BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
something wicked this way comes--
She doesn’t fail to notice the shift in his posture as she unrolls the scroll – it was common among foreigners, she thinks, to be caught unaware by the inherent magic of Novus. (For even the telekinesis, she imagines, was a gift from the gods. Seraphina had been told that not all gods were good outside of Novus, or kind; sometimes she isn’t even sure if her own were, either.) He moves closer to the crisp papyrus, breathing in its musky scent, and, to her surprise, begins to nip at the paper’s stained edges. She considers warning him to be careful with the document, but thinks better of it. Eik doesn’t seem to be doing it any harm, and far be it from she to dissuade him from learning more of Novus, even if the object of his curiosity seems, to her, entirely mundane.
He seems to realize that she is watching him, and, with a hint of dry amusement creasing his features, returns his dark, dark eyes to her. Seraphina still hasn’t decided what to make of him, this curious and somewhat elusive being, difficult to read as she has ever seen; he was clever, she decides. She’s not sure what kind of cleverness it is yet. Some are blessed with a cleverness that pulls them from the flames, but others have a cleverness that burns - and perhaps Eik has a bit of both. She eyes him clinically, as though she intends to take him apart and piece him back together with her gaze. However, as he answers her question, her expression morphs to something more enigmatic. Perhaps there is a bit of concern buried within it, even, because she has seen that distant stare. “It suits-“ She begins, then leaves him in quiet. She has felt that distant stare, when she remembers those upturned eyes, facing the sky like glass marbles. She has seen those eyes on Viceroy when he dipped into those long, unpleasant periods of silence, not seeing anything, not hearing anything, not really there, possessed by memories of a land of ghosts. As his expression and posture devolve into panic, she thinks of Viceroy again, but she doesn’t think of him as Viceroy the beast, the horror that shattered her memories to strands and broke her time and time again; she thinks of a crumpled Viceroy, a screaming Viceroy, a Viceroy that felt all too much or nothing at all, a Viceroy in caught like an animal in a trap, struggling to find his way free. (She pitied him, sometimes. It was hard to. Now, it is hard to feel anything, but sometimes it still pricks.) She shakes those thoughts away, and, as gently as she can muster (which is still not very gently), asks, “Are you alright, Eik?”
He breaks free of what she can only assume was his own memory with an apologetic ghost of a smile; she wants to tell him that there’s no need for that kind of a look, not in a land like Solterra where it seems everyone is just a broken piece attempting to mold themselves into something whole, but she stays silent. His next question brings a faint curl to the edges of her lips, her eyes flickering away. “Yes, he…he did. It’s like learning to speak, if you grow up with it.” Viceroy. He had taught her everything, but memories of him still scrape at the back of her mind because she still can’t decide who he was, much less who his ghost, so permanently entrenched in everything she says or does, is. She is quick to change the subject. “Do you have writings like this in your homeland?”
Her eyes find their way back up to him at his next remark. “It varies. Most are from the past few centuries, but others…” She trails off, considering. “Others are more than a thousand years old.” There might be the faintest hint of pride in her tone, pride for the half of her lineage that grew among these sands – pride for a society that has overcome the inhospitable dangers of the land that was given to them.
He continues, and she responds in kind. “I don’t know if I’m looking for anything,” She admits, her voice dipping low. “Zolin kept all but his most trusted advisors out of the library when I was younger – he kept knowledge from the people. Our history, our writings, our beliefs…he feared them, so he kept them locked away.” Knowledge was dangerous to men like Zolin. Fortunately, it did not seem that Maxence felt the same way, much less she; a well-educated populace was invaluable. “I am simply trying to familiarize myself with what is here.” Maybe it is a bit more than that – Seraphina does not know who she is. She thinks she might have known, once, but her memories lie in incomprehensible fragments, now, her existence consisting wholly of little blips of who she was. If she found her people, perhaps, she thinks, she will find herself. His next remark is enough to bring a flicker of amusement to her features, though it is banished almost immediately. “You don’t need to apologize for asking questions,” Seraphina assures him, but she notes that he sounded wholly unapologetic in the first place.
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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
