I'M NOT CRAZY,
but when the sun split / him wide, he left me this, look, / my body veined in soot.☼
Across from her, in the mirror, the viceroy is shaving off her hair.
She, a girl – not even a year old, if she had to guess – lies in a crumpled mass on a sandstone floor, slender chest heaving, sides slick with sweat and blood. She is swollen here and there with ugly bruising and veined red. There isn’t enough of it to pool. Sometimes, he insisted that he would not be so wasteful; that he was not so interested in wasting the healer’s time. She imagines that this was him on a good day, when he hadn’t lost his patience with her yet.
(He lost his patience often; and she was his favorite.)
He shaves right at the nape of her neck, and her fine white hair falls to the floor in clumps. Her legs twitch loosely, even limply, in the way that a butterfly twitches when it is caught in the mud. He nicks her more than once, shallowly, probably intentionally. It bleeds horribly. (Shallow cuts often do.) The girl has her back to her, so she cannot see her face, but she can imagine the kind of expression that she was wearing at the time.
Her magic twines around one coil of her forelock and twists it. When Viceroy died, she stopped cutting her hair. He always insisted on shaving it off entirely, down to the skin, and, as soon as it began to grow back, he would shave it again. He told her that it was useless in combat; it would be a burden on the battlefield. He crooned in a sickly-gentle voice that he was doing it because it was in her best interest. She had seen the reason in it, at the time, but now that she is older, she has a feeling that he mostly did it because he was maneless, and, when they met, he couldn’t stand the sight of her long, long hair.
She doesn’t remember their meeting, exactly – but she remembers Viceroy well, as though he’d only died yesterday, so she can imagine the curve of his lips at the edges when he saw something that he disliked.
She does not think of him often, anymore. (She has thought of him more often recently.)
Seraphina drifts by the image in the glass with a shake of her head. She might have been horrified by it, if it had happened to someone else; but it happened to her, so she feels almost nothing at all. At least the cruelties of her childhood were no fault of her own – at least she does not have to feel such the painful clench of guilt whenever she regards them.
She passes through rows and rows of shards; her image ripples alongside her, below her, ahead of her, behind her. No matter where she looks, she can only see her own face, which is condemnation enough; but she cannot see at all what she so desperately wants to find, which are features not unlike her own, but softer, less worn by exhaustion, less angular and thin in the cheeks. She cannot remember her face, anymore, and, though she knows that she was good, she cannot recall enough of her to follow her example.
She cannot even recall the name that she gave her. Perhaps that is what severed them the most; her daughter was not named Seraphina.
She stops, and she turns her head to the mirror at her side. She watches herself in the reflection, newly scarred, a thin line of blood dribbling from the gold on her cheek, cowl pulled over her shameful face. Her eyes are sunken and dark, and her lips make a frown so heavy that it seems perpetual, and, though her magic was still weak and ambling, at the time, she can see it tugging at the white tangles of her mane, threatening to make a medusa of her.
Seraphina continues walking – further and deeper, towards the core of this place.
@Tenebrae || <3 <3 <3 || rebecca dunham, "elegy for the eleven" ; title "Notname," Lyd Havens
Sera || Eresh
but when the sun split / him wide, he left me this, look, / my body veined in soot.☼
Across from her, in the mirror, the viceroy is shaving off her hair.
She, a girl – not even a year old, if she had to guess – lies in a crumpled mass on a sandstone floor, slender chest heaving, sides slick with sweat and blood. She is swollen here and there with ugly bruising and veined red. There isn’t enough of it to pool. Sometimes, he insisted that he would not be so wasteful; that he was not so interested in wasting the healer’s time. She imagines that this was him on a good day, when he hadn’t lost his patience with her yet.
(He lost his patience often; and she was his favorite.)
He shaves right at the nape of her neck, and her fine white hair falls to the floor in clumps. Her legs twitch loosely, even limply, in the way that a butterfly twitches when it is caught in the mud. He nicks her more than once, shallowly, probably intentionally. It bleeds horribly. (Shallow cuts often do.) The girl has her back to her, so she cannot see her face, but she can imagine the kind of expression that she was wearing at the time.
Her magic twines around one coil of her forelock and twists it. When Viceroy died, she stopped cutting her hair. He always insisted on shaving it off entirely, down to the skin, and, as soon as it began to grow back, he would shave it again. He told her that it was useless in combat; it would be a burden on the battlefield. He crooned in a sickly-gentle voice that he was doing it because it was in her best interest. She had seen the reason in it, at the time, but now that she is older, she has a feeling that he mostly did it because he was maneless, and, when they met, he couldn’t stand the sight of her long, long hair.
She doesn’t remember their meeting, exactly – but she remembers Viceroy well, as though he’d only died yesterday, so she can imagine the curve of his lips at the edges when he saw something that he disliked.
She does not think of him often, anymore. (She has thought of him more often recently.)
Seraphina drifts by the image in the glass with a shake of her head. She might have been horrified by it, if it had happened to someone else; but it happened to her, so she feels almost nothing at all. At least the cruelties of her childhood were no fault of her own – at least she does not have to feel such the painful clench of guilt whenever she regards them.
She passes through rows and rows of shards; her image ripples alongside her, below her, ahead of her, behind her. No matter where she looks, she can only see her own face, which is condemnation enough; but she cannot see at all what she so desperately wants to find, which are features not unlike her own, but softer, less worn by exhaustion, less angular and thin in the cheeks. She cannot remember her face, anymore, and, though she knows that she was good, she cannot recall enough of her to follow her example.
She cannot even recall the name that she gave her. Perhaps that is what severed them the most; her daughter was not named Seraphina.
She stops, and she turns her head to the mirror at her side. She watches herself in the reflection, newly scarred, a thin line of blood dribbling from the gold on her cheek, cowl pulled over her shameful face. Her eyes are sunken and dark, and her lips make a frown so heavy that it seems perpetual, and, though her magic was still weak and ambling, at the time, she can see it tugging at the white tangles of her mane, threatening to make a medusa of her.
Seraphina continues walking – further and deeper, towards the core of this place.
@Tenebrae || <3 <3 <3 || rebecca dunham, "elegy for the eleven" ; title "Notname," Lyd Havens
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
