FROM THE GODS WHO SIT IN GRANDEURgrace is somehow violent--
A noncommittal hum of response to his words, trailed by a hint of a smile at the faintest expression of amusement on his features; if he planned to be evasive with his desires, with what he truly wanted in exchange for his loyalty, – because she was sure that a simple dance would not suffice – then Seraphina would reply with ambiguity in kind, at least until she knew he was willing to consider her proposition. For now, she supposed, she had to dance. (How long had it been since she’d last done so, much less with a partner? Months? A year? She pushed those thoughts aside – dance was simply another kind of battle, another exercise in grace and motion and attentiveness, and Seraphina was nothing if not perceptive. Even now, strangely relaxed, she watched his every motion, familiarizing herself with the way he moved. She would need to know, lest this dance be an embarrassingly clumsy affair.)
“I’m here, am I not?” She fixed him with a long, even stare. If she had made the trek from the deserts of Solterra to the fields of Delumine, she could certainly handle a short dance. With that, she brushed up against his side, inviting him to follow her movements.
She felt the song like the thrumming of her own blood, twisting and writhing within her veins like fire, like some ancestral memory; it felt like her homelands, stung like sand and grit and heat in her mouth. (And then it was the vast, endless sprawl of green that was Delumine, the roar of the oceans as they beat against the cliffs of Terrastella, rampant and untamed, the clear surface of the massive lake in Denocte, like a vast mirror to reflect the sky.) In its beat, she heard the clap of hooves against worn paths, songs sung by untrained tongues as they struggled for morale and purpose in the march towards a war that meant nothing – and, for a moment, she heard the foreign whispers of Viceroy, the sweet arias of her mother, little more than a haze of memories, like smoke after a flame, anymore. This song was not Solterran, but the combination of its parts somehow still rung familiar in her frame. She moved as freely as the wind on the sands, steps fluid and light to the slow, lilting beat, snakelike; her frame, usually only so unrestrained and graceful on the battlefield, swayed in time with the music. She led him forward without a hint of hesitation, and, were it not for the persistent heat transferred between their frames with each motion, she might have forgotten that he was there at all.
(Perhaps, she considered, for a breath, that his presence simply felt natural at her side, strangely natural. This was immediately dismissed – he was a good dancer, and nothing more. She would not have expected less of a warrior.)
As the music slowed to a halt, she slowed with it, until finally she stood motionless; her odd eyes, fire and ice, came to rest on his own. “Will that suffice?” Perhaps now he would lend her his ear.
(Diplomacy, she decided, was a strange affair.)
@Ammon - <3
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
