☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers
real gods require blood
It has been a week since the Davke had come.
A week since everything she had built had gone up in smoke. A week since she had been reminded in the most vicious and ugly manner imaginable exactly who she was and what she stood against.
A week since, again, she had been forced to ask herself why and found no answer.
As always, Seraphina had put out the fires. As always, she had hunted down the stragglers. As always, she had met bloodlust with blood – as always, she’d collected the bodies. She wondered how long the sandstone roads would stink of burning flesh and smoke. She wondered how long it would take to rebuild, if they could ever rebuild at all. She wondered how long the Davke would be kept at bay, if this vengeance was as fickle and foolish and self-righteous as their motivations – if all the blood she had watched her nation shed was enough to fill their stomachs. She did not care if they were done or not; she merely cared for how long she’d have to devise them into graves they’d dig themselves.
She wants to ache. She wants to ache, to rage, to scream - but her lips can only find the same, tired words, and her chest feels like it is caving in to nothing.
And now she meanders up familiar, worn stone paths under a canopy of patched starlight, content enough in the court’s stability to travel outside of it. There is something that she must do.
In her charcoal lips, she clutches a golden emblem melded into the shape of the sun. It was once situated above her throne; the emblem was, supposedly, a relic from the time of Queen Sol, forged by her blacksmith-lover to proclaim her allegiance to Solis. The edges are slightly rough, chipped by the carving knife she’d used to pry it free from the ancient wood that only miraculously survived the flames. Alongside it, a candle, and an accompanying match. As she reaches the peak, the heavens open above her head, pelting the silver with a cold dusting of rain and wind that knocks her hair from its braids and leaves it streaming rivulets down the sides of her neck. Perhaps, she thinks, it is only right that she does this now, the furthest she can ever be from her god’s light. In the darkness and the haze, she finds herself consumed, another monochromatic smudge against a desolate landscape of mottled stone.
As she takes her final steps up to the shrines, she drinks in the sight of them – beautiful and ancient and untouched by time. As she passes each of them, she pauses, offering a small dip of her head in acknowledgement; no prayers, though. She realizes that, during the Davke attack, during the slaughter, no prayer passed her lips – no prayer even came to mind, not even the soft mantra that she’d repeated through all her years of war. Perhaps, even then, she had known. Perhaps, even before she heard the whispers, even before she saw the Davke come, a halo of gold illuminating the swirl of dust set up against the horizon, she had known. Perhaps she had always known.
She knows now.
She finds her way to Solis’s shrine last and takes some meager cover underneath it, depositing the candle and the emblem on the cold marble. She lights the match with her mind and lifts the tiny flame to the wick, alighting the candle; it flickers red-orange against her bloodshot eyes and stark features, strangely warm in the cold and the rain. With that done, she casts a long glance at the emblem, and then pushes it forward to the golden hooves of the sun god, polished and glimmering like wildfire against the frail light of the candle. She tries to think of prayers to whisper, but the words won’t come – her throat seems to close up whenever she tries to cede to them, as though even a search for finality is too much of a concession to make. She tells herself that there is no need to speak her mind to the sun god. There is nothing on his sands of which he is unaware.
The candle flickers out with a gust of mountain wind, leaving little more than a trail of smoke as ghostly silver as the mare’s coat and a faint recollection of cinnamon.
So why had she come, if not to seek some light in the darkness, if not to ask for aid as she struggles to rebuild what remains of the kingdom of day? She looks up into the hard, unfeeling eyes of the statue and wonders if she is beginning to resemble it – no, she thinks, as she catches the vicious, proud twitch of his brows and the curl of his lips and remembers that there is nothing, nothing, nothing that would spark her features to rage. Her apathy is alien and wrong, but she can’t seem to untangle herself from it, and, in the wake of the slaughter, she is unwilling to try; if nothing else, it will serve her well in the days to come.
She is not chosen by those eyes.
