☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
on Tuesday - you wake - walk the back stairs to find a bird
half dead and thrashing - stunned by its own purpose
It is some ungodly hour of the night, and, to her chagrin, the once-queen of Solterra is holed up restlessly in an almost impossibly suspicious Denoctian inn, pacing.
The blood king was surprisingly competent for a man who’d failed to assassinate two queens and hadn’t noticed a rebellion brewing right under his nose; he had eyes everywhere. Since she was already in the area, she’d decided to stay in Denocte for a night or two longer, to see if she could flush out any of his spies and followers. She hadn’t spent much time in the night kingdom, and, though it wasn’t entirely because of the location, she felt ill at ease so much as lingering in Denocte’s labyrinthian back-alleys and rolling hills. Her accent was a difficult thing to disguise, and her general lack of familiarity with the Night Kingdom did her few favors in her efforts to navigate its underbelly. (It was hardly safe work, and she was hardly in a safe position; if she were merely visiting Denocte, she would have likely stayed with one of the Denoctians she knew, but that would do her little good in her search for Raum’s people.) Still – power spoke for something, as did her unyielding temperament.
Besides – she likes to think that this rebellion has improved her understanding of shadier, more unsavory dealings. Even if she isn’t altogether sure that’s a good thing.
Her armor lies in a pile in the corner of the room, accompanied by Alshamtueur and her arrow. The dull lamp-light emphasizes the silver gleam of her coat; she might as well be a metal carving, a girl-shaped trinket rather than a girl. (Of course, no carving would carry a knot of scars on her cheek.) The shadows linger awkwardly in the concaves of her ribs, making her look far hungrier than she feels, and they further emphasize the sleepless hollows under her eyes, the gaunt angles of her cheeks. She supposes it is for the best. No one will pay her much mind if she masquerades as a Solterran refugee – she certainly looks the part.
Still – her hair is unbraided, and, with little else to knead out her persistent anxiety, she finally brushed it out at some point during the hours that she’s been awake. (She has been halfway tempted to shave it off, lately, or at least to trim it, but the memory of Viceroy doing it for her has stopped her, if only as an act of defiance against a dead man.) In the absence of proper management, it has grown even longer than usual, nearly falling to her hooves. She’s going to have to trim it. Possibly not now, when she doesn’t have anything to use but Alshamtueur and dull lamp light, but-
There comes the sound of a knock from the window; it is halfway open. Summers in Denocte are stuffy and humid, and the room is hardly well-ventilated.
She freezes and turns towards the window. She is met by nothing but darkness.
However, before she could dismiss it as nothing but the night wind or her imagination, both of which were apt to play tricks on her, a voice floats through the open window. She cannot pinpoint its source, beyond right outside of her window, and she cannot pinpoint its owner, beyond vaguely familiar and aware of who she is, or at least who she is pretending to be. Her brow furrows. She opens her mouth, and then she closes it.
She fumbles for an appropriate answer – or any kind of answer, really. His accent is faintly familiar, and his voice somehow even more familiar, but she can’t piece together exactly who she thinks that it should belong to. (It comes out silky-sweet and smooth, though slightly slurred. Where has she heard that pronunciation before? It makes her think of someone, or multiple someones, but the thing that bothers her more than the familiarity of the voice itself is the familiarity of the accent, which is not quite like any of the courts’.) Her head tilts. She stares, her mind grasping for the arrow in her scarf, which lies in a spool in the corner of the room. She doesn’t do anything with it; she doesn’t even pull it out of its sleeve. However, she has it in her (metaphorical) grasp, and that is reassurance enough for her, for she knows how little effort it takes to put it through someone’s skull.
(Of course, she cannot actually see his skull to put an arrow through it, which, she thinks, could pose a problem. Then again, if he’d had any kind of malevolent reason to visit her room in the middle of the night, she doubts that he would have given her any forewarning; she has dealt with enough assassins to know that they prefer to work cleanly and quietly, and it is rather difficult to do either if you are caught in the act.)
