☼ 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
Charcoal ears twitch forward to catch his response. “…I was.” She feels like she’s facing an anomaly, some passing ghost, a face that she never expected to see again – but they had all become faceless to her, somewhere during all of that bloodshed. He’s moving closer to the water’s edge and to her, and, this time, she stands her ground. Seraphina is not afraid of him, though she imagines that he would be a challenge to take down in a fight. In a fight. Try as she might, she can’t stop herself from thinking of any passing stranger as a threat, though she imagines it is healthy in a land so bloodthirsty as her desert kingdom. She watches those moonstone eyes, uncertain, expression unreadable.
When he speaks next, his voice is mangled with something she recognizes as regret. “I didn’t see out the War though, killing younglings wasn’t what I signed up for. None of us signed up for that.”
His words provoke a stiff exhale. She knew that, too, of course. They weren’t just fed to the war because Zolin was running out of soldiers; the children also proved a massive psychological toll on the enemy. Their very presence was as effective a weapon as the violence they provided, with their empty, broken eyes and their empty relentlessness. She wonders, then, if she is looking at a man to whom war meant something. How jarring to see little things with knives clutched between their teeth cascading over the dunes in a flood of gangling limbs, intent on bloodshed for no reason but that they must. Fighting a child like that, she imagined, would be terrible. Fighting any child at all would be terrible – a useless loss of a life that could have meant something. “Oh.” And then, with surprisingly genuine sympathy, she adds, “I…I’m sorry.” She’s not sure if she’s apologizing for the experience or her own presence, her own culpability. Seraphina has killed many times. She’s never liked it, although she has a difficult time liking much of anything. She’s never been forced to kill children before. She wants to tell him that they would have considered it a mercy, if they weren’t all gone by then, but she’s not sure that those words are true. She might have wished she were dead time and time again during the war, but she’d never actually died, and now…now she’s something else entirely. Now she is a queen; now she is the ruler, not the powerless pawn. She still isn’t sure if it is a good thing, and she knows that the crown fits awkwardly on her head. She’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to get past what the war did to her, either, if she’ll ever be able to truly understand the reality that all of those around her seem to be living. However, she cannot deny that the Davke attack has loosed something inside of her that laid buried for what felt like lifetimes.
Some small part of her, deep down, buried beneath walls and walls and walls continues kicking. She doesn’t have fire, and she doesn’t think she ever will, but maybe that little flicker is enough.
He has another question. “Why do you still wear it?” A pointed glance at her collar. She follows his eyes.
Seraphina blinks at him with something akin to confusion, as though she’s never considered the proposition before. “I can’t.” Her voice is flat, momentarily, the answer stated as though it should be abundantly obvious. It isn’t, though. Of course it isn’t, and of course he doesn’t understand why she wears it – why would anyone wear the horrors they have seen around their neck if they could take them off? She inclines her head slightly, then, white waves falling in her eyes. (Should have put it in braids, she thinks; when loose, the length is a hassle.) “Do you know how they trained us?” A genuine question, but one she already suspects that she knows the answer to. Viceroy liked to keep his methods secret. In any case, she doesn’t actually wait for his response. If he doesn’t know, she’ll save him the unpleasant details. “The collar is…fundamental to our…conditioning. I can’t take it off.” The simple act of removing it would not be difficult – it is only held together by clamps. All she would have to do is unclamp it, and it would fall off her throat all on its own. This simple removal, however, is precisely the reason why the collars were manufactured. They were uncomfortable and shameful, tools that became associated with the pain of repetitive beatings and psychological manipulation; whenever they were brought through the city, they knew that others turned their eyes away whenever they caught a glimpse of the silver sliver around their throats. They wanted absolute obedience from their soldiers, and the collar ensured it, tested it. It would be so easy to take it off.
If their training was complete, they never would.
She pauses for a moment. Then, hesitantly: “…but sometimes I think there might be more to it than that.” Now, more than anything, the collar is a symbol, an insult to the system that created her worn in the place of a crown. I am not one of you, and I never will be – and you’d best be sure that I won’t forget your crimes for a moment. She doesn’t like attaching sentiment to her noose, but she’s hardly ignorant of what it has come to mean among her people, although few of them brave mentioning it to her. Seraphina does not want to be like Zolin, and she wants all of Novus to know that she will never become him.
Being an ugly symbol of what he wrought, then, suits her comfortably.
