have you ever burned grief but found yourself unable to brush the ashes off your skin?
The sky is burning, and she watches it run red and choked with black smoke with a dull sense of horror that is not quite understanding.
She hears Ereshkigal’s laughter in the back of her mind, halting and pitiless. The Terminus beats at the mouth of the Rapax, staining the clear blue water black and turning the meeting-place to violent chop; she stares at the writhing waves.
The volcano. She had heard rumors, in the past few weeks – but there were more immediately terrible things to worry over than a potential eruption.
(Of course. If it could go wrong, it would, wouldn’t it? Her stomach turns knots that are not exactly fear. She does not know what they are. She is petrified, yes, terrified of losing any more ground – like she is tied up in a cave while the tide rolls in. But she is not terrified in a way that is new. Terror is dull. It does not bite at her anymore; she is wound so tense that it terror is inescapable, inevitable. The knot in her stomach is not terror.)
She has seen horror. She has seen little but horror.
(If this is some divine punishment, some part of her – that part with ugly teeth, that part of her that sobs like some harbinger, that part of her that wishes, that wishes, that wishes so ardently that she had died when Raum killed her, not lived on like this, a mourning shadow, something that is no longer herself - can’t help but think that perhaps it is deserved. Logically, she knows that there is more to the world than horror. Logically, she knows that there are plenty of good people, and they do not deserve to be punished. (She is not one of them.) Logically, she knows that, if the gods are responsible, this is just more cruelty. Logically, she knows that it is never so simple, nor so easy to discern. Logically, she knows that horror is not even most of the world – but it is all she sees, and she finds it in the glass-marble eyes of the dead that haunt her no matter where she goes, in the waking realm or the dreaming, in the starving ribs of children on Solterra’s streets, in the tattered image of her own reflection. Logically, she knows that, if she wishes the world to burn, she is no better than that thing in the palace, with his silver-sleek skin (but isn’t she silver-sleek?) and his burning blue eyes. Logically, she knows that better, or the illusion of it, is all that she has left. And this is why you are better than the rest of us, or something like that, wasn’t it what Acton had said? She’d thought that he was wrong. She knew that he was wrong. But she could pretend to be. Even if she isn’t good, even if all of this horror is her fault, she can pretend to be – better. Even if she isn’t.
But it would be so much easier if it would just end.)
She cannot stay here; that much is obvious. Ereshkigal swoops forward in front of her, and she considers telling the demon to fly south, towards Terrastella and Denocte – but the smoke inhalation would likely be dangerous for her, and, much as a part of her loathes the bird, she knows that she will lose a part of her soul if she dies and their – unfortunate – bond is broken. (And she knows that, without Ereshkigal, she will be alone through the long, long days she passes in isolation under the Solterran sun, broken up by her agents or scuffles with the guards or rare conversations with travelers, who grow rarer by the day. She is no longer sure that she won’t lose her mind if she is alone; she always used to seek out isolation, as a queen, but now she craves something else. Anything else.) She turns away from the frothing sea, and, as the ashes begin to fall, runs along the Rapax, sweat heaving down her brow.
A woman stands in her path, frozen, staring up at the sky.
It occurs to Seraphina that she is beautiful. Slender and effeminate, with long, long hair – a startling contrast of cream and coffee and gold, striking even in the low light, with great horns that dangled jewels and brilliant golden eyes, especially notable and wide with panic. She wonders if she is a noblewoman, but it doesn’t matter one way or another. If she doesn’t move, she might be a dead woman, with the strangling coils of smoke moving ever-closer and the falling ashes drifting towards the ground. (She is only glad that it is winter; the ground is less likely to catch flame. The last thing that Delumine needs is another forest fire.) She curves in her path to rush up to her side.
Ereshkigal laughs her disdain into Seraphina’s ear, but she doesn’t care. The world is dark. She will still, of course, stop to save her – or to urge her into saving herself. She knows what it means to freeze, and to freeze at the worst possible moment – to be paralyzed.
“Move,” she says, her tone harsh with urgency. It is not cruel, but, without the luxury of time, she does not have it in her to try to soothe the startled creature’s nerves; she nudges the woman with her shoulder, hoping that the touch might spur her into movement. “We need to move further north.” The volcano is to the far south, and, if the destruction has already moved as far as the Rapax, she shudders to think of what a state Terrastella and Denocte must be in.
She thinks of Raum, in Solterra, and her stomach knots; every time that some little piece of her manages to pull itself together enough to insist, quietly, that she’s hit her lowest point, something seems to happen to drag her further and further down – spiraling hopelessly into a pit she is no longer sure that she can climb out of.
@Llewelyn || consider this a starter for you? <3
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
***STAFF EDIT
@Seraphinahas rolled a 6! She has been awarded +120 signos
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