Finally, she opts for a reluctant, stilted, “…Verona?” because she can’t think of anyone else who’d be sending her letters – that she doesn’t happen to know personally. (And, though she chooses to avoid it, she can’t think of anyone else who would be brazen enough to refer to her as his “dearest Fia.”) Seraphina takes a step or two closer to the window, her eyes narrowing to two-tone slits as she stares out of the foggy glass and into the Denoctian streets. Nothing. Nothing.
But she has a feeling that he is close. It doesn’t take seeing him to know; his voice definitely came from just outside of the (barely cracked) window, and she is fairly sure that she can see his breath fogging up the window.
And, after taking a few hesitant steps towards the window, Seraphina is abruptly hit with the scent of alcohol. She stares at the window, her eyes narrowing fractionally.
Should she be concerned that he can find her in the middle of the night in Denocte while rather inhibited by, judging by the slur to his voice and the fact that she can smell it from inside the room, more than a few drinks?
She should definitely be concerned about that.
That and the fact that she can’t see him at all – even as she presses the window a bit further open, a tentative gesture at best, Seraphina cannot make out any form in the persistent blackness of the street outside. She might as well be speaking to a disembodied voice. Or – there might have been the vague impression of a form, but it is so well hidden in the shadows that Seraphina cannot discern any identifying characteristics. Some kind of magic or enchantment, she assumes, which is likely quite useful for a spy (or whatever he’s supposed to be).
She doesn’t know where to look, so she stares at where she thinks he – might – be and hopes that there is still enough distance between herself and the window (or that his vision has been impaired by the alcohol) so that he cannot quite tell if she is looking in the wrong direction. “How did you find me here?” How did you find me in the first place? is perhaps the more important question, but it isn’t one that she asks, because she doubts he’ll tell her the answer even if she does.
(His letters had come from nowhere, with no indication of how or why he knew her – but, of course, Seraphina knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. His information has always been reliable, so she does not so much as try to pry too deeply into his affairs…suspicious as he is. She hasn’t wanted to risk losing his support.)
Her brow arches, and she waits. There is still some space between herself and the window, just in case she has miscalculated – but she thinks that she can trace his presence, to some extent, if only because his breathing is fogging up the window.
tags | @Caine
notes | I was not at all expecting to reply to this tonight, but happy...end of finals period?
"speech"
on Tuesday - you wake - walk the back stairs to find a bird
half dead and thrashing - stunned by its own purpose
It is some ungodly hour of the night, and, to her chagrin, the once-queen of Solterra is holed up restlessly in an almost impossibly suspicious Denoctian inn, pacing.
The blood king was surprisingly competent for a man who’d failed to assassinate two queens and hadn’t noticed a rebellion brewing right under his nose; he had eyes everywhere. Since she was already in the area, she’d decided to stay in Denocte for a night or two longer, to see if she could flush out any of his spies and followers. She hadn’t spent much time in the night kingdom, and, though it wasn’t entirely because of the location, she felt ill at ease so much as lingering in Denocte’s labyrinthian back-alleys and rolling hills. Her accent was a difficult thing to disguise, and her general lack of familiarity with the Night Kingdom did her few favors in her efforts to navigate its underbelly. (It was hardly safe work, and she was hardly in a safe position; if she were merely visiting Denocte, she would have likely stayed with one of the Denoctians she knew, but that would do her little good in her search for Raum’s people.) Still – power spoke for something, as did her unyielding temperament.
Besides – she likes to think that this rebellion has improved her understanding of shadier, more unsavory dealings. Even if she isn’t altogether sure that’s a good thing.
Her armor lies in a pile in the corner of the room, accompanied by Alshamtueur and her arrow. The dull lamp-light emphasizes the silver gleam of her coat; she might as well be a metal carving, a girl-shaped trinket rather than a girl. (Of course, no carving would carry a knot of scars on her cheek.) The shadows linger awkwardly in the concaves of her ribs, making her look far hungrier than she feels, and they further emphasize the sleepless hollows under her eyes, the gaunt angles of her cheeks. She supposes it is for the best. No one will pay her much mind if she masquerades as a Solterran refugee – she certainly looks the part.
