[P] a man takes his sadness to the river

[Seraphina]

STICKS AND STONES STILL ROTTING IN MY HANDS.
The story rained so hard, it’s all I had to drink. Hope is the loneliest house on the block. It spends years waiting for a hammer. Forgets it was once a tree.

She is almost afraid, when she steps out into the light.

No – she is afraid. She feels like she is afraid of everything, lately, and, like a man desperate to keep land from being eroded by a rushing river, she is clutching desperately at something she cannot hold. She is scared of everything, and she is scared of everyone. Once, when she was a hollowed-out bowl, or a statue, she had stood in front of Avdotya – shell-shocked from a death, his name burnt like a brand onto the tip of her tongue, her first failure of so, so many – and, illuminated by the hazy glow of the ancient stained glass windows that had hung heavy with the weight of history along the walls of the throne room, she had agreed to take the crown. She hadn’t been afraid, then. Now she is. She is afraid of everything – of more death, of more violence, that a single misstep would cost her what little remains of what she once held dear. All this has led to is one, fundamental truth: the world is a thing with teeth, and, the moment that you show your throat, it always bites. Always. She has never been trusting, and she has never been optimistic.

But she thought the world could change. (It, of course, didn’t; her life ended in dark and blood, as it always does.)

When she does not move, Eik bridges the space between them. She almost jerks back the moment that he steps towards her, that familiar shame burning a pit in her stomach, but she forces herself to still, legs locking beneath her quivering frame. Please don’t, she wants to say, in spite of herself, as he draws closer. Please don’t. I can’t. Please don’t.

But he does.

He meets her gaze, and she doesn’t resist him. (Oh, but she wants to. She wants to run. From him – from this – from everything. Duty keeps her rooted in place, like iron nails screwed to the floorboards of a sinking ship.) She doesn’t resist him when she feels his chest brush against her own, when he rests his head on her withers, when she feels his skin against hers, the press of his mane to her neck; she doesn’t resist, but she doesn’t move. She stands stiff. Trembling.

It is in the silence between them – where he does not speak, and she does not know what to say – that Seraphina feels the press of tears at the corners of her eyes, and she knows that she will not be able to resist them, either. She can count from memory the number of times she has cried in her life. (She knows that she will remember this one, too.) She spends a quiet moment – is it that long? – biting the curve of her lip, silently begging the tears to recede back into the dips of her eyes, but they fall out instead and tumbled down the concave of her cheeks in sticky, wet trails. She grinds her teeth so hard that she tastes copper and salt. It doesn’t take long for her breaths to come out as wet, stuttering sobs, practically gasps, and that is another failure, another shame, but, though she fights with herself over it, she finds herself too weak to hold her sorrow in. She is glad that he is looking away from her, chin pressed to her withers; she would not want him to see her like this. Not in pieces.

(The weight comes rushing in all at once. She is caught in a terrible trap; there is no way back, and there is nothing ahead. The walls are closing in at all sides. Solterra is burning, burning, burning, and she’d only ever wanted to make it beautiful. She feels like she is drowning, like she is pinned down by dark water like she was so many years ago in the maze. It’s heavy on her chest, pulling her down, down, down, down, and she can’t see the surface. Even if she kicks, it just feels like drowning. Is there any way out? What remains for her, once Raum is dead? She is in tatters. Everything she was, everything she ever wanted – tatters.)

I’m sorry, Seraphina, he whispers, and she feels his words against her skin; she feels them more than she hears them, with the sound of her own sobs echoing like a hum between her ears. How long has it been since she’s heard her own name? Ereshkigal never uses it. Most of her resistance does not know her, and, even if they do, they uphold the ruse like she does, like their lives depend on it. How long has it been? Days, at least. Weeks. I’m so sorry. His words echo. Roll around her mind. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry; and she feels like she’s been waiting for an apology, from someone or something, but, now that she’s hearing it, she doesn’t know how it makes her feel.

She isn’t sure what his apology is for – some perceived offense, or some expression of sympathy for the situation? She puzzles through it in a haze, and, though she is far from silent – even her breaths are spaced with rattling gasps, which occasionally reach a crescendo and punctuate themselves with cries so sharp and high that they could be howls – it takes her a long moment to calculate a response. Even once she pieces it together, she isn’t sure that it’s the right one.

“Why are you sorry?” Her voice comes out weak and stuttering, awkwardly interspaced between sobs, and she struggles to maintain her composure for long enough to force the words past her trembling lips. “This isn’t your fault.” It’s mine, she means. It’s all mine – I was the one who let him in, I was the one who was too weak, I was the one who allowed this to happen. It was her duty to protect Solterra, and she fell.

(It was her duty to protect him, and she didn’t. What was the point in apologies between them now?)

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@Eik || <3

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

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