little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.
the Indian's axed your scalp.
She is so relieved when he does not touch her.
Elif doesn’t realize she had been bracing for it until the moment does not come; she is not sure what might have happened, then. Would she shiver, would she weep, to feel that cold touch on her burnished coat? Or - more foolish yet! - would she strike him, draw a line of red across that silver, and so forfeit her brief life?
But her end is not met yet. (Nor can it be - she has yet to find the man who slew her brother, though it is no longer the most important thing on her horizon with Solterra smoking, burning yet again.) Instead the king is only talk, each word the touch of a wetted blade, made to prick the blood to her skin. If only he knew how close to the surface it runs already! Always she is flushed with it, fists up and ready to punch at the first perceived slight. She is so high-strung now that she is, perversely, almost calm - trembled to stillness. Her eyes flash like a blaze upon summer grasses, her ears turn back, her mane is bristled like a cat’s back -
and yet she cannot disagree. Oh! She loves her people, she thinks them the best, the boldest, the fiercest of Novus, but ever have they been tigers prepared to turn on each other. She is silent in the face of his commentary, her gaze the only thing that moves - across his face, over the guards, around the throne room so open, so still, so full of cold gold. How many times has it been threatened with burning?
It is not until he speaks of their hunger - their starvation - that her gaze snaps back to his, that her ears flatten more fully yet. Her sparse tail snaps behind her, a whip against her hocks, when his blue eyes rake across her figure. She knows she has never been much to look at; she is not ashamed to stand, plain and thorny and thin, before any man or any king. But to have him judge her, or think her already so weak -
“I could leave if I wanted,” she says, and stirs one wing against her side. “It is not for my sake I stay.” At once she regrets it - this madman could have her wings clipped or torn away, she would not for a moment put it past him - but she only shakes her head when he continues, his voice dropping to a whisper that ghosts along her skin.
Oh, her eyes burn at his back when he turns! He has no clue how many times she has been told some version of how she is misjudging her importance, how she is only a girl (and a poor one at that), how she would be better minding her too-sharp looks and too-sharp tongue. Almost more than anything else this goads her to fury, to hear from the mouth of this murderous king what she has heard her whole life from her mother.
It is much easier (though it should not be, not to a proper pious girl) to talk of her god.
In silence she snarls when he invokes Solis, and takes a step forward after him - though she is quickly stopped by a movement from the guards on either side of the room. Otherwise she might have followed him, as he gives his soliloquy, and struck him at last. Instead she can only watch, burning and burning, as Solis fails yet again to strike him down. “I do not know where he is.” She bites it out and it is bitter on her tongue, but had she truly expected anything else? Well she remembers the day she saw her god, jesting, laughing, proud, like any other Solterran boy. Like any other Solterran fool.
Solis will not help them win this. She need not go to a priest to know it.
Her mouth is a drawn line when he turns back to her, but up and up her chin tilts when she answers him. “I came here to beg.” More bitter words; she does not even know how. Did it involve tears, did it involve falling to the marble on her knees? Impossible. “But I see you are unreasonable - mad. I heard you were an orphan. Is that what you wish, then? To make orphans of the rest of us? Already you have killed the queen our mother-” Abruptly she falls silent, struck by a realization. There had been no pyre for Seraphina, to send her soul to the heavens on flame and on smoke. There had been no vigil, no offerings made. And when she had flown over the battlefield, to see for herself that this madman’s words were true, she had seen no body.
Elif is different, now. Grief stills her, quenches the blaze of her anger and pride. Grief, and shame. When she continues her voice is softer, and sorry. “Where is her body, your…your majesty? It is our custom to burn it. I - I will beg for that.” Even if she must grind her teeth to dust to do it.
@Raum
