☼ S E R A P H I N A ☼
be an outcast / qualified to live among your dead
Seraphina has found that she feels strangely at ease with Florentine, most of the time. There is something comfortable about her, and something kind; it is probably what made a good queen of her, for her tenure. For what it is worth – if there is anything to complain about in her broth, she does not have enough of a taste for good cooking to notice. Most of her meals are plucked fruits from the oasis and bits of foraged greens, and, during Raum’s reign, she spent months brought so utterly low that she scarcely ate anything, determined to give what she could find – what little the desert provided that wasn’t taken by the Regime – to the people beneath her. There is little food to complain about when you have been truly hungry; and she does not taste the broth as much as she tastes the way that it settles into her bones warmly, keeps out the chill.
And so – they cook and clean, and she settles into the comfortable simplicity of it. Her life has been many things, she thinks, but it has rarely been allowed to be so quiet. She has never thought of herself (or most of what she has experienced, though, if she thinks of it too much, she finds herself realizing, uncomfortable, that it is more unique than she would like) as special, but this is ordinary in a different way than she is accustomed to. It is ordinary in a way that feels more like life than death, and she isn’t sure what to do with that, yet – but she hopes that she will figure it out eventually.
When Florentine, smiling, suggests that she enjoy her retirement, she does not answer, but she does return an uneasy smile of her own. She doesn’t know what it means to be – idle, or retired. She always assumed that she would die first, but now she is alive, and, though she could return to her homeland, to the court that raised her and built her and broke her to pieces, but she doesn’t know if she wants to. That is the trouble, she thinks. She does not know what she wants.
(There are so many things that she longs for – but it is so hard to believe that she could ever have them. It is so hard to even think of them.)
She can help Florentine, at least; and she studies her expression carefully when she offers, but she cannot read it. Soon after, they are settled for the night, and she tries to force herself to sleep, but, in the unfamiliar space of her cottage, though she does not feel cold (the fire is still burning, after all), she feels a chill. She lies awake for hours, uncertainty gnawing a hole in the pit of her stomach, and, though she is sure that she falls asleep eventually, she swears that she only spends a moment in the empty darkness of slumber.
She has felt aimless for so long, and so much of her still does – but, in the cold light of morning, she is sure that she will find much left to do.
tags | @Florentine
notes | <3
"speech"
be an outcast / qualified to live among your dead
Seraphina has found that she feels strangely at ease with Florentine, most of the time. There is something comfortable about her, and something kind; it is probably what made a good queen of her, for her tenure. For what it is worth – if there is anything to complain about in her broth, she does not have enough of a taste for good cooking to notice. Most of her meals are plucked fruits from the oasis and bits of foraged greens, and, during Raum’s reign, she spent months brought so utterly low that she scarcely ate anything, determined to give what she could find – what little the desert provided that wasn’t taken by the Regime – to the people beneath her. There is little food to complain about when you have been truly hungry; and she does not taste the broth as much as she tastes the way that it settles into her bones warmly, keeps out the chill.
And so – they cook and clean, and she settles into the comfortable simplicity of it. Her life has been many things, she thinks, but it has rarely been allowed to be so quiet. She has never thought of herself (or most of what she has experienced, though, if she thinks of it too much, she finds herself realizing, uncomfortable, that it is more unique than she would like) as special, but this is ordinary in a different way than she is accustomed to. It is ordinary in a way that feels more like life than death, and she isn’t sure what to do with that, yet – but she hopes that she will figure it out eventually.
When Florentine, smiling, suggests that she enjoy her retirement, she does not answer, but she does return an uneasy smile of her own. She doesn’t know what it means to be – idle, or retired. She always assumed that she would die first, but now she is alive, and, though she could return to her homeland, to the court that raised her and built her and broke her to pieces, but she doesn’t know if she wants to. That is the trouble, she thinks. She does not know what she wants.
(There are so many things that she longs for – but it is so hard to believe that she could ever have them. It is so hard to even think of them.)
She can help Florentine, at least; and she studies her expression carefully when she offers, but she cannot read it. Soon after, they are settled for the night, and she tries to force herself to sleep, but, in the unfamiliar space of her cottage, though she does not feel cold (the fire is still burning, after all), she feels a chill. She lies awake for hours, uncertainty gnawing a hole in the pit of her stomach, and, though she is sure that she falls asleep eventually, she swears that she only spends a moment in the empty darkness of slumber.
She has felt aimless for so long, and so much of her still does – but, in the cold light of morning, she is sure that she will find much left to do.
tags | @
notes | <3
"speech"
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
