I’m so wound-bound.
I’m so lost to the vanity of staying. Stay.
Fighting doesn’t feel like it used to.
She supposes that the difference lies in that she is afraid of death. Before her fight with Raum, she wasn’t. Death’s grim specter hung over her head more times than she could count, during the war and occasionally even afterwards, but, in the past, when it had come, it was closer to a relief than anything. As a girl, she hadn’t wanted to live, or, at least, she hadn’t cared if she died – she is no longer sure that there is much distinction. She can remember fragments of what it felt like to fall during the war, the tip of one weapon or another sunk into the fragile recesses of her chest. She remembers, yes, what it felt like to die on a battlefield. She was a girl. Her body was crushed so easily beneath the weight of stampeding hooves, crumpled like a sheet of paper. She remembers those odd moments between life and death. Blackness would lick at the edges of her vision like a hungry animal. She would feel her blood crusting on her limbs, mingled with clumpy stamps of mud. Flies would buzz between her ears. At one point, during one almost-death or another, she thought that a vulture came to gnaw at her tattered flesh, even though she wasn’t dead yet. (It was ironic, if she considered Ereshkigal.) She shook it off with what little force remained in her small body, because she did not care if she died, but she did not want to be eaten alive.
When she was almost-dead as a girl, it felt like the way that things should be. That was the fate she was raised for; she never considered that things could be otherwise. Fighting was a mechanical necessity. She didn’t care to be mowed down. When she was struck, the closest thing she showed to a flinch was the instinctual twitch of flesh, a bodily impulse that not even she could control.
When Raum struck her down, it did not feel right.
It did not feel like the way her story was supposed to end. (Then again, her story has not felt right since she survived the war, or the burning of the city, or the teryr.) It was desperate. It was lonely. She twitched against the dark, and she did not want to die. She wanted something else, and all of her wants have been leaking out of her (like blood, or tears) since.
Maybe she winces, now.
If she’d had time to observe it and think about it, really think about it, Seraphina would have been fascinated (and impressed) by Bexley’s show of magic. She does not, however, have time to do either of those things.
She does not have time to dodge the ball of howling blue flame, though she does make an attempt to step out of its path. Her thoughts are torn somewhere between an instinctual panic that she has not been able to stamp out since the last time she was here and the fact that she knows - knows - that Bexley wouldn’t hurt her, not seriously. In the moment that she moves, her hooves (still suspended in midair) quick as bird’s wings across the dry soil, it doesn’t matter that she knows. It doesn’t matter that she’s been in plenty of fights before, it doesn’t matter that she’s had plenty of burns before, it doesn’t matter that a burn across the hindquarters wouldn’t kill her – all she can think about is dying, alone and inconsequential. Oh, she was all too consequential politically; her death toppled a kingdom. (Raum had never ruined them, but she had, the moment she fell.) Her lack of consequence was a personal thing, a void scarcely-missed.
The flame hits her, just barely. Wisps of it catch in her hair. It feels like warm bathwater.
She is already moving. She twists, the movement sharp enough to kick up a spray of dirt with force alone, though her hooves are still not on the ground, and she turns towards Bexley, never losing momentum. It registers somewhere in the distance between them that the flame was barely a flame at all, and the hit was barely a hit. Her thoughts are running in slow-motion. It’s not a welcome reprieve from the way that they have been overwhelming her recently; it’s almost worse.
Once she is close enough to feel the heat that is still radiating off of Bexley’s skin, Seraphina lunges. She doesn’t try to bite, though. She doesn’t even try to kick.
Instead, her teeth go right for her blonde, blonde hair, and maybe, if they manage to grasp a chunk of it, they grant it a tug that isn’t sharp enough to rip any of it out – it might pull her head to the side a bit.
(In the right light, the gesture could almost be playful.)
@
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
Summary:
wow folks since I just realized I forgot to add the summary for the last post, here it is :
- Sera manages to get a snap in. She takes Bexley's hit to the side, but she doesn't end up falling over herself (though she nearly does) because her magic kicks in and saves her. She is now hovering. And curious about what Bexley will do going forward.
aaaaand for this post :
- Sera monologues again about the Raum battle. She manages to move a bit, but she takes Bexley's fireball to the withers; predictably, it doesn't hurt her, though. She then turns and dashes up to her, lunges, and tries to pull her hair, which is going to be a running gag with her and spars now, I guess.
Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 0
Item(s) Used: n/a
Response Deadline: 8/14/19 (or whenever)
Tags: @
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
