[P] a prayer roiling somewhere dark and hollow

[Seraphina]

MY BODY, THE QUIET GRAVE
it's the difference between drowning and burning

He comes from the sea.

Submerged, but only up to his hocks – there is something to the way that the saltwater moves around his long, slender legs that seems strange to Seraphina. Dusk has always been closest to the tides, with their sharp-toothed kelpies and their shamans. He looks, she thinks, like a character from a Terrastellan folktale, with the soft dappling of newborn stars on his hide and the wash of salt water against his dark skin. She wonders, sometimes, what she is becoming when the anger burns up inside of her, red and blinding, and she feels like she is more magic than she is Seraphina. (A monster, perhaps, that roams the Mors, with a mind to kill and a scarred face – a story told to scare small children so they do not wander.) She wonders if there is something in Asterion like that, something that comes with carrying some great weight upon his back – or if it is simply a trick of the tides, another test by the island.

He regards her with something that is almost like worth. “Seraphina.” And oh, it is a relief to hear her name on someone’s lips – even someone she barely knows. “This island must suit you.” There is a smile that curves across her dark maw, then, but it is not a pleasant thing; it is bitter and hollow and aching, a sort of resignation.

“It seems so,” she says, simply. “We are both things that should not be.” Ereshkigal is proof enough of that; the vulture came to collect her soul because she should have died but did not. (So many things she should have done! And, the old echo - you could have prevented this.) Seraphina regards him with a certain curiosity, wondering if he will make real his suggestion at the statue. She has never disliked Asterion, but, when she met him, she wondered what would become of him – pensive and depressed and lacking in conviction, as far as she could see. But, as she looks at the starswept bay now, his hooves buried in the tide, she sees something different. “I’m not sure that I ever congratulated you on your ascension – you seem to be doing quite well.” It has aged him, she thinks. Asterion has always been older than her, but, when they met, she thought him practically a boy. He seems wiser for it – but there is something crueler and harder about that wisdom, inflicted by the near-loss of his sister and tested in the absolute devastation of his nation during the disasters. And all for the tests of a god.

When she nearly died, she cried to Solis. He seems to have answered her, though his voice is silent; but he gave her a knife, and he showed her how to use it.

She takes that to mean that they have no need of gods, now – good. She tires of them anyways.

There is warmth in Asterion, but he is not smiling. There is a gleam in her eyes, and she does not think that she should like it, but she does; and she knows that she should not like the way he asks his next question, but it momentarily satiates the gnawing, thrashing beast that has taken up residence inside of her chest, that thing which longs for blood. (Comforted, perhaps, in that she is not the only one being driven towards terrible things.)

“Does he know?” It requires little contemplation to understand what Asterion is asking.

“No,” comes her response, cold and surgical as a knife; somehow, her presence has escaped the Blood King’s notice, as much trouble as she must have been to his newborn regime already, “and I intend to use that to my advantage.” What Raum did not expect he could not prepare for or avoid; she had the element of surprise, and now was an ideal time to push it, gods or no gods. (She cannot see it, but she feels Ereshkigal smile above her, her mouth all full of razors.)

She watches him with a gaze that is weighty as ocean depths, clawing at the shore – to drag down below the surface, into the dark. “Will you help me hunt him, Asterion?”

After all – every ruler must learn to kill.

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@Asterion || <3

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

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