BECAUSE NOTHING SHE COULD SAY COULD CHANGE THE MELTED MUSIC OF HER SPACE
Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace / Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief / Because her grief required no imagination / Because it was raining outside the palace / Because there was no rain in her vicinity.☼
Since her battle with Raum, nothing in Seraphina’s life has felt entirely real.
Now, as she looks down the shoreline and meets eyes with the man who used to be her Emissary, she cannot help but feel that everything around her is even less real than usual. She had barely become accustomed to inhabiting a world where seeing Eik and Bexley was completely ordinary when, abrupt as a lightning strike, she found herself living in a place where it was almost inconceivable to ever see either of them again. None of this feels quite right. Not the way that age is beginning to show in his face, in the way that he moves along the sand; not in the way that the waves leap at the shoreline with tender touches of foam. They should be in Solterra, years ago, and-
She hasn’t wanted to see anyone, lately. (She hasn’t wanted to see anyone in years.) Something curls in her throat, and she isn’t sure if it’s some kick from the still-unnamed twins inside of her or if it is her own, gnawing anticipation. Still, when he says her name, she feels something. Seraphina is not sure if she wants to laugh or to cry, and, if she wants to cry, if it is from relief or something a bit closer to pure, bitter-bright agony.
“Eik.” His name settles on her tongue with an aftertaste of oak tree. Somehow, it only feels halfway-familiar, and the thought makes her throat sting. She feels like his name should belong to someone else, someone younger, someone she watched mouth at the edges of parchment in the library once-
but if there is one thing that she has learned, or one thing that she knows innately, it is that she is no longer that Seraphina any more than he is still that Eik.
(Nothing ever feels gone like it should; in her half-life, her waking grave, it never quite feels over. She still wakes up feeling dead, even with the twitch of twins - twins - in her stomach.)
“Yes.” She is surprised at how easy the admission comes, because she doesn’t want it to; she has never wanted to admit to a weakness, least of all in the face of someone who followed her. (Followed her once, now. Not anymore, and never again. The impulse lingers, regardless, a desire to seem strong in the face of adversity – though she isn’t sure that anyone but her would understand her situation as an adversity, at least in a glance. Most expectant mothers are happy, and she is-) “I don’t think I’ve…” She trails off, pressing a sigh to the back of her mouth, and then finishes her sentence. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid of anything in my life.” And when she says it, she can’t quite bring herself to tell if it is true or not. There is a part of her that is only just beginning to untangle how much of her life she has spent afraid of one thing or another, and, more than that, afraid of admitting or acknowledging her own fear in the first place.
It’s nice to see you, he says, and she knows, in her own way, that he means it. (Perhaps that is why something inside of her seems to settle, that persistent guilt that scratches at the edges of her ribcage whenever she runs into anyone that she used to know. Guilt for failing. Guilt for fading, for falling out of sight, for disappearing. And now, lately, guilt for never making anything of herself in all that time she spent disappeared, for never becoming better from it.)
“You too,” comes her quiet reassurance, more urgent than she expects. “I’m – I’m glad to see you again.” I was beginning to think that I never would goes unsaid. (So does I’m glad that you’re alive and I’m glad that you’re here. As she has grown older, she has a feeling that she has become host to so many graves, so many disappearances. At least she cannot count him among them.)And when he says that he always thought that it would be different, here is a laugh in her mouth that isn’t a laugh, an upward curve of her lips that is only the facsimile of a smile, and she says, “And so….did I,” and it is hard to say if she means that she always thought that they would meet again under different circumstances or if she still finds the past two years – nearly three, now, when she thinks of it – unimaginable.
“Have you been well, Eik?” And she leaves so much unspoken, but she does wonder – how is Isra? How are his two daughters? She’s never met either of them. With something of a pang, it occurs to her that she doesn’t even know their names.
@Eik || <3 <3 <3 || june jordan, "what great grief has made the empress mute?" ; title from "eurydice," h.d.
Sera || Eresh
Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace / Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief / Because her grief required no imagination / Because it was raining outside the palace / Because there was no rain in her vicinity.☼
Since her battle with Raum, nothing in Seraphina’s life has felt entirely real.
Now, as she looks down the shoreline and meets eyes with the man who used to be her Emissary, she cannot help but feel that everything around her is even less real than usual. She had barely become accustomed to inhabiting a world where seeing Eik and Bexley was completely ordinary when, abrupt as a lightning strike, she found herself living in a place where it was almost inconceivable to ever see either of them again. None of this feels quite right. Not the way that age is beginning to show in his face, in the way that he moves along the sand; not in the way that the waves leap at the shoreline with tender touches of foam. They should be in Solterra, years ago, and-
She hasn’t wanted to see anyone, lately. (She hasn’t wanted to see anyone in years.) Something curls in her throat, and she isn’t sure if it’s some kick from the still-unnamed twins inside of her or if it is her own, gnawing anticipation. Still, when he says her name, she feels something. Seraphina is not sure if she wants to laugh or to cry, and, if she wants to cry, if it is from relief or something a bit closer to pure, bitter-bright agony.
“Eik.” His name settles on her tongue with an aftertaste of oak tree. Somehow, it only feels halfway-familiar, and the thought makes her throat sting. She feels like his name should belong to someone else, someone younger, someone she watched mouth at the edges of parchment in the library once-
but if there is one thing that she has learned, or one thing that she knows innately, it is that she is no longer that Seraphina any more than he is still that Eik.
(Nothing ever feels gone like it should; in her half-life, her waking grave, it never quite feels over. She still wakes up feeling dead, even with the twitch of twins - twins - in her stomach.)
“Yes.” She is surprised at how easy the admission comes, because she doesn’t want it to; she has never wanted to admit to a weakness, least of all in the face of someone who followed her. (Followed her once, now. Not anymore, and never again. The impulse lingers, regardless, a desire to seem strong in the face of adversity – though she isn’t sure that anyone but her would understand her situation as an adversity, at least in a glance. Most expectant mothers are happy, and she is-) “I don’t think I’ve…” She trails off, pressing a sigh to the back of her mouth, and then finishes her sentence. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid of anything in my life.” And when she says it, she can’t quite bring herself to tell if it is true or not. There is a part of her that is only just beginning to untangle how much of her life she has spent afraid of one thing or another, and, more than that, afraid of admitting or acknowledging her own fear in the first place.
It’s nice to see you, he says, and she knows, in her own way, that he means it. (Perhaps that is why something inside of her seems to settle, that persistent guilt that scratches at the edges of her ribcage whenever she runs into anyone that she used to know. Guilt for failing. Guilt for fading, for falling out of sight, for disappearing. And now, lately, guilt for never making anything of herself in all that time she spent disappeared, for never becoming better from it.)
“You too,” comes her quiet reassurance, more urgent than she expects. “I’m – I’m glad to see you again.” I was beginning to think that I never would goes unsaid. (So does I’m glad that you’re alive and I’m glad that you’re here. As she has grown older, she has a feeling that she has become host to so many graves, so many disappearances. At least she cannot count him among them.)And when he says that he always thought that it would be different, here is a laugh in her mouth that isn’t a laugh, an upward curve of her lips that is only the facsimile of a smile, and she says, “And so….did I,” and it is hard to say if she means that she always thought that they would meet again under different circumstances or if she still finds the past two years – nearly three, now, when she thinks of it – unimaginable.
“Have you been well, Eik?” And she leaves so much unspoken, but she does wonder – how is Isra? How are his two daughters? She’s never met either of them. With something of a pang, it occurs to her that she doesn’t even know their names.
@
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
