I CAN'T TELL IF IT'S WORSE TO WALK THROUGH
a forest with a path or without (a path). / damage done and damage made. / can I be gentle? / I mean / can I be gentle☼
Her dread hangs like a seed in her stomach – persistent and rooted and growing, waiting to be brought to light.
I cannot do this. She loathes mirrors because she cannot stand to look at herself, because she can barely recognize herself; she is falling apart and she has been falling apart for years, now, and she always imagined that she would fall apart entirely, but now she can’t, but she doesn’t know if she can halt her own decay when it has come so close to overtaking her entirely. I cannot do this. She tried not to let Raum rake every tender part of her out when he raked open her face, to let him crush the little softness that she had come to possess in the time after Zolin’s death, but sometimes she only feels deep and dark and aching, and it is only her careful composure that keeps her from doing something terrifying. She has loved – she has loved, she has loved and been in love, but she is sure that she has always done it wrong. I cannot do this. There is nothing loveable left to her, only bits and pieces with hard edges, sharp enough to the touch to cut. She is not worth loving; she is not even worth regarding. She could never make anyone happy. (She has never been able to make anyone happy.) That is one reason why she ran.
How could she possibly love them like they deserve? How could she possibly be a-
She can’t finish the thought. I cannot do this. She cannot keep them happy. She cannot love them; and she is scared, even terrified, that she will disappoint them just as she has disappointed everyone else.
Ereshkigal grins through her pain, but she does not notice. She does not notice anything before the crunch of hooves on dead grass, the sudden transgression of another presence.
And – when her eyes come to rest on the golden form of the man, on his approach, the tremor of her thin frame slips out of her like a breath. The Silver Queen is reduced, but her posture straightens, and there is a stubborn dignity to the way that she raises her chin to look at him, her gaze hardening like molten steel. Adonai is far from the worst of the Solterran nobility. (In fact, she would venture to say that he is one of the better ones.) Regardless, her pride will not suffer to look so pathetic in the face of him, or anyone of his bloodline. She has spent too much of her life crushed beneath the whims of Solterra’s noble houses to crumble before him now.
She had hoped to avoid all thoughts of Solterra, coming here, and all thoughts of what the sun had done to her. It seems that she could not be so lucky; the desert always has a way of finding her, no matter how far she runs from it.
The last time that Seraphina caught sight of Adonai, he was sick; but he has further deteriorated since then, and, looking at him, she struggles to understand how he still clings to life. She recalls that he was beautiful, before this, though she hardly noticed – spun of pale gold, and blue eyed. He is still pale gold, now, and his eyes are blue, but his fur has gone dull and dark-pocked, bony rather than elegant, and his glossy eyes are watery where they should be sharp. He looks a bit like a corpse, drowning beneath his furs. He looks a bit like a corpse in noble’s garb, dressed for a funeral.
She would be nauseated, but she has seen far, far uglier sights than this.
Even dying, she cannot pity House Ieshan’s firstborn son. As she examines his sickly frame, she knows that it is pure indulgence that has kept him alive. She can hardly blame his family for clinging to him. She can hardly blame them for all the doctors they have called to his side, for all the – likely futile, given the way that Ereshkigal is looking at him from the branches; given the way her worm-like tongue snakes out from between her beak and drags along her teeth – treatments they have attempted. No, she can hardly blame them at all – but she can quietly observe the way that she has seen people die from something as simple as a cold in the slums, the way that she saw people starving to death on the streets nearly every day when Raum was in power.
And here he is, alive – and healthier than most of them, though he is dying of something far more pervasive and inevitable than a seasonal illness or malnutrition.
She can’t blame him. She can’t quite pity him, either.
“You’re right,” she says, softly, “but I’ve barely noticed.” She did; but she supposes that she needs to care for herself more, now that she is-
She can’t even finish the sentence inside of her own head. She doesn’t want to, least of all now – if she does, she might crumble in front of him, and she could not bear to do that. “I would think that the cold poses far more of a danger to you than to I, Prince Adonai.” The title slips off her tongue with something that is not quite disdain, and not quite contempt; it would be more accurate to say that the word is spoken with an absence of respect, her flat cadence indicative of an empty platitude. Still, there is the faintest prickling of something like concern in her soft, distant voice, the hint of an unspoken question - why are you here, all alone, in the middle of winter? She does not ask it.
A laugh splits from the branches. It is a terrible noise, a noise like skin-crawling dread; low and rippling, like a laugh heard from beneath the surface of a rushing river. Seraphina does not have to look up to know that Ereshkigal is watching them with her beady, blood-red eyes – she can feel her stare like a physical weight as it drags down the curve of her spine, and finally recedes. She suspects that she is looking at Adonai.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ereshkigal croons happily; she punctuates with a high-pitched, deranged giggle. “He will die soon. It has already been decided.”
Seraphina does not give demon so much as a glance. Her stare remains trained on Adonai – on his eyes. She cannot argue with Ereshkigal’s assertations; the prince has one hoof in the grave already. Regardless, she says, “My companion is a rather vile creature. I wouldn’t humor her taunting; she’ll take it as an invitation to trouble you further.”
To a demon, who has eternity, soon is relative, and all things die.
Still. Looking at Adonai, who is already more dead than alive, it seems comical to deny the veracity of her statement.
(Isn’t she the same?)
