☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
try try your whole life to be righteous and to be good
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood
It’s quiet in the caves.
Seraphina can’t remember the last time she was down here – sometime in her youth, she knows. The soldiers would sneak through them to get past enemy lines. They aren’t safe, and, as she descends deeper and deeper into the musty darkness, she knows that they aren’t really familiar anymore, either. That doesn’t keep her from walking, however, loosing sleek strands of her snow-white hair and tying them around stalagmites to keep her way. A lantern dangles in the air at her side, rosy, cinnamon-scented flame sending odd shadows dancing along the cavern walls. There are torches lining the walls, long unlit; now that the caverns have become the hunting ground of thieves and outcasts, most of the passages remain dark and unwelcoming. She pushes forward, hair tumbling down her neck; she had not bothered to braid it.
She isn’t entirely sure what possessed her to descend into the ominous, labyrinthian darkness of the Abigo Caves. She knows well how dangerous they are, and, though she possesses reasonable trust in her own navigational skills, she knows that her kingdom is in no position to have the life of its sovereign at risk, particularly for a foolish venture. However, as she stared out at the Mors earlier that morning, steeling herself to travel to Veneror again, – for ceremony, not faith – she realized that she couldn’t bring herself to cross Novus under the weight of a sky she no longer wanted to see, her every move watched by the oppressive eyes of gods in which she had lost her belief. And so, she had returned to these familiar, spiraling pathways; with each step she takes, Seraphina sinks further and further away from the world above, as though she’s sinking beneath the ink-black water in the maze, some unseen monster prowling at her heels. It’s quiet, save for the gentle rhythm of her own breath and the clap of her hooves against the stones. Quiet, like the Mors at night, far away from the bustle of the capitol city. If you ran far enough into the desert, she’d learned, you could eventually reach expanses of sand where nothing could be seen from horizon to horizon but rising dunes, like waves, and endlessly blue sky. Once, they had been something of a comfort, a lapse from the relentless tension that inevitably came with navigating the capitol city. Now, whenever she stepped into the desert, she could think of nothing but the Davke watching, waiting like serpents in the sand. She knows that it was never safe, but, for a time, it had felt that way.
The path spills out into a large cavern enclosed around an underground lake, likely fed by a river she cannot see but thinks that she can hear. To her surprise, the cavern is open to the sky; at some point in her travels, she must have risen up towards the surface again. Starlight is spangled across the dark, mirror-like surface of the lake; it is as though all of the constellations have been plucked from the sky and flung across the water, as though there is no difference between the space above and the space below. She steps out into the starlight tentatively, lantern flickering at her side. It’s strangely beautiful and entirely unexpected, she has to admit – she had never seen water in the caves before, though she has occasionally heard tales of lakes large enough to be called seas and rivers far more magnificent and untainted than anything that could be found above the surface. As she paces tentatively down the stony, slick bank of the lake, she snuffs the flame of her lantern; she came prepared with plenty of matches, and the candle has more than enough wax left to burn, but she has no need for it under the cover of starlight. The water laps at her hooves, and she bends to drink, scattering the stars in waves of glittering ripples; it’s pleasantly cool and fresh against her lips. She draws back, then, and edges back towards the cavern walls, peering off into the bluish darkness in search of the next path. The silence is no longer a comfort under the open sky, but, although it would have been her solution in the past, she can’t find it in her to sing. Whenever she tries to remember the words, she finds herself thinking of what to do all over again; glassy eyes and bloody bodies are never out of her mind for long. She wants so desperately for her next move to be as clear as the mirror-like surface of the lake, but she knows that she can no longer look to the sky for guidance.
She paces forward along the water’s edge with little more than a rudimentary glance up.
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tags | @Renwick
notes | tagged as exp earning because I'm pretty sure it's...gonna hit some backstory-related requirements.
try try your whole life to be righteous and to be good
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood
It’s quiet in the caves.
Seraphina can’t remember the last time she was down here – sometime in her youth, she knows. The soldiers would sneak through them to get past enemy lines. They aren’t safe, and, as she descends deeper and deeper into the musty darkness, she knows that they aren’t really familiar anymore, either. That doesn’t keep her from walking, however, loosing sleek strands of her snow-white hair and tying them around stalagmites to keep her way. A lantern dangles in the air at her side, rosy, cinnamon-scented flame sending odd shadows dancing along the cavern walls. There are torches lining the walls, long unlit; now that the caverns have become the hunting ground of thieves and outcasts, most of the passages remain dark and unwelcoming. She pushes forward, hair tumbling down her neck; she had not bothered to braid it.
She isn’t entirely sure what possessed her to descend into the ominous, labyrinthian darkness of the Abigo Caves. She knows well how dangerous they are, and, though she possesses reasonable trust in her own navigational skills, she knows that her kingdom is in no position to have the life of its sovereign at risk, particularly for a foolish venture. However, as she stared out at the Mors earlier that morning, steeling herself to travel to Veneror again, – for ceremony, not faith – she realized that she couldn’t bring herself to cross Novus under the weight of a sky she no longer wanted to see, her every move watched by the oppressive eyes of gods in which she had lost her belief. And so, she had returned to these familiar, spiraling pathways; with each step she takes, Seraphina sinks further and further away from the world above, as though she’s sinking beneath the ink-black water in the maze, some unseen monster prowling at her heels. It’s quiet, save for the gentle rhythm of her own breath and the clap of her hooves against the stones. Quiet, like the Mors at night, far away from the bustle of the capitol city. If you ran far enough into the desert, she’d learned, you could eventually reach expanses of sand where nothing could be seen from horizon to horizon but rising dunes, like waves, and endlessly blue sky. Once, they had been something of a comfort, a lapse from the relentless tension that inevitably came with navigating the capitol city. Now, whenever she stepped into the desert, she could think of nothing but the Davke watching, waiting like serpents in the sand. She knows that it was never safe, but, for a time, it had felt that way.
The path spills out into a large cavern enclosed around an underground lake, likely fed by a river she cannot see but thinks that she can hear. To her surprise, the cavern is open to the sky; at some point in her travels, she must have risen up towards the surface again. Starlight is spangled across the dark, mirror-like surface of the lake; it is as though all of the constellations have been plucked from the sky and flung across the water, as though there is no difference between the space above and the space below. She steps out into the starlight tentatively, lantern flickering at her side. It’s strangely beautiful and entirely unexpected, she has to admit – she had never seen water in the caves before, though she has occasionally heard tales of lakes large enough to be called seas and rivers far more magnificent and untainted than anything that could be found above the surface. As she paces tentatively down the stony, slick bank of the lake, she snuffs the flame of her lantern; she came prepared with plenty of matches, and the candle has more than enough wax left to burn, but she has no need for it under the cover of starlight. The water laps at her hooves, and she bends to drink, scattering the stars in waves of glittering ripples; it’s pleasantly cool and fresh against her lips. She draws back, then, and edges back towards the cavern walls, peering off into the bluish darkness in search of the next path. The silence is no longer a comfort under the open sky, but, although it would have been her solution in the past, she can’t find it in her to sing. Whenever she tries to remember the words, she finds herself thinking of what to do all over again; glassy eyes and bloody bodies are never out of her mind for long. She wants so desperately for her next move to be as clear as the mirror-like surface of the lake, but she knows that she can no longer look to the sky for guidance.
She paces forward along the water’s edge with little more than a rudimentary glance up.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @
notes | tagged as exp earning because I'm pretty sure it's...gonna hit some backstory-related requirements.
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
