☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
In the stockpile of hope, the ticking future--
a forgotten tree, a creek with peepers going mad - in the labyrinths of green - pit against all the world’s hungering.
Still as good as a shadow upon the sands, Seraphina bounds across the rolling expanse of the Mors, white hair tumbling loose behind her; with her magic to keep it in something akin to organized chaos, she feels as though she wears it free more often than braided lately, silently reveling in her newfound freedom. It still aches, of course. She still feels the weight of her failure on her shoulders like lead, and she doubts that she will ever be free of it. There is no such thing for penance, not for so much death, and there is no way to change the past, short of turning back time. She expects that she will hold her failure in her chest for a very long time. Possibly forever. She has all the time in the world for that, now.
And it is almost cruel that there are so many dead, and she is alive and free for what feels like the firs time in her life, unbound by collar or chain or crown, by precedent or by tradition. She is not just Seraphina, because she will never be just Seraphina - a monarch will always mean too much – but at least she is Seraphina now. That will have to be enough.
Ereshkigal dips low to her as she runs, her wings beating so close to her side that the barest edges of the pinions brush up against her flanks; her mouth tastes dry and acidic from the dusty heat, and sweat is matting in little metallic rivulets down her neck and flanks, but the sensation borders on elating. She has missed it, in her time away from home. (She longed. She longed - and yet, she never wanted to come back. It would have been much easier if she had stayed away, run and run and run until she left all of the broken pieces of her life behind her, hid from the guilt and hoped it would go away. But here she was again, back again, because for all that she had spent her life trying to escape from one chain or another, Seraphina would always, always return.) The sand is familiar. The way it shivers under her hooves as they only barely scrape the surface. In the distance, the dark shape of a teryr – and above her head, the sun, the sun, always the sun.
The oasis is a distant pool of blue. In her time away, couldn’t she remember every inch of Solterra-? (And didn’t she remember it every night while she slept?) The ripple of water against heat, the low hang of green-leaved palms, the waterfall where she met Caine so many moons ago. The only refuge against the unrelenting violence of the Mors, beyond the court itself, and the solitary source of water for most everything in the desert.
She springs forward, graceful strides propelling her down a dune and through the thin line of shrubbery outlining the edge of the Oasis. Another horse is already there; he is all bulk and scales, and she catches his eyes in acknowledgement as Ereshkigal comes to land between her shoulders, her gaze trained on the bright blue surface of the Oasis. She is looking for a fish, Seraphina suspects, the carnivore. Ereshkigal prefers finding corpses to making them, but, when she is hungry enough, she will eat anything she can find, right down to the bones. It is as grotesque as it is fascinating, and Ereshkigal takes sadistic glee in stuffing anything she can fit in her mouth down her throat – whole.
Seraphina dips her head to the stranger in silent greeting and bends to drink, ignoring the vulture’s silent protest as she scares of some fortunate, silver-scaled creature that disappears somewhere deeper in the pool.
tags | @Oriax
notes | <3
"speech"
In the stockpile of hope, the ticking future--
a forgotten tree, a creek with peepers going mad - in the labyrinths of green - pit against all the world’s hungering.
Still as good as a shadow upon the sands, Seraphina bounds across the rolling expanse of the Mors, white hair tumbling loose behind her; with her magic to keep it in something akin to organized chaos, she feels as though she wears it free more often than braided lately, silently reveling in her newfound freedom. It still aches, of course. She still feels the weight of her failure on her shoulders like lead, and she doubts that she will ever be free of it. There is no such thing for penance, not for so much death, and there is no way to change the past, short of turning back time. She expects that she will hold her failure in her chest for a very long time. Possibly forever. She has all the time in the world for that, now.
And it is almost cruel that there are so many dead, and she is alive and free for what feels like the firs time in her life, unbound by collar or chain or crown, by precedent or by tradition. She is not just Seraphina, because she will never be just Seraphina - a monarch will always mean too much – but at least she is Seraphina now. That will have to be enough.
Ereshkigal dips low to her as she runs, her wings beating so close to her side that the barest edges of the pinions brush up against her flanks; her mouth tastes dry and acidic from the dusty heat, and sweat is matting in little metallic rivulets down her neck and flanks, but the sensation borders on elating. She has missed it, in her time away from home. (She longed. She longed - and yet, she never wanted to come back. It would have been much easier if she had stayed away, run and run and run until she left all of the broken pieces of her life behind her, hid from the guilt and hoped it would go away. But here she was again, back again, because for all that she had spent her life trying to escape from one chain or another, Seraphina would always, always return.) The sand is familiar. The way it shivers under her hooves as they only barely scrape the surface. In the distance, the dark shape of a teryr – and above her head, the sun, the sun, always the sun.
The oasis is a distant pool of blue. In her time away, couldn’t she remember every inch of Solterra-? (And didn’t she remember it every night while she slept?) The ripple of water against heat, the low hang of green-leaved palms, the waterfall where she met Caine so many moons ago. The only refuge against the unrelenting violence of the Mors, beyond the court itself, and the solitary source of water for most everything in the desert.
She springs forward, graceful strides propelling her down a dune and through the thin line of shrubbery outlining the edge of the Oasis. Another horse is already there; he is all bulk and scales, and she catches his eyes in acknowledgement as Ereshkigal comes to land between her shoulders, her gaze trained on the bright blue surface of the Oasis. She is looking for a fish, Seraphina suspects, the carnivore. Ereshkigal prefers finding corpses to making them, but, when she is hungry enough, she will eat anything she can find, right down to the bones. It is as grotesque as it is fascinating, and Ereshkigal takes sadistic glee in stuffing anything she can fit in her mouth down her throat – whole.
Seraphina dips her head to the stranger in silent greeting and bends to drink, ignoring the vulture’s silent protest as she scares of some fortunate, silver-scaled creature that disappears somewhere deeper in the pool.
tags | @Oriax
notes | <3
"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
