☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
It’s midnight in my head & she binds her reckless throat.
It is midnight, and the moon is full. It is never really winter in the desert, not in the way that winter comes to all other places – but there is the barest hint of a chill, a little lick of pale, cold fire that shivers up her spine when the wind blows in just the right direction from the sea. It is midnight, and the moon is full, and she is as silver as her blade in the pale light. The sand does not crunch beneath her hooves when she runs. She hovers just above it, perfectly silent save for the click of her sword at her hip, the shifting of the thick fabric of her scarf, the rare creak of leather. It is midnight, and the moon is full, and she is cold in a way that cannot be explained by the wind, and the cold will not go away. It makes her teeth chatter and her skin crawl. It is always winter inside of her sometimes, winter where she is dead on the ground and there are flowers all around, snow white except for those places where they are splashed bright red. Those corpse eaters. She still smells them sometimes; she wakes at night smelling them, jerks upright to something sickeningly-sweet with a copper aftertaste.
She is restless tonight.
Ereshkigal senses it, and Seraphina can feel her laughing; not aloud, but somewhere inside, somewhere deep in her chest. She always stokes her higher, fiercer, wants to see her burn. The vulture is a poor influence, she knows, and one that she must always work to temper. She is too cruel to live here, in these mortal lands, and, if she lets her dig in too far, her talons sink too deep – if she ever does that, she will be too cruel for this place, too. She does not want to be cruel anymore. But she doesn’t want to find herself in that field of flowers ever again, and she has the marks to show for it.
The tips of Ereshkigal’s feathers brush against her cheek, right at the scar. Seraphina dances away from her touch, allowing her eyes to roll over to linger on her dark form, a silent warning; Ereshkigal makes a hissing sound, deep in the back of her throat.
Somewhere in the desert they stumble upon a sandwyrm. It is between two dunes that she could probably discern if she were thinking, but she is not thinking, or she is thinking out of her own control – her mind is running too fast, and her thoughts feel like they are crumbling out of her control. One moment, she is rearing back, her hooves dipping into the sand and kicking up a spray; the next, the sandwyrm is dead in front of her, tongue lolling out of its bloody jaws, and there is an arrow in its skull, right between the eyes. She is standing in front of it, her shoulders slumped, her head slumped, her eyes glazed.
The scent of blood snaps her out of it, and she jerks upright, taking a step back. Yes, that is her arrow – right there, right between the eyes, the tip buried somewhere in the animal’s brain. Yes, she did that. She must have done that. There was no one else to do it. She barely remembers. She barely thought of it – and it was done. She barely thought of it, and she is not sure if that is a curse or a blessing.
She blinks at the arrow, and she reaches the tentative grasp of her mind around the hilt; she has to wriggle it a bit to pull it from the sandwyrm’s skull, and she is left with the memory of a meaty squelch ringing between her ears and the arrow suspended in front of her, dripping fleshy bits of red onto the sand.
tags | @Vendetta
notes | a strange little exercise, I guess.
"speech"
It’s midnight in my head & she binds her reckless throat.
It is midnight, and the moon is full. It is never really winter in the desert, not in the way that winter comes to all other places – but there is the barest hint of a chill, a little lick of pale, cold fire that shivers up her spine when the wind blows in just the right direction from the sea. It is midnight, and the moon is full, and she is as silver as her blade in the pale light. The sand does not crunch beneath her hooves when she runs. She hovers just above it, perfectly silent save for the click of her sword at her hip, the shifting of the thick fabric of her scarf, the rare creak of leather. It is midnight, and the moon is full, and she is cold in a way that cannot be explained by the wind, and the cold will not go away. It makes her teeth chatter and her skin crawl. It is always winter inside of her sometimes, winter where she is dead on the ground and there are flowers all around, snow white except for those places where they are splashed bright red. Those corpse eaters. She still smells them sometimes; she wakes at night smelling them, jerks upright to something sickeningly-sweet with a copper aftertaste.
She is restless tonight.
Ereshkigal senses it, and Seraphina can feel her laughing; not aloud, but somewhere inside, somewhere deep in her chest. She always stokes her higher, fiercer, wants to see her burn. The vulture is a poor influence, she knows, and one that she must always work to temper. She is too cruel to live here, in these mortal lands, and, if she lets her dig in too far, her talons sink too deep – if she ever does that, she will be too cruel for this place, too. She does not want to be cruel anymore. But she doesn’t want to find herself in that field of flowers ever again, and she has the marks to show for it.
The tips of Ereshkigal’s feathers brush against her cheek, right at the scar. Seraphina dances away from her touch, allowing her eyes to roll over to linger on her dark form, a silent warning; Ereshkigal makes a hissing sound, deep in the back of her throat.
Somewhere in the desert they stumble upon a sandwyrm. It is between two dunes that she could probably discern if she were thinking, but she is not thinking, or she is thinking out of her own control – her mind is running too fast, and her thoughts feel like they are crumbling out of her control. One moment, she is rearing back, her hooves dipping into the sand and kicking up a spray; the next, the sandwyrm is dead in front of her, tongue lolling out of its bloody jaws, and there is an arrow in its skull, right between the eyes. She is standing in front of it, her shoulders slumped, her head slumped, her eyes glazed.
The scent of blood snaps her out of it, and she jerks upright, taking a step back. Yes, that is her arrow – right there, right between the eyes, the tip buried somewhere in the animal’s brain. Yes, she did that. She must have done that. There was no one else to do it. She barely remembers. She barely thought of it – and it was done. She barely thought of it, and she is not sure if that is a curse or a blessing.
She blinks at the arrow, and she reaches the tentative grasp of her mind around the hilt; she has to wriggle it a bit to pull it from the sandwyrm’s skull, and she is left with the memory of a meaty squelch ringing between her ears and the arrow suspended in front of her, dripping fleshy bits of red onto the sand.
tags | @Vendetta
notes | a strange little exercise, I guess.
"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
