SOMETIMES YOU CAN GET AWAY COMPLETELY
but [they] / will tell about the howling / and the loss☼
There is always some part of her that screams: you should have become better from this.
You should not have grown tired and miserable, bent-double beneath the weight of your own memories; you should have become righteously furious and inspiring, willfully and insistently ferocious in the face of every injustice that you encountered. Or, if you had to become miserable - you should have at least become miserable in a way that it was easy to love, miserable in a way that was charming and romantic, miserable in a way that made someone want to save you.
If it had made you compelling - at least it would have been useful.
The water ripples beneath her frame. The Seraphina-in-the-water shifts with each low bump, and her eyes seize on the sharp angles of her cheekbones, and then on her sides, which are only beginning to swell. She can barely bring herself to think about what happened to her, like every other thing that has been done to her body over her past seven - nearly eight - years. It makes her think of a girl with dead, dark eyes, her white hair shorn off at the roots. It makes her think of a ghost, scarred ugly, bright gold. It makes her feel like a passenger in her own skin.
She knows whose doing this is, but he has been - silent. She doesn’t understand why this had to happen, least of all to her, but, then, that has never mattered in any of her personal tragedies. Did she do something wrong? If she did, then why was she never told-?
Bexley Briar is golden, but not like the dunes. She is gold like silk is gold; like sun-rays, but not the sun, are gold. She slips out of the desert and onto the shore of the Oasis, and Seraphina turns to stare at her and her white-toothed grin, and she feels like she is being torn in two.
She is happy to see her, or she should be. She knows that she should be, but she isn’t, quite, and it isn’t because of Bexley, she knows, because she could never not want to see her, but she doesn’t want anyone to see her, and-
We have got to start meeting on purpose.
“Yes,” she says, her voice admirably calm, and composed, and Seraphina-like, “we do,” and if this conversation had happened years ago, she might have been reasonable, queenly, diplomatic - suggested letters, though the thoughts of letters makes her head hurt and her chest constrict, at this point. It isn’t as though Ereshkigal won’t deliver them, though she doesn’t like to, and she isn’t an especially kind messenger.
But, Solis - she isn’t thinking about that, now. She feels nauseous. Lightheaded. Her mouth opens, and she manages to spit out an, “I-” but doesn’t manage to get any further. She doesn’t know how to explain herself. She doesn’t even know exactly what happened to her, much less how to put words to it; and all of the ones that she can muster feel like pitiful excuses. Does she know? Has she noticed, yet? She doesn’t think so, because surely she wouldn’t be looking like that, if she did, and-
She should tell her, she knows, but she can’t find the words. Perhaps it is the disappointment she anticipates, the preemptive prickle of shame it sends arcing up her spine. That is probably it. This feels like another failure, and she-
She is so tired of being shameful.
@Bexley || <3|| june jordan, "you came with shells" // title from "have never been a lonely god," paige ackerson-kiely
Sera || Eresh
but [they] / will tell about the howling / and the loss☼
There is always some part of her that screams: you should have become better from this.
You should not have grown tired and miserable, bent-double beneath the weight of your own memories; you should have become righteously furious and inspiring, willfully and insistently ferocious in the face of every injustice that you encountered. Or, if you had to become miserable - you should have at least become miserable in a way that it was easy to love, miserable in a way that was charming and romantic, miserable in a way that made someone want to save you.
If it had made you compelling - at least it would have been useful.
The water ripples beneath her frame. The Seraphina-in-the-water shifts with each low bump, and her eyes seize on the sharp angles of her cheekbones, and then on her sides, which are only beginning to swell. She can barely bring herself to think about what happened to her, like every other thing that has been done to her body over her past seven - nearly eight - years. It makes her think of a girl with dead, dark eyes, her white hair shorn off at the roots. It makes her think of a ghost, scarred ugly, bright gold. It makes her feel like a passenger in her own skin.
She knows whose doing this is, but he has been - silent. She doesn’t understand why this had to happen, least of all to her, but, then, that has never mattered in any of her personal tragedies. Did she do something wrong? If she did, then why was she never told-?
Bexley Briar is golden, but not like the dunes. She is gold like silk is gold; like sun-rays, but not the sun, are gold. She slips out of the desert and onto the shore of the Oasis, and Seraphina turns to stare at her and her white-toothed grin, and she feels like she is being torn in two.
She is happy to see her, or she should be. She knows that she should be, but she isn’t, quite, and it isn’t because of Bexley, she knows, because she could never not want to see her, but she doesn’t want anyone to see her, and-
We have got to start meeting on purpose.
“Yes,” she says, her voice admirably calm, and composed, and Seraphina-like, “we do,” and if this conversation had happened years ago, she might have been reasonable, queenly, diplomatic - suggested letters, though the thoughts of letters makes her head hurt and her chest constrict, at this point. It isn’t as though Ereshkigal won’t deliver them, though she doesn’t like to, and she isn’t an especially kind messenger.
But, Solis - she isn’t thinking about that, now. She feels nauseous. Lightheaded. Her mouth opens, and she manages to spit out an, “I-” but doesn’t manage to get any further. She doesn’t know how to explain herself. She doesn’t even know exactly what happened to her, much less how to put words to it; and all of the ones that she can muster feel like pitiful excuses. Does she know? Has she noticed, yet? She doesn’t think so, because surely she wouldn’t be looking like that, if she did, and-
She should tell her, she knows, but she can’t find the words. Perhaps it is the disappointment she anticipates, the preemptive prickle of shame it sends arcing up her spine. That is probably it. This feels like another failure, and she-
She is so tired of being shameful.
@
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
