[P] waiting for that morning sun

[Seraphina]

I STAY EMPTY, I FEEL THE HUNGER
so simple when I was younger

--

Seraphina followed the footsteps of the ink-coated stranger in a silence that seemed to extend into her thoughts. She felt that she should have thought something as she followed him, but her mind was left empty as she stumbled in her mechanical pursuit; she was surrounded by gaping, uncomfortable quiet, save the soft whisper of growing wind. The throbbing in her leg had soon become so anticipated that she didn’t feel it at all, and the blood from the gashes on her chest had slowed to a gooey trickle – it was caked on her skin in a layer of dark, gelatinous pus, but she barely noticed it. Her mouth still tasted like copper, and, whenever she breathed, she sucked in the tangy, sticky scent of blood. It didn’t bother the warrior woman, though. She had dragged herself back to Solterra in far worse condition than this in the past, and she could certainly do it again.

Homecoming was not her present objective, however.

It might have seemed strange to be following behind the stallion that had caused her those wounds to begin with, but Seraphina had seen enough of him to gauge his skill, and Solterra was always on the hunt for capable warriors. During their battle, she hadn’t noticed the scent of any of the other courts on him, so she thought that he might be a loner. If he was, she had every intention of offering him a home in Solterra. Although there seemed to be a darkness gnawing at him, a cold rage that put her own indistinct apathy to shame, it was secondary to his skills, and Solis only knew that most of the Solterrans were damaged goods.

(And he’d spared her. He could have easily left her maimed, and, for a fraction of a second, she’d thought he might, but he hadn’t.)

The tall grasses of the Eleutheria Plains had risen to brush against her legs before she caught up with him again. The brilliant sunlight that had beat down upon her shoulders during their battle had fallen prey to a swarm of murky grey clouds, and she could smell the promise of rain – a foreign, earthy freshness to the desert mare – on the wind. Now it existed only in subdued beams of light that found their way through little cracks in the cloud cover; they left patches of the desaturated tawny sea illuminated in pure, pale gold. Autumn chill had crept in with the breeze, and Seraphina wasn’t sure if she minded it or not; there was a near-imperceptible tremble to her silver skin, but it could just have easily been the result of her injuries as the cold. Her mane, long tugged free of its braids, trailed behind her in ghostly tangles.

She trailed her eyes along the antlered stallion thoughtfully, though she kept her distance from him – she wasn’t sure if he’d noticed her, or if he had realized that he was being followed. (Somehow, she imagined that he had. He seemed clever.) Raising her voice to be audible over the wind, Seraphina offered, “You’re quite skilled.” Her words were genuine, but, in the mare's cool, throaty tones, words slurred softly with her desert drawl, they sounded like less of a compliment and more of an observation.

With that, she waited; she would have more to say once she had a chance to gauge his reaction.

@

@Ammon - this took for...ever....I am so sorry