☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
I MOUTH her name to a god / whose language I don't speak.
I make metaphor for the empty / she is becoming - a trench opening / from the outside in, the inside of a fist, / decay-dark socket in the head / of a bleached cow skull --
When he notices her, when she speaks – he swings his antlered head in an arc, the motion of a startled warrior. Seraphina does not move an inch. She does not wince from the way that his dark antlers slice through the air between them; she does not even blink. There is no twitch to her charcoal lips. She simply floats, silver form suspended, unkempt white hair bobbing about her like ocean currents.
You’re….floating, he manages. She is. There is very little that she can do about it, though – the part of her that begs to control the roiling toss of her magic weakens by the day.
Seraphina tilts her head, the white cascade of her mane trailing after the motion. “An effect of my magic,” she says, without much emotion. (She does not stop floating, either.)
Nowadays, an outcast – a perpetual wanderer, or a hermit – she can almost remind herself of her days as a guard. They are a cold comfort, at best. When she traces the old routes that she used to follow, long before she was an Emissary or a collared queen, when she was still scarcely more than a slave, Seraphina can almost feel like she has strangled her aimless mass of a life into a routine.
The illusion never lasts for long. She’s not who she used to be. She often longs to be that Seraphina again, but the longing is half-hearted at best. It would rid her of the persistent ache that trails her like the scent of graves and death wherever she goes, like the smell of burning flesh and newborn stone and blood and night-blooming flowers, but it would not free her. She would simply lapse from one misery to another, replace overflow with emptiness.
The cure for a flood is not a drought. She knows this; she knows it well.
He confirms that the wreckage is his, and he asks if this land has a name. He didn’t arrive on Novus’s shores intentionally, she takes it. (With how badly-damaged his ship was, she couldn’t imagine that this was his destination regardless.) She dips her head in confirmation.
“Yes. The island is Novus – and you are in Solterra, the desert kingdom of the Day Court.” The words drip off her tongue, each one thickly accented by her native tongue; it rolls, deep and rhythmic, like the dunes that stretch out in all directions, each shift in cadence like reaching a crest. "We are in the Mors desert. It is not…safe for travelers who are unfamiliar with it. Would you like me to guide you to the capitol?”
To tell the truth, Seraphina has no desire to go back. To tell the truth, Seraphina can barely stomach it to so much as look at the city – her home, she reminds herself, with a violent pang somewhere deep in the recesses of her chest – without feeling sick.
Regardless. She will do it, if he asks, because it is her duty to serve these sands and whoever happens to wander them; because it is her burden to bear, for now and forever, until the sands finally take her back. (She wonders if she will ever be anything but a servant, if she will ever live her life unbowed and deliberate, and then she dismisses herself immediately for the hubris – for the selfishness – and she reminds herself that this is exactly what she deserves, and, even then, that it will never be enough.)
There is only so far and so long that she can run.
tags | @Galileo
notes | <3
poem | jamaal may, "Yes I know She's Dying"
"speech"
I MOUTH her name to a god / whose language I don't speak.
I make metaphor for the empty / she is becoming - a trench opening / from the outside in, the inside of a fist, / decay-dark socket in the head / of a bleached cow skull --
When he notices her, when she speaks – he swings his antlered head in an arc, the motion of a startled warrior. Seraphina does not move an inch. She does not wince from the way that his dark antlers slice through the air between them; she does not even blink. There is no twitch to her charcoal lips. She simply floats, silver form suspended, unkempt white hair bobbing about her like ocean currents.
You’re….floating, he manages. She is. There is very little that she can do about it, though – the part of her that begs to control the roiling toss of her magic weakens by the day.
Seraphina tilts her head, the white cascade of her mane trailing after the motion. “An effect of my magic,” she says, without much emotion. (She does not stop floating, either.)
Nowadays, an outcast – a perpetual wanderer, or a hermit – she can almost remind herself of her days as a guard. They are a cold comfort, at best. When she traces the old routes that she used to follow, long before she was an Emissary or a collared queen, when she was still scarcely more than a slave, Seraphina can almost feel like she has strangled her aimless mass of a life into a routine.
The illusion never lasts for long. She’s not who she used to be. She often longs to be that Seraphina again, but the longing is half-hearted at best. It would rid her of the persistent ache that trails her like the scent of graves and death wherever she goes, like the smell of burning flesh and newborn stone and blood and night-blooming flowers, but it would not free her. She would simply lapse from one misery to another, replace overflow with emptiness.
The cure for a flood is not a drought. She knows this; she knows it well.
He confirms that the wreckage is his, and he asks if this land has a name. He didn’t arrive on Novus’s shores intentionally, she takes it. (With how badly-damaged his ship was, she couldn’t imagine that this was his destination regardless.) She dips her head in confirmation.
“Yes. The island is Novus – and you are in Solterra, the desert kingdom of the Day Court.” The words drip off her tongue, each one thickly accented by her native tongue; it rolls, deep and rhythmic, like the dunes that stretch out in all directions, each shift in cadence like reaching a crest. "We are in the Mors desert. It is not…safe for travelers who are unfamiliar with it. Would you like me to guide you to the capitol?”
To tell the truth, Seraphina has no desire to go back. To tell the truth, Seraphina can barely stomach it to so much as look at the city – her home, she reminds herself, with a violent pang somewhere deep in the recesses of her chest – without feeling sick.
Regardless. She will do it, if he asks, because it is her duty to serve these sands and whoever happens to wander them; because it is her burden to bear, for now and forever, until the sands finally take her back. (She wonders if she will ever be anything but a servant, if she will ever live her life unbowed and deliberate, and then she dismisses herself immediately for the hubris – for the selfishness – and she reminds herself that this is exactly what she deserves, and, even then, that it will never be enough.)
There is only so far and so long that she can run.
tags | @Galileo
notes | <3
poem | jamaal may, "Yes I know She's Dying"
"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