Still – her hair is unbraided, and, with little else to knead out her persistent anxiety, she finally brushed it out at some point during the hours that she’s been awake. (She has been halfway tempted to shave it off, lately, or at least to trim it, but the memory of Viceroy doing it for her has stopped her, if only as an act of defiance against a dead man.) In the absence of proper management, it has grown even longer than usual, nearly falling to her hooves. She’s going to have to trim it. Possibly not now, when she doesn’t have anything to use but Alshamtueur and dull lamp light, but-
There comes the sound of a knock from the window; it is halfway open. Summers in Denocte are stuffy and humid, and the room is hardly well-ventilated.
She freezes and turns towards the window. She is met by nothing but darkness.
However, before she could dismiss it as nothing but the night wind or her imagination, both of which were apt to play tricks on her, a voice floats through the open window. She cannot pinpoint its source, beyond right outside of her window, and she cannot pinpoint its owner, beyond vaguely familiar and aware of who she is, or at least who she is pretending to be. Her brow furrows. She opens her mouth, and then she closes it.
She fumbles for an appropriate answer – or any kind of answer, really. His accent is faintly familiar, and his voice somehow even more familiar, but she can’t piece together exactly who she thinks that it should belong to. (It comes out silky-sweet and smooth, though slightly slurred. Where has she heard that pronunciation before? It makes her think of someone, or multiple someones, but the thing that bothers her more than the familiarity of the voice itself is the familiarity of the accent, which is not quite like any of the courts’.) Her head tilts. She stares, her mind grasping for the arrow in her scarf, which lies in a spool in the corner of the room. She doesn’t do anything with it; she doesn’t even pull it out of its sleeve. However, she has it in her (metaphorical) grasp, and that is reassurance enough for her, for she knows how little effort it takes to put it through someone’s skull.
(Of course, she cannot actually see his skull to put an arrow through it, which, she thinks, could pose a problem. Then again, if he’d had any kind of malevolent reason to visit her room in the middle of the night, she doubts that he would have given her any forewarning; she has dealt with enough assassins to know that they prefer to work cleanly and quietly, and it is rather difficult to do either if you are caught in the act.)
Finally, she opts for a reluctant, stilted, “…Verona?” because she can’t think of anyone else who’d be sending her letters – that she doesn’t happen to know personally. (And, though she chooses to avoid it, she can’t think of anyone else who would be brazen enough to refer to her as his “dearest Fia.”) Seraphina takes a step or two closer to the window, her eyes narrowing to two-tone slits as she stares out of the foggy glass and into the Denoctian streets. Nothing. Nothing.
But she has a feeling that he is close. It doesn’t take seeing him to know; his voice definitely came from just outside of the (barely cracked) window, and she is fairly sure that she can see his breath fogging up the window.
And, after taking a few hesitant steps towards the window, Seraphina is abruptly hit with the scent of alcohol. She stares at the window, her eyes narrowing fractionally.
Should she be concerned that he can find her in the middle of the night in Denocte while rather inhibited by, judging by the slur to his voice and the fact that she can smell it from inside the room, more than a few drinks?
She should definitely be concerned about that.
That and the fact that she can’t see him at all – even as she presses the window a bit further open, a tentative gesture at best, Seraphina cannot make out any form in the persistent blackness of the street outside. She might as well be speaking to a disembodied voice. Or – there might have been the vague impression of a form, but it is so well hidden in the shadows that Seraphina cannot discern any identifying characteristics. Some kind of magic or enchantment, she assumes, which is likely quite useful for a spy (or whatever he’s supposed to be).
She doesn’t know where to look, so she stares at where she thinks he – might – be and hopes that there is still enough distance between herself and the window (or that his vision has been impaired by the alcohol) so that he cannot quite tell if she is looking in the wrong direction. “How did you find me here?” How did you find me in the first place? is perhaps the more important question, but it isn’t one that she asks, because she doubts he’ll tell her the answer even if she does.
(His letters had come from nowhere, with no indication of how or why he knew her – but, of course, Seraphina knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. His information has always been reliable, so she does not so much as try to pry too deeply into his affairs…suspicious as he is. She hasn’t wanted to risk losing his support.)
Her brow arches, and she waits. There is still some space between herself and the window, just in case she has miscalculated – but she thinks that she can trace his presence, to some extent, if only because his breathing is fogging up the window.
tags | @Caine
notes | I was not at all expecting to reply to this tonight, but happy...end of finals period?
"speech"
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