Sovereigns were supposed to be chosen by their patron gods, were they not? That is what she has always been told – that was what Zolin claimed whenever his orders were rejected, though she cannot believe that he was chosen by Solis, either. Perhaps she’s every bit as much a sham as her predecessor. Maxence was chosen; he’d slain a teryr, after all. (The same teryr, she thinks, that would have left her dead without his interference – if she ever needed a sign that this crown was not her own, it was that.) Avdotya was fire and rage and ambition, and just as culpable in the creature’s death as Maxence; was it really, then, a shock that the sun god’s favor would go to her, a woman that could take power and vengeance by her own volition, rather than the silver, who’d only ever come into possession of it by chance? She is the Queen of the Day Court, now, but she’d never been the Queen of the Sun. She wants to be angry, or jealous; she wants to be bitter. She wishes she could ask if all of those years of prayer, of screaming, of begging weren’t enough – she wants to say that she tried. She knows that none of those things matter to the sun god. She understands. Nor does she blame the slaughter on him; that belonged to nothing but her own incompetence, her own foolishness. Nevertheless, she knows who he aided that day.
She has spent all her years worshipping a god who demands fire, and all she has ever had to offer is smoke.
Seraphina is not interested in begging for scraps of favor; she is not interested in begging for anything at all. She is done with begging, done with searching for answers, done with searching for some compensation for a past that is nothing but smoke and ashes – if she cannot be volatile and furious as flame (and, when she probes at the space inside of her, darker and darker and deeper and deeper by the day, she knows that she will never have fire), she will be as enduring and creeping as winter ice. She knows what she is; she’ll sooner break than bend.
She takes a deep breath, then exhales white. Her eyes remain on the statue. “The Day Court remains your domain. Its people still look to you for light, beyond the smoke.” One last thing lingers on her tongue, mingled with the taste of blood that she cannot seem to wash out. Seraphina does not hesitate. She is done with hesitation. She is done with being a belonging; she is done with the gods-damned collar around her neck. She will see her people restored – she will see her predecessors’ mistakes fixed – regardless of what it may cost her.
She whispers her final words in quiet defiance – the steady, certain voice of one who’d been crushed beneath the weight of one too many sets of hooves. “But I am no longer yours.”
half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers
real gods require blood
It has been a week since the Davke had come.
A week since everything she had built had gone up in smoke. A week since she had been reminded in the most vicious and ugly manner imaginable exactly who she was and what she stood against.
A week since, again, she had been forced to ask herself why and found no answer.
As always, Seraphina had put out the fires. As always, she had hunted down the stragglers. As always, she had met bloodlust with blood – as always, she’d collected the bodies. She wondered how long the sandstone roads would stink of burning flesh and smoke. She wondered how long it would take to rebuild, if they could ever rebuild at all. She wondered how long the Davke would be kept at bay, if this vengeance was as fickle and foolish and self-righteous as their motivations – if all the blood she had watched her nation shed was enough to fill their stomachs. She did not care if they were done or not; she merely cared for how long she’d have to devise them into graves they’d dig themselves.
She wants to ache. She wants to ache, to rage, to scream - but her lips can only find the same, tired words, and her chest feels like it is caving in to nothing.
And now she meanders up familiar, worn stone paths under a canopy of patched starlight, content enough in the court’s stability to travel outside of it. There is something that she must do.
In her charcoal lips, she clutches a golden emblem melded into the shape of the sun. It was once situated above her throne; the emblem was, supposedly, a relic from the time of Queen Sol, forged by her blacksmith-lover to proclaim her allegiance to Solis. The edges are slightly rough, chipped by the carving knife she’d used to pry it free from the ancient wood that only miraculously survived the flames. Alongside it, a candle, and an accompanying match. As she reaches the peak, the heavens open above her head, pelting the silver with a cold dusting of rain and wind that knocks her hair from its braids and leaves it streaming rivulets down the sides of her neck. Perhaps, she thinks, it is only right that she does this now, the furthest she can ever be from her god’s light. In the darkness and the haze, she finds herself consumed, another monochromatic smudge against a desolate landscape of mottled stone.
