[SWP] ACT V: a day that lasts forever

[Seraphina]

I'M NOT ONE TO EVER PRAY FOR MERCY
or to wish on pennies in the fountain or the shrine, but that day you know I left my money, and I thought of you only - all that copper glowing fine

The sun is the only thing that is moving in the midday sky, but it is not setting. Instead – and her stomach clenches – instead, the sun is writhing, jerking to and fro like a child’s toy caught between two warring infants. The gods, is all Seraphina can think. This is the work of the gods, or something far worse, because she cannot help but think that there must be worse things in lands beyond their own, or perhaps in the depths of the sea, places so dark and primordial that no light can touch them. Of course, didn’t she already know that this was Tempus’s work? Didn’t she know, in some horrifying, heavy way, the moment that she saw the ivy?

And didn’t she know - didn’t she know - that, regardless of what followed, the appearance of a god would always mean some great change in the world they live in?

She wonders what it means. If this is how the world will end – not with some great burst of flames, but with excruciating silence, enveloped with the stillness which comes, as death, to all things.

But – they are still moving. The wildlife is gone, but the people are still moving; she sees them here and there, among the leaves or on the shoreline, as shadows, cast oddly beneath a never-ending stretch of sunlight. Under different circumstances, a day that lasted forever might have seemed an auspicious occasion, to a denizen of Solis’s court. This, however, just makes her think of Caligo’s eternal night, an story she has only heard of in whispered folktales, but one she knows as well as her own-

And with it, a detail that makes her blood run cold. And Tempus could not stop his daughter, for time’s balance could never be restored if a single part of it was frozen-

Her mouth is dry. She steps on a branch, and it does not crack beneath her hooves; when she brushes past elephant’s ears and thick bushes with bright red berries, they do not stir to accommodate her movement. Ereshkigal flies above her, the pinions of her wings barely brushing the curve of her spine, but she does not disturb the air. It is lifeless, dry, deader than the air in the middle of the Mors when there is no wind and the sun is in the very center of the sky. It feels like the air of a crypt.

Her skin crawls. She has not been so solitary as to miss the rumors – of disappearances, of the horribly-mangled dead. Didn’t she know they would die? Didn’t she expect this to happen? (Didn’t she know that the gods were cruel, that their magic was cruel, that this was a test in the same mold as the tests Viceroy would give her as a girl? Why are you surprised, you shouldn’t be surprised, you knew better, you know better - she knows better.) She wonders if she will die here, too.

(A bead of sweat trickles down her brow. She cannot shake the sudden feeling that something is watching her, though all those little creatures in the undergrowth seem to have disappeared. The island itself, perhaps. Does it have eyes? She wonders, sometimes.)

“Don’t look back,” Ereshkigal whispers, her voice a low, throaty rasp, and Seraphina doesn’t. She keeps walking. She does not run. She does not run. She knows, when she reaches the shoreline, that the bridge will be there, and she can escape the island – but she knows that she will not be any safer on the bridge. (The thought leaves her with the sensation of tentacles – sticky masses of rubber, sticky, slick with slime. Tentacles, inching around her torso, her throat, dragging her off that little stretch of ink-black, down below the waves…)

Even if she crosses, even if she returns to the seaboard – she knows, knows that if the gods are quarreling, there is nowhere in this world that is safe to return to. The best place to stay is the epicenter, where, if she is clever, if she survives, she might finally be given some sort of answer.

Ereshkigal lands on her shoulders, claws curling into the thick leather of her armor. The sudden weight is almost enough to make her jump; normally, the vulture would laugh at her skittishness, but she is unnervingly silent. (And she told her that she would not look back – how could she be sure that the thing on her back was Ereshkigal at all?) But Seraphina does not look back. Seraphina does not ask is that you, Ereshkigal? Seraphina is silent, silent, silent, like all the rest of the world. If that is not Ereshkigal, she does not want to know.

There are many things in this world, she knows, that do not bite unless you give them the satisfaction which comes from recognizing their teeth.

When she passes the treeline and steps out onto the beach, the weight disappears. A moment later, Ereshkigal lands at her side, and she does not ask if it was her in the woods. Instead, she steps forward, towards the water, towards the water - her hooves should disturb the sand, and trail it when they lift up, but none of the grains stir with her passage. In the sky, the sun is great, and it is terrible, and somehow she is sure that it is closer than she has ever seen it before, and she has stood at the side of its god. It is terrible, and it is burning, and she is terrible, and she is burning, so she looks up at it and she thinks she sees some terrible mirror of the gaping space growing in the darkness between her ribs. Jerked. Tattered. The water is frozen in motion; it is still, but in a strange way, the waves like some foaming painting, a moment preserved. She wonders if she could even pass through it if she touched it, or if the surface had become hard and solid, like metal or clay. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t know, so she looks to the sun, but it does not look back. There is no golden figure who breaches the edge of the horizon; there is not even Tempus, who is likely more qualified to fix troubles with time anyways. There is no one. She looks up and down the shore, expecting some other figures, but no one is there.

If this is the end of the world, she and Ereshkigal are watching it alone.

“Solis,” she whispers, her voice a barely-audible tremor – a flighty thing, like the beat of a bird’s wings. “What is this?” Where are you, she begs. Where are you?

But, as usual, his answer never comes.

---

something solitary & vaguely creepy. I'm enjoying all these twists and turns!

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

@

STAFF EDIT***
@Seraphina has rolled a 3! She has been awarded +150 signos.