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tags | @Renwick
notes | <3
try try your whole life to be righteous and to be good
wind up on your own floor, choking on blood
Charcoal ears twitch forward to catch his response. “…I was.” She feels like she’s facing an anomaly, some passing ghost, a face that she never expected to see again – but they had all become faceless to her, somewhere during all of that bloodshed. He’s moving closer to the water’s edge and to her, and, this time, she stands her ground. Seraphina is not afraid of him, though she imagines that he would be a challenge to take down in a fight. In a fight. Try as she might, she can’t stop herself from thinking of any passing stranger as a threat, though she imagines it is healthy in a land so bloodthirsty as her desert kingdom. She watches those moonstone eyes, uncertain, expression unreadable.
When he speaks next, his voice is mangled with something she recognizes as regret. “I didn’t see out the War though, killing younglings wasn’t what I signed up for. None of us signed up for that.”
His words provoke a stiff exhale. She knew that, too, of course. They weren’t just fed to the war because Zolin was running out of soldiers; the children also proved a massive psychological toll on the enemy. Their very presence was as effective a weapon as the violence they provided, with their empty, broken eyes and their empty relentlessness. She wonders, then, if she is looking at a man to whom war meant something. How jarring to see little things with knives clutched between their teeth cascading over the dunes in a flood of gangling limbs, intent on bloodshed for no reason but that they must. Fighting a child like that, she imagined, would be terrible. Fighting any child at all would be terrible – a useless loss of a life that could have meant something. “Oh.” And then, with surprisingly genuine sympathy, she adds, “I…I’m sorry.” She’s not sure if she’s apologizing for the experience or her own presence, her own culpability. Seraphina has killed many times. She’s never liked it, although she has a difficult time liking much of anything. She’s never been forced to kill children before. She wants to tell him that they would have considered it a mercy, if they weren’t all gone by then, but she’s not sure that those words are true. She might have wished she were dead time and time again during the war, but she’d never actually died, and now…now she’s something else entirely. Now she is a queen; now she is the ruler, not the powerless pawn. She still isn’t sure if it is a good thing, and she knows that the crown fits awkwardly on her head. She’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to get past what the war did to her, either, if she’ll ever be able to truly understand the reality that all of those around her seem to be living. However, she cannot deny that the Davke attack has loosed something inside of her that laid buried for what felt like lifetimes.
Some small part of her, deep down, buried beneath walls and walls and walls continues kicking. She doesn’t have fire, and she doesn’t think she ever will, but maybe that little flicker is enough.
He has another question. “Why do you still wear it?” A pointed glance at her collar. She follows his eyes.
Seraphina blinks at him with something akin to confusion, as though she’s never considered the proposition before. “I can’t.” Her voice is flat, momentarily, the answer stated as though it should be abundantly obvious. It isn’t, though. Of course it isn’t, and of course he doesn’t understand why she wears it – why would anyone wear the horrors they have seen around their neck if they could take them off? She inclines her head slightly, then, white waves falling in her eyes. (Should have put it in braids, she thinks; when loose, the length is a hassle.) “Do you know how they trained us?” A genuine question, but one she already suspects that she knows the answer to. Viceroy liked to keep his methods secret. In any case, she doesn’t actually wait for his response. If he doesn’t know, she’ll save him the unpleasant details. “The collar is…fundamental to our…conditioning. I can’t take it off.” The simple act of removing it would not be difficult – it is only held together by clamps. All she would have to do is unclamp it, and it would fall off her throat all on its own. This simple removal, however, is precisely the reason why the collars were manufactured. They were uncomfortable and shameful, tools that became associated with the pain of repetitive beatings and psychological manipulation; whenever they were brought through the city, they knew that others turned their eyes away whenever they caught a glimpse of the silver sliver around their throats. They wanted absolute obedience from their soldiers, and the collar ensured it, tested it. It would be so easy to take it off.
If their training was complete, they never would.
She pauses for a moment. Then, hesitantly: “…but sometimes I think there might be more to it than that.” Now, more than anything, the collar is a symbol, an insult to the system that created her worn in the place of a crown. I am not one of you, and I never will be – and you’d best be sure that I won’t forget your crimes for a moment. She doesn’t like attaching sentiment to her noose, but she’s hardly ignorant of what it has come to mean among her people, although few of them brave mentioning it to her. Seraphina does not want to be like Zolin, and she wants all of Novus to know that she will never become him.
Being an ugly symbol of what he wrought, then, suits her comfortably.
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tags | @
notes | <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
