AND THERE'S NO WAY TO ESCAPE THE VIOLENCE OF A GIRL AGAINST HERSELF
Seraphina does not feel like herself, lately.
Sometimes she feels like she is unraveling and then the room unravels with her. She finds herself standing among a sea of shattered glass and broken objects, and then it sinks in slowly why they are broken, why she is cut, why she is bleeding. She doesn’t mean to do it. She barely even thinks about doing it. She should feel terrified by it, but more often she feels nothing at all. Seraphina does not feel like herself, lately, and, although she knows that she should be getting better – she has no reason not to be better, with Raum dead -, sometimes she thinks – knows – that she is becoming worse.
They are standing among a spiral of mirrors, their mingled reflections dancing the surface of the glass. Her eyes are trained on Bexley – Bexley solid, beaten gold, real and warm and alive in front of her – but she sees the images stained across her peripheral vision. She sees the past, in fragments; finding Bexley mostly-dead in a collapsed cave, appointing her Emissary in the wake of Avdotya’s betrayal, standing at the summit of the gods. (There are bits of futures, too, and things that never came to pass; but Seraphina is barely sure how to piece that blur of images together without context, and she doesn’t think that she wants to know. She looks away. At Bexley.)
When she speaks, she sees stages of shock settle across the golden girl’s features. (She looks older than her, now. Still lovelier, but older. The revelation makes her feel colder than the wind, like her skin is in danger of icing over.) Stages of shock, and then something familiar - that wild-eyed, ferocious smile breaks across her lips. Seraphina doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s relieved, because it is Bexley; she’s horrified, because it reminds her of a past that haunts, and she can’t see past the teeth. I thought you were dead, she says, and then-
Bexley laughs.
It is a wild, hoarse sound that somehow reminds her of Ereshkigal. It sounds like she hasn’t laughed in months. It sounds like she just crawled out of a grave – like her mouth is still dry and dirty from the coffin. Seraphina doesn’t smile, exactly. She barely remembers how; but she feels some strange, faint warmth at the sound, ugly as it is. It is gone as quickly as it appeared, Bexley’s mouth snapped shut – she isn’t sure if it’s vainglory humiliation or more shock. Both options are plausible, with her. Yeah, well. So did I.
And then silence. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t know what to say.
She clears her throat. Her eyes train on her – sharp and cyan. And you, she says, her tone not-quite-accusatory and not-quite-angry; it makes her wince regardless. You were supposed to be dead, too. You’ve been gone. Uhh. A long time. For a moment, Seraphina imagines a world where she could have made some triumphant return from the grave; where she could have stepped out of this perpetual darkness and back out into the sun, where she knows that she should be.
It is reflected in the mirror, behind Bexley. A Seraphina crowned again. A Seraphina who looks happy to be alive, a Seraphina who isn’t alone, with a figure she thinks that she might recognize, or a few of them. There are two smaller silhouettes, two, a girl with ice-blue eyes and a boy with gold – but they are gone before she can get a good look at them, scattered like ashes on the wind, and then she is just staring at the dark form of herself again, depleted and miserable.
It wouldn’t be realistic anyways.
She tries to find the right words. “After I ‘died,’” she says, “I didn’t know how to...how to return. I’m…sorry.” The apology fits awkwardly in her mouth; she isn’t quite sure what to do with it. She still doesn’t know how to return - she doesn’t know how to be Seraphina anymore, for herself or for anyone else. She hadn’t thought that it mattered, and she isn’t sure what to do with the revelation that maybe, maybe it did.
There are horrible images scrawled on the walls. On the mirrors. She wonders what they would look like shattered, a sea of broken glass swirling around their hooves, carried thin and glittering by the breeze; she wonders and wonders and wonders. A hairline fracture appears in the glass in front of her, right over her face. She forces herself to stop wondering.
Her eyes train back on Bexley. Her head is dipped; she cannot meet her eyes. “What happened to you?” She’s sure that she could have found out, if she’d tried – but she didn’t want to know. The thought made her feel empty and nauseous and bitter and angry, and, Solis, she hadn’t wanted to know. She was so tired of knowing horrible things.
But now she wonders. Earnestly. Maybe it is some terrible desire for something to relate to - what horrible thing killed you and brought you back a revenant, too?
@
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
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
