I LIGHT A MATCH TO A STICK OF GRAPHITE--
The silence is interrupted by the sound of hooves, which is soon followed by a voice.
A child’s voice, to be exact – asking about how she got here before her, and some kind of a ship. Seraphina turns in the direction of the voice, her gaze falling upon a small pegasus, accompanied by some kind of water bird. (She doesn’t know much about creatures who don’t occupy the desert, but she feels like she’s seen something like it around rivers in her travels. Of course, she’s never had good reason to pay much attention.) The girl can’t be older than a few months; she is small and delicate, and she radiates a childlike naivete and boisterousness that Seraphina has sorely missed in Solterra.
(Their children are starving, orphaned, broken, exposed to every cruelty the world has to offer – she wishes they were so unburdened, so fearless.)
Her coat is a soft blue roan, and, in the place of a tail, she has a set of tail feathers. Her mane is cropped short and dark; she is almost boyish in physique, and certainly in bearing.
“Ship?” Seraphina tilts her head at the child, blinking; seems that she’s mistaken her for someone else. She is certainly no seafaring creature; in fact, she spent most of her time in the desert, which was practically the opposite of the sea. The little girl seems to realize that she has the wrong person, once she bridges some of the distance between them, and apologizes for it. She introduces herself as Charlie, and the bird as Indy, her best mate.
“Charlie, and Indy,” she repeats, “Hello there. My name is Fia, and this is Ereshkigal.” The lie slips off her tongue more and more easily each time she speaks it, it seems; she isn’t sure that she likes the sensation of disappearing into someone else’s skin, of slowly scraping away more and more of Seraphina to accommodate her wraithlike alias. But that doesn’t matter now. She stares the child and her companion down, a look of concern flickering to life in her multi-colored eyes. Is she on her own? On this island? Seraphina knows as well as she knows the lay of the Mors that this place is dangerous, and certainly no place for a child to be wandering alone. (Really, no place for a child at all. When had the gods ever had pity on a creature simply because of its youth? Never, never, never - but she tries to suppress her melancholy, for the sake of interacting with the girl.) She inclines her head instead, her odd eyes coming to a rest on the bright vermilion eyes of the girl. “Are you and Indy exploring on your own?” Perhaps her parents were around somewhere, and she’d just gotten separated from them; if that were the case, she could help her reunite with them.
At least Ereshkigal was staying quiet, for the moment – the demon isn’t exactly child-friendly. She simply remains at her perch on Seraphina’s shoulder, her blood-red eyes flickering between Charlie and Indy, lingering for a moment on the bird (and perhaps smiling a bit at the sight of a real one) and then on the child. “We don’t have time to play with little girls,” came her voice, after a moment – though, thankfully, she spoke through their connection, rather than aloud.
“Quiet. The girl might be in danger, out here on her own,” her own response snaps through their link.
As if to prove her point, the water in the pool comes alive.
It looks like it could almost be a horse, if a horse were carved of a rippling flow of water, which pulsates and bobs as if with waves; there are faint indentations where its eyes should be, but it is too long in the legs and in the neck, and the face is the wrong shape. (Somehow, the creature is elfin, practically fae. Some sort of water spirit? She has heard of desert spirits, creatures formed from the sands…) It draws forward, outline wavering like a distant mirage, and stares them down. Seraphina’s mind reaches for Alshamtueur and her arrow, just in case. (But what use would either of them be against a creature made of water? She is not even sure that her magic could grasp it if she tried.) Small creatures scatter in its wake, flashes of silver and dots of black that dart in her peripheral vision. Her eyes remain trained on the creature.
It opens its mouth, but no words come out.
Seraphina squints, attempting to read the creature’s lips. She thinks that she catches an end and a time, but she can’t piece together enough to guess at the sentence. (Ereshkigal, on her shoulder, feels unbearably smug – Seraphina suspects that she knows exactly what the creature said.)
Its message delivered, or something like it, the creature fades away – first to mist, and then to nothing at all, leaving in its absence only the sound of insects.
@
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
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
