☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
in the end, the World takes everything.
Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
She isn’t prepared, exactly, to feel a jerk of something more like anxious pain than relief when his expression brightens with a sudden, luminous emotion that she recognizes dully as hope. His lips curve up into a smile which is almost childlike, suddenly befitting his youthful, dimpled features, and her heart makes an awkward stuttering movement in her chest, like a clock with a broken hand. For a moment, he is bright and alive, and she can’t help but remember that this, this is what hope does to people. Seraphina cannot help but remember the hopeless expressions of the people that she found while Raum was in power – the beggars on the street, war-orphans, half-starved widows – and how they had looked when they saw the gold-scarred face of Fia, the way that she had told stories of perseverance, of cities that grew back up from their ashes, of battlefields worse than this-
And, with a momentary close of her eyes and a quiet, ghostly exhalation, she recalls a city full of statues and the hungry mouth of a basilisk, a madman who could not allow any other living creature to be happy because of his own misery, and suddenly there is nothing worthwhile about hoping for anything at all. The reality of any situation will always find a way to be crueler than any of her imaginings, she knows.
The boy thanks her, and she wonders if he will still be thankful if she is wrong, or if something has changed. (She can only hope that she was correct, rather than irresponsible.) It is enough, he tells her, for the moment. A part of her longs to hope that is true. She longs to believe that it is enough for hope – however beaten-down and battered - to sustain you until you find something else to live for; and not just for the boy. Perhaps she also longs for the sake of the two lives growing inside of her, and, more selfishly, perhaps she longs for herself.
“I only hope,” she says, softly and reluctantly (because she has almost forgotten how to hope for anything much), “that anything comes of it. You can find a guide to lead you to Terrastella in the city, I’m sure, once you’ve gotten settled.”
(She almost offers to guide him herself, but a kick in her stomach suggests that she might not be available when he wishes to leave.)
And she keeps leading him across the dunes – towards the gates of that great sandstone city, a beacon to travelers among the harshness and the cruelty of the desert, burnt and rebuilt and burnt and rebuilt time and time again.
tags | @Mauna
notes | <3
quote | cynthia cruz, "letters to emily"
"speech" || "ereshkigal"
in the end, the World takes everything.
Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
She isn’t prepared, exactly, to feel a jerk of something more like anxious pain than relief when his expression brightens with a sudden, luminous emotion that she recognizes dully as hope. His lips curve up into a smile which is almost childlike, suddenly befitting his youthful, dimpled features, and her heart makes an awkward stuttering movement in her chest, like a clock with a broken hand. For a moment, he is bright and alive, and she can’t help but remember that this, this is what hope does to people. Seraphina cannot help but remember the hopeless expressions of the people that she found while Raum was in power – the beggars on the street, war-orphans, half-starved widows – and how they had looked when they saw the gold-scarred face of Fia, the way that she had told stories of perseverance, of cities that grew back up from their ashes, of battlefields worse than this-
And, with a momentary close of her eyes and a quiet, ghostly exhalation, she recalls a city full of statues and the hungry mouth of a basilisk, a madman who could not allow any other living creature to be happy because of his own misery, and suddenly there is nothing worthwhile about hoping for anything at all. The reality of any situation will always find a way to be crueler than any of her imaginings, she knows.
The boy thanks her, and she wonders if he will still be thankful if she is wrong, or if something has changed. (She can only hope that she was correct, rather than irresponsible.) It is enough, he tells her, for the moment. A part of her longs to hope that is true. She longs to believe that it is enough for hope – however beaten-down and battered - to sustain you until you find something else to live for; and not just for the boy. Perhaps she also longs for the sake of the two lives growing inside of her, and, more selfishly, perhaps she longs for herself.
“I only hope,” she says, softly and reluctantly (because she has almost forgotten how to hope for anything much), “that anything comes of it. You can find a guide to lead you to Terrastella in the city, I’m sure, once you’ve gotten settled.”
(She almost offers to guide him herself, but a kick in her stomach suggests that she might not be available when he wishes to leave.)
And she keeps leading him across the dunes – towards the gates of that great sandstone city, a beacon to travelers among the harshness and the cruelty of the desert, burnt and rebuilt and burnt and rebuilt time and time again.
tags | @
notes | <3
quote | cynthia cruz, "letters to emily"
"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
