ever forgive herself for the things that she has done wrong, either.)
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tags | @Rhoswen
notes | rhos is breaking my heart, man
and I'm faded away
you know, I used to be on fire
She listens to her silently. Patiently. She tries to linger, for a moment, on the red woman’s every word, because she feels like she does not really know the creature in front of her, though she has a feeling that she is opening her heart up for her to see; she tries to piece those little details together into something that resembles a person, because she has never known Rhoswen well, and she certainly does not know her well now. A loving father. A mother with a tongue like a blade. Denocte – she visualizes stars and woodsmoke, the clink of coins, a night sky, the treachery of the Arma mountains. (She knows, in a distant way, that people have grown up differently than Solterran children, choked by sand and heat and raised up to battle the monsters that lurked within their desert home, but she still struggles to visualize it. Perhaps she should go out more, if she has the time.) A heart that lies and lies and lies, a compass that leads you astray; a will-o-wisp, bright and burning, a guiding light that leads you over a cliff to your doom. Seraphina has never been a trusting thing, herself, and she has been quick to realize that loyalty is a fickle thing, at best, but there is something in Rhoswen’s words that sears.
(Perhaps it is because Seraphina still thinks of love as some distant, far-off thing. It is relegated to fairy tales and fables, a mythical and utterly pure concept that she associates with the courtly stories her mother told her as a child, before she had ever even heard of a Zolin or a Viceroy. It is a softer thing, and now, looking at Rhoswen, she is forced to grapple with the horrible truth that sometimes love doesn’t work – sometimes there is not a happy ending.
Sometimes love doesn’t even matter at all.)
And, as she approaches her last words, her voice seems to hitch, as though she is caught in some great tangle – of guilt, or emotion, or memory. Some fatal mixture, she supposes. “I forgot.” Like some fatal condemnation. I forgot. Seraphina lets it hang in the air between them, unsure of what to say. She has never been good at consolation, and she is somehow certain that attempting to console Rhoswen will only make her feel worse anyways; she has made up her mind to punish herself for this, perhaps more than she deserves, and it would be wrong to take the burden of guilt off her. In Solterra, a scar is not such an awful thing to have – a burden is not such an awful thing to bear, so long as you can bear it. The things that hurt, the pricks and bruises and gashes that cut like chasms, are the things that force one to move forward; a content life is a stagnant one.
So, instead, she turns to look at her again, those strange eyes catching in the pale, burning light of dawn. “What will you do now, Rhoswen?” Because that, she hopes, is what really matters. It is not the fall – the fall is inevitable. What matters is standing back up.
(She does not think that Rhoswen will forgive herself. Well, Seraphina knows what it means to do something unforgivable, and she does not think that she will ever forgive herself for the things that she has done wrong, either.)
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tags | @Rhoswen
notes | rhos is breaking my heart, man
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
