She watched the stranger with an even, if somewhat curious, caution, though the gentle lilt of his voice wanted desperately to put her at ease; she supposed that she had always held a certain - buried - admiration for those that could speak freely, unrestrained by what was meant to be proper and right and fortified. When she spoke, for her drawling Solterran accent, Seraphina knew that she conveyed nothing but dry logic, and she felt more than a prick of envy in the face of such openness. However, it was an exploitable weakness, and she knew better than to allow fleeting interests – the desire to know others at all, to understand, to empathize, to be understood – to interfere with her duties. So long as she completed them she was right, and there was nothing more fulfilling than being right.
(She still admired (or, more privately, liked, or envied, or both) his voice and the unworried, genuine pleasantness of his smile.)
He confirmed what she had already suspected; what but the relic would bring a stranger to the Day Court in the absence of a sovereign? His next words did contradict her logic, as he admitted that he appreciated the warmth of Solterra, something that she did understand. “I’ll admit that I find the heat exhausting, until I spend some time away...though I think that I miss the view far more than the weather,” She admitted, offering a small dip of her head. In the depths of the Mors, quiet and empty as she imagined the darkest reaches of the ocean, she could stare out for miles at nothing but empty sky. There was a familiarity to that loneliness and calm, and she found that she took it for granted when she left. He proceeded to introduce himself – Reichenbach.
Warrior of Denocte, The Night Court.
She’d thought that she’d placed a bit of the accent.
A flicker of instinctive distrust twitched in her throat for a fraction of a second. When she was young, Seraphina recalled skirmishes between Day and Night; she had been far too young and green to fight herself, but Viceroy was of high rank, and she was his protégé and constant companion. The horrors of war, like all horrors, had never been hidden from her – somehow the wild-eyed survivors, burnt and mauled beyond recognition, haunted her far less than the burials. There were always more graves to dig, all unmarked and scattered across foreign soil. She’d tried to find flowers for them, desperate to atone for something she could not put into words, and she was nearly captured three times while hunting for blooms in the muddled turf. Seraphina was younger, then. Sentiment had felt valuable enough to pursue.
Relations had been far more diplomatic, if icy, in more recent years. She was about to offer her own introduction when Reichenbach called out to Venari – apparently the two were acquainted, and considering how many times she’d run into the same individuals while on her own search, she wasn’t surprised. Reichenbach asked Venari to introduce her, so, in the interest of politeness, she remained silent as she black-and-teal stallion approached, dipping his antlered skull and offering a polite greeting to her, first. “The same, Venari,” She responded in kind, though her tone and expression remained perfectly cool and composed. “Interesting pretenses indeed – I’m simply glad that you were not what I was anticipating. I’ll admit, I am…unaccustomed to combat in enclosed spaces.”
Venari introduced her first, and she offered a quick dip of her head in kind, listening patiently as he reintroduced Reichenbach. Once he seemed to be finished, she offered a soft, “A pleasure to meet you, Reichenbach.” Venari continued, reintroducing himself as a caretaker. At his remark, she offered a rather pointed glance at his antlers. “I wouldn’t count yourself out of the running so quickly, unless those are just for show.”
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