As she takes her final steps up to the shrines, she drinks in the sight of them – beautiful and ancient and untouched by time. As she passes each of them, she pauses, offering a small dip of her head in acknowledgement; no prayers, though. She realizes that, during the Davke attack, during the slaughter, no prayer passed her lips – no prayer even came to mind, not even the soft mantra that she’d repeated through all her years of war. Perhaps, even then, she had known. Perhaps, even before she heard the whispers, even before she saw the Davke come, a halo of gold illuminating the swirl of dust set up against the horizon, she had known. Perhaps she had always known.
She knows now.
She finds her way to Solis’s shrine last and takes some meager cover underneath it, depositing the candle and the emblem on the cold marble. She lights the match with her mind and lifts the tiny flame to the wick, alighting the candle; it flickers red-orange against her bloodshot eyes and stark features, strangely warm in the cold and the rain. With that done, she casts a long glance at the emblem, and then pushes it forward to the golden hooves of the sun god, polished and glimmering like wildfire against the frail light of the candle. She tries to think of prayers to whisper, but the words won’t come – her throat seems to close up whenever she tries to cede to them, as though even a search for finality is too much of a concession to make. She tells herself that there is no need to speak her mind to the sun god. There is nothing on his sands of which he is unaware.
The candle flickers out with a gust of mountain wind, leaving little more than a trail of smoke as ghostly silver as the mare’s coat and a faint recollection of cinnamon.
So why had she come, if not to seek some light in the darkness, if not to ask for aid as she struggles to rebuild what remains of the kingdom of day? She looks up into the hard, unfeeling eyes of the statue and wonders if she is beginning to resemble it – no, she thinks, as she catches the vicious, proud twitch of his brows and the curl of his lips and remembers that there is nothing, nothing, nothing that would spark her features to rage. Her apathy is alien and wrong, but she can’t seem to untangle herself from it, and, in the wake of the slaughter, she is unwilling to try; if nothing else, it will serve her well in the days to come.
She is not chosen by those eyes.
Sovereigns were supposed to be chosen by their patron gods, were they not? That is what she has always been told – that was what Zolin claimed whenever his orders were rejected, though she cannot believe that he was chosen by Solis, either. Perhaps she’s every bit as much a sham as her predecessor. Maxence was chosen; he’d slain a teryr, after all. (The same teryr, she thinks, that would have left her dead without his interference – if she ever needed a sign that this crown was not her own, it was that.) Avdotya was fire and rage and ambition, and just as culpable in the creature’s death as Maxence; was it really, then, a shock that the sun god’s favor would go to her, a woman that could take power and vengeance by her own volition, rather than the silver, who’d only ever come into possession of it by chance? She is the Queen of the Day Court, now, but she’d never been the Queen of the Sun. She wants to be angry, or jealous; she wants to be bitter. She wishes she could ask if all of those years of prayer, of screaming, of begging weren’t enough – she wants to say that she tried. She knows that none of those things matter to the sun god. She understands. Nor does she blame the slaughter on him; that belonged to nothing but her own incompetence, her own foolishness. Nevertheless, she knows who he aided that day.
She has spent all her years worshipping a god who demands fire, and all she has ever had to offer is smoke.
Seraphina is not interested in begging for scraps of favor; she is not interested in begging for anything at all. She is done with begging, done with searching for answers, done with searching for some compensation for a past that is nothing but smoke and ashes – if she cannot be volatile and furious as flame (and, when she probes at the space inside of her, darker and darker and deeper and deeper by the day, she knows that she will never have fire), she will be as enduring and creeping as winter ice. She knows what she is; she’ll sooner break than bend.
She takes a deep breath, then exhales white. Her eyes remain on the statue. “The Day Court remains your domain. Its people still look to you for light, beyond the smoke.” One last thing lingers on her tongue, mingled with the taste of blood that she cannot seem to wash out. Seraphina does not hesitate. She is done with hesitation. She is done with being a belonging; she is done with the gods-damned collar around her neck. She will see her people restored – she will see her predecessors’ mistakes fixed – regardless of what it may cost her.
She whispers her final words in quiet defiance – the steady, certain voice of one who’d been crushed beneath the weight of one too many sets of hooves. “But I am no longer yours.”
@Aislinn - <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
