☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
sometimes what a stranger might call sacrifice is
embracing the thankless bramble
The dark man tells her that he seeks Caligo, and he expects that she will be disappointed. She isn’t, save in the abstract – she always likes to seek new blood for her own court. “I suppose that depends on why you seek Caligo.” It isn’t a question, but it has the upward-curving intonation of one. She doesn’t press. Gods know, she has secrets of her own to keep from him; but, if he comes from a foreign land to seek a goddess he knows nothing of, she suspects there is a story behind it. His inquiries then turn to international relations, and her expression darkens momentarily, the troubling events of the past few months returning anew to her thoughts. They often occupied them, particularly when she was trying to sleep...
“Historically, yes.” She nods. No use in hiding the truth from him; he would likely find it soon enough, and she would rather he heard it from her lips than anyone else’s, because she knew the truth. (It was not always kind, particularly to Solterra, but when was history a kind thing?) “For many years, we were at war. Our people were…primarily the aggressors. Our previous monarchy was extremely violent and corrupt, and Solterran culture values glory.” There is far more to it than that, of course, but she does not bother to linger on the rest. “Fool king after fool king thought to take the Night Kingdom. None succeeded. The last war was recent enough to be within memory – many people on both sides fought in it.” She fought in it, as a girl, but she does not say that. Most of her history is an open secret, because of the collar wrapped like a noose around the slender girth of her throat, and she craves the rare occasion where someone does not know what it signifies.
“Now, though…Solterra’s first king, after the monarchy fell, suspected a citizen who left for Denocte of being a spy, and he had him captured and imprisoned, but he soon released him without bloodshed. His suspicions were not entirely unfounded; the Night King had sent spies to our court, and, eventually, two of them would attack one of the Champions of our nation, now the Regent. The Denoctian Regime was…hardly diplomatic about it, but we could not retaliate, because we had recently suffered some…internal strife.” She does not elaborate on the Davke attack, though she feels a spreading sensation of renewed shame curling up in her stomach. She shakes it off and continues. “But our current Queen has no wish for war with Denocte – she was a soldier herself – and the new Queen of Denocte seems to have no desire for war either. Things seem to be calm, for now.” It is always strange, speaking of herself in the third person, but she often forces herself to do it anyways, when she walks the streets undercover. Sometimes, she simply wishes to escape being queen, but there are liars and assassins everywhere in the sun kingdom…and she has more enemies than she would like to count.
He asks, then, what inspires her faith, and a wry smile curves the expanse of her lips. “What gives me faith?” she echoes, her eyes gleaming with something – something like fire, but fire tamed. A burn subdued, or an old ache. “I’m sure that this will sound strange to you, traveler, if you come from a land without much religion…” She trails off, aware that strange is probably mild. Insane might be more accurate. “…but our gods sometimes choose to take a physical form, and they interact with us personally. Just recently, the Time God, Tempus, led a summit with the leaders of each nation, and the gods of each court came to deal with…certain troubles that had befallen each of their patron states.” She thinks of Solis, burning and golden; she thinks of the sound of his voice, the look of his eyes, how beautiful and horrible it was to behold him. How painful. “I believe in them because I have seen them, and I cannot deny what I have seen with my own eyes. But gods are not always good, and they are not always kind, and perhaps it is even crueler, because we know that they are there, that they do not always listen to our prayers.” She doesn’t know how to explain faith to the faithless. She doesn’t know how to explain why you should put your faith and your prayers in something that might never answer. After all, she has prayed to the silence many times, and she is not sure that she is better for it.
Still. Believing was not blindness. Believing was faith, even in the face of failure, and she is not sure that there are words for that part of it; it was something that must be earned.
----------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Blyse
notes | sera talks his ear off 2k19
sometimes what a stranger might call sacrifice is
embracing the thankless bramble
The dark man tells her that he seeks Caligo, and he expects that she will be disappointed. She isn’t, save in the abstract – she always likes to seek new blood for her own court. “I suppose that depends on why you seek Caligo.” It isn’t a question, but it has the upward-curving intonation of one. She doesn’t press. Gods know, she has secrets of her own to keep from him; but, if he comes from a foreign land to seek a goddess he knows nothing of, she suspects there is a story behind it. His inquiries then turn to international relations, and her expression darkens momentarily, the troubling events of the past few months returning anew to her thoughts. They often occupied them, particularly when she was trying to sleep...
“Historically, yes.” She nods. No use in hiding the truth from him; he would likely find it soon enough, and she would rather he heard it from her lips than anyone else’s, because she knew the truth. (It was not always kind, particularly to Solterra, but when was history a kind thing?) “For many years, we were at war. Our people were…primarily the aggressors. Our previous monarchy was extremely violent and corrupt, and Solterran culture values glory.” There is far more to it than that, of course, but she does not bother to linger on the rest. “Fool king after fool king thought to take the Night Kingdom. None succeeded. The last war was recent enough to be within memory – many people on both sides fought in it.” She fought in it, as a girl, but she does not say that. Most of her history is an open secret, because of the collar wrapped like a noose around the slender girth of her throat, and she craves the rare occasion where someone does not know what it signifies.
“Now, though…Solterra’s first king, after the monarchy fell, suspected a citizen who left for Denocte of being a spy, and he had him captured and imprisoned, but he soon released him without bloodshed. His suspicions were not entirely unfounded; the Night King had sent spies to our court, and, eventually, two of them would attack one of the Champions of our nation, now the Regent. The Denoctian Regime was…hardly diplomatic about it, but we could not retaliate, because we had recently suffered some…internal strife.” She does not elaborate on the Davke attack, though she feels a spreading sensation of renewed shame curling up in her stomach. She shakes it off and continues. “But our current Queen has no wish for war with Denocte – she was a soldier herself – and the new Queen of Denocte seems to have no desire for war either. Things seem to be calm, for now.” It is always strange, speaking of herself in the third person, but she often forces herself to do it anyways, when she walks the streets undercover. Sometimes, she simply wishes to escape being queen, but there are liars and assassins everywhere in the sun kingdom…and she has more enemies than she would like to count.
He asks, then, what inspires her faith, and a wry smile curves the expanse of her lips. “What gives me faith?” she echoes, her eyes gleaming with something – something like fire, but fire tamed. A burn subdued, or an old ache. “I’m sure that this will sound strange to you, traveler, if you come from a land without much religion…” She trails off, aware that strange is probably mild. Insane might be more accurate. “…but our gods sometimes choose to take a physical form, and they interact with us personally. Just recently, the Time God, Tempus, led a summit with the leaders of each nation, and the gods of each court came to deal with…certain troubles that had befallen each of their patron states.” She thinks of Solis, burning and golden; she thinks of the sound of his voice, the look of his eyes, how beautiful and horrible it was to behold him. How painful. “I believe in them because I have seen them, and I cannot deny what I have seen with my own eyes. But gods are not always good, and they are not always kind, and perhaps it is even crueler, because we know that they are there, that they do not always listen to our prayers.” She doesn’t know how to explain faith to the faithless. She doesn’t know how to explain why you should put your faith and your prayers in something that might never answer. After all, she has prayed to the silence many times, and she is not sure that she is better for it.
Still. Believing was not blindness. Believing was faith, even in the face of failure, and she is not sure that there are words for that part of it; it was something that must be earned.
----------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Blyse
notes | sera talks his ear off 2k19
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
