[P] oath

[Sabine]

s a b i n e you are a garden  that will one day bloom When Raum snatches up Rhoswen's letter, desecrating the sacrosanct divinity with his wicked-black fingers, Sabine turns away. No matter his crimes, no matter the pain he has wrought, she cannot stand and watch as his soul smatters and cracks like a bough beneath an axe. Even standing this close to him is terrible enough; the seismic waves of his grief pound her small frame with devastating force -- she can feel the void in his chest widening, like a black hole that yawns and pulses with lurid greed. An arrow of light shoots through one of the gargantuan lancet windows and Sabine clings to the simple beauty of its static dance. She stares at the marble floor that is drowning in gold, compelling herself not to look up, not to look at him as he shrinks and swells like an atom under measureless pressure.  But when the sunlight is fractured by the shadows of beautiful broken glass that scream and tear, Sabine can look away no longer. The horror of love and hate comes barrelling into the hall, swallowing man and girl, slapping them with blood-water and irreparable change.  For they are helpless to the tide of time that throws them first left and then right; Sabine realises, quite suddenly, that her father is just naive as she. He believed he could control the very nature of life and death -- that he could pass judgement like a God wild and unbridled --  and Sabine, as she stands shaking beside the broken glass and laughter, wonders if he still believes that now. The crow-king swoops toward the girl, his grief burning over into rage. She is frozen in the hot-ice of his ire. It is a sickness, it is the end. She might have laughed for the likeness she sees in him (how much he looks like Rhoswen in this singing red light) but she does not laugh and she does not cry. She can only whisper, "I don't know," into the thick air and curse her elemental inability to lie. -----

art created by rhiaan