[P] to never do anything by half-measures;

[Seraphina]

S E R A P H I N A

in the absence of everything
ABSTAIN FROM FEAR

--

Feeling crept back into her like spring after an especially long winter – the numbing, throbbing pain draped lavishly across her shoulders like some great cape receded to little but the familiar lash of desert heat and movement as her tangle of wounds, like a thicket of jagged pink thorns, healed. Consider, however, that was not the only feeling that came creeping up upon Seraphina in the aftermath of the teryr hunt. The heavy weight of responsibility and all of the strange, foreign, sealed-up emotions that came with it, a mess of anxieties and fears, loomed at the floodgates of her carefully-regulated barricades. This did nothing to ease her stiff posture or cold expression, of course; Seraphina appeared blissfully distinct from the world around her, capable of examining the world without consideration for fickle little things like attachment or morality, subject to change quick as the wind. Her interest was in efficiency, or so she contested. As unfortunate as these newfound insecurities were, she was determined to persevere without allowing them to hinder her judgement, to remain impartial and alien.

(And then there was the socializing.)

Dawn’s rosy fingertips were just beginning to brush across the edge of the golden horizon when she made her way out of the library and onto the battlements, an apparition cast in hazy silver glow beneath the dappled starlight which managed to escape the windows. When she moved free of the confinement of Keep walls, she stood practically illuminated in the pale light, the stark white of her mane aflame in the midst of nondescript darkness and sandstone. She hoped that Maxence had received her note – she’d scarcely been able to find heads or tails of him for days, and she needed to speak to him. Most pressingly, there was the issue of Rostislav in the dungeons, and what Maxence hoped to do with him. (She felt a prick of irritation considering it, but swallowed it down. Why hadn’t he consulted with her?) Then there was the matter of the Temple of Solis, which she’d agreed to bring to Maxence’s attention when next she spoke with him…and a small part of her simply wanted to speak with him. He was their leader, their sovereign, their king, and she knew so little of him. She had a feeling that they all knew little of him – or his motivations, however pure he claimed them to be – and it was that ambiguity that fed serpents like Velorca. Best to parse him for herself, then, figure out what sort of man he was, rather than what sort of man he claimed to be.


Seraphina remained at her vigil in silence, eyes cast out to greet the rising sun.

@


@Maxence - <3