@Adonai || ilu (& him) <3 || lily wang, "prayer"
Sera || Eresh
a forest with a path or without (a path). / damage done and damage made. / can I be gentle? / I mean / can I be gentle☼
Her dread hangs like a seed in her stomach – persistent and rooted and growing, waiting to be brought to light.
I cannot do this. She loathes mirrors because she cannot stand to look at herself, because she can barely recognize herself; she is falling apart and she has been falling apart for years, now, and she always imagined that she would fall apart entirely, but now she can’t, but she doesn’t know if she can halt her own decay when it has come so close to overtaking her entirely. I cannot do this. She tried not to let Raum rake every tender part of her out when he raked open her face, to let him crush the little softness that she had come to possess in the time after Zolin’s death, but sometimes she only feels deep and dark and aching, and it is only her careful composure that keeps her from doing something terrifying. She has loved – she has loved, she has loved and been in love, but she is sure that she has always done it wrong. I cannot do this. There is nothing loveable left to her, only bits and pieces with hard edges, sharp enough to the touch to cut. She is not worth loving; she is not even worth regarding. She could never make anyone happy. (She has never been able to make anyone happy.) That is one reason why she ran.
How could she possibly love them like they deserve? How could she possibly be a-
She can’t finish the thought. I cannot do this. She cannot keep them happy. She cannot love them; and she is scared, even terrified, that she will disappoint them just as she has disappointed everyone else.
Ereshkigal grins through her pain, but she does not notice. She does not notice anything before the crunch of hooves on dead grass, the sudden transgression of another presence.
And – when her eyes come to rest on the golden form of the man, on his approach, the tremor of her thin frame slips out of her like a breath. The Silver Queen is reduced, but her posture straightens, and there is a stubborn dignity to the way that she raises her chin to look at him, her gaze hardening like molten steel. Adonai is far from the worst of the Solterran nobility. (In fact, she would venture to say that he is one of the better ones.) Regardless, her pride will not suffer to look so pathetic in the face of him, or anyone of his bloodline. She has spent too much of her life crushed beneath the whims of Solterra’s noble houses to crumble before him now.
She had hoped to avoid all thoughts of Solterra, coming here, and all thoughts of what the sun had done to her. It seems that she could not be so lucky; the desert always has a way of finding her, no matter how far she runs from it.
The last time that Seraphina caught sight of Adonai, he was sick; but he has further deteriorated since then, and, looking at him, she struggles to understand how he still clings to life. She recalls that he was beautiful, before this, though she hardly noticed – spun of pale gold, and blue eyed. He is still pale gold, now, and his eyes are blue, but his fur has gone dull and dark-pocked, bony rather than elegant, and his glossy eyes are watery where they should be sharp. He looks a bit like a corpse, drowning beneath his furs. He looks a bit like a corpse in noble’s garb, dressed for a funeral.
She would be nauseated, but she has seen far, far uglier sights than this.
Even dying, she cannot pity House Ieshan’s firstborn son. As she examines his sickly frame, she knows that it is pure indulgence that has kept him alive. She can hardly blame his family for clinging to him. She can hardly blame them for all the doctors they have called to his side, for all the – likely futile, given the way that Ereshkigal is looking at him from the branches; given the way her worm-like tongue snakes out from between her beak and drags along her teeth – treatments they have attempted. No, she can hardly blame them at all – but she can quietly observe the way that she has seen people die from something as simple as a cold in the slums, the way that she saw people starving to death on the streets nearly every day when Raum was in power.
And here he is, alive – and healthier than most of them, though he is dying of something far more pervasive and inevitable than a seasonal illness or malnutrition.
She can’t blame him. She can’t quite pity him, either.
“You’re right,” she says, softly, “but I’ve barely noticed.” She did; but she supposes that she needs to care for herself more, now that she is-
She can’t even finish the sentence inside of her own head. She doesn’t want to, least of all now – if she does, she might crumble in front of him, and she could not bear to do that. “I would think that the cold poses far more of a danger to you than to I, Prince Adonai.” The title slips off her tongue with something that is not quite disdain, and not quite contempt; it would be more accurate to say that the word is spoken with an absence of respect, her flat cadence indicative of an empty platitude. Still, there is the faintest prickling of something like concern in her soft, distant voice, the hint of an unspoken question - why are you here, all alone, in the middle of winter? She does not ask it.
A laugh splits from the branches. It is a terrible noise, a noise like skin-crawling dread; low and rippling, like a laugh heard from beneath the surface of a rushing river. Seraphina does not have to look up to know that Ereshkigal is watching them with her beady, blood-red eyes – she can feel her stare like a physical weight as it drags down the curve of her spine, and finally recedes. She suspects that she is looking at Adonai.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ereshkigal croons happily; she punctuates with a high-pitched, deranged giggle. “He will die soon. It has already been decided.”
Seraphina does not give demon so much as a glance. Her stare remains trained on Adonai – on his eyes. She cannot argue with Ereshkigal’s assertations; the prince has one hoof in the grave already. Regardless, she says, “My companion is a rather vile creature. I wouldn’t humor her taunting; she’ll take it as an invitation to trouble you further.”
To a demon, who has eternity, soon is relative, and all things die.
Still. Looking at Adonai, who is already more dead than alive, it seems comical to deny the veracity of her statement.
(Isn’t she the same?)
@
Sera || Eresh
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
