☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
and you run from it then
now you can't escape
Seraphina does not like it here.
The music is nice, and the paintings – she watches dancers perform their routines by firelight, shadows cast disjointed and fluid against the makeshift stages upon which they perform. Darkness fell hours ago; a cape of stars lines the horizon, and a full moon. The smell of alcohol and smoke is not so nice, but, then, she has never been one for revelry. (The chief revelers of Novus, however, are out of the picture, and she is not sure that she wants to know what it would be like were they in attendance. Much the same, she imagines, but stronger – and, perhaps, bloodier, for reasons that she would never quite understand, but she tells herself that doesn’t matter.) Her eyes stir from the dancers, and she turns to face the crowd. (A familiar habit. No matter where she stands, she has never been able to convince herself that she is safe. Each shadow could hide a threat, each ripple of flame an assassin’s knife – best to stay wary.) She scans unfamiliar blurs of faces and limbs and torsos and hair, and-
She freezes.
She has to be wrong, she thinks, at first, as she stares at that familiar, disappearing patchwork of orange and black and white; the gates of Denocte are closed, and he is pure Denoctian, pure Crow, and so he can’t be here. If it weren’t for a persistent specter of curiosity, she might have left well enough alone and left the passer-by to his own devices, seeing as he could not possibly be the spy that had left her Champion of Community for dead…but the specter persists, and she finds her pace quickening to follow him. She does not know what she will say, if she catches him – she doesn’t even know if there is anything that she wants to say, but some part of her is unwilling to let him, or the impression of him, slip away. Not without accountability, whispers the voice inside of her, gnashing its teeth. Not without – accountability. The words feel like disjointed fragments, because what in the hell does accountability matter in a world that doesn’t give a damn about who it hurts, but she presses forward nevertheless, a lily-scented smudge of grey weaving and twisting through the crowd like a serpent. (Some part of her is a snake, but she tries – tries – so hard to gnaw away at her fangs.) A rush of wolfish adrenaline, the leering urge of purpose prowling inside of her ribcage like a hungry wolf; she is suddenly reminded of her time as a soldier, tracking enemies led astray across the monotonous sands, waiting, waiting, waiting. Her steps are quiet, creeping, her lily-crowned skull dipped low. Ferality comes bleeding out – a ravenous, scraping anger that twists and knots like a hunger inside of her, pent-up and rotting for weeks after the Davke attack, after his attack. She feels – all carnivore. Smoke and laughter and music melt away, and she could be here or a desert hundreds of miles away. She is hunting.
She catches him; emerges from the crowd, just at his flank.
“Hello, Acton,” Comes that voice, dry and frigid with cold – she wonders if he’ll remember it, even before he turns around and sees her, marble eyes ablaze with the flicker of torches.
Fancy meeting you here.
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tags | @Acton
notes | this should be fun
and you run from it then
now you can't escape
Seraphina does not like it here.
The music is nice, and the paintings – she watches dancers perform their routines by firelight, shadows cast disjointed and fluid against the makeshift stages upon which they perform. Darkness fell hours ago; a cape of stars lines the horizon, and a full moon. The smell of alcohol and smoke is not so nice, but, then, she has never been one for revelry. (The chief revelers of Novus, however, are out of the picture, and she is not sure that she wants to know what it would be like were they in attendance. Much the same, she imagines, but stronger – and, perhaps, bloodier, for reasons that she would never quite understand, but she tells herself that doesn’t matter.) Her eyes stir from the dancers, and she turns to face the crowd. (A familiar habit. No matter where she stands, she has never been able to convince herself that she is safe. Each shadow could hide a threat, each ripple of flame an assassin’s knife – best to stay wary.) She scans unfamiliar blurs of faces and limbs and torsos and hair, and-
She freezes.
She has to be wrong, she thinks, at first, as she stares at that familiar, disappearing patchwork of orange and black and white; the gates of Denocte are closed, and he is pure Denoctian, pure Crow, and so he can’t be here. If it weren’t for a persistent specter of curiosity, she might have left well enough alone and left the passer-by to his own devices, seeing as he could not possibly be the spy that had left her Champion of Community for dead…but the specter persists, and she finds her pace quickening to follow him. She does not know what she will say, if she catches him – she doesn’t even know if there is anything that she wants to say, but some part of her is unwilling to let him, or the impression of him, slip away. Not without accountability, whispers the voice inside of her, gnashing its teeth. Not without – accountability. The words feel like disjointed fragments, because what in the hell does accountability matter in a world that doesn’t give a damn about who it hurts, but she presses forward nevertheless, a lily-scented smudge of grey weaving and twisting through the crowd like a serpent. (Some part of her is a snake, but she tries – tries – so hard to gnaw away at her fangs.) A rush of wolfish adrenaline, the leering urge of purpose prowling inside of her ribcage like a hungry wolf; she is suddenly reminded of her time as a soldier, tracking enemies led astray across the monotonous sands, waiting, waiting, waiting. Her steps are quiet, creeping, her lily-crowned skull dipped low. Ferality comes bleeding out – a ravenous, scraping anger that twists and knots like a hunger inside of her, pent-up and rotting for weeks after the Davke attack, after his attack. She feels – all carnivore. Smoke and laughter and music melt away, and she could be here or a desert hundreds of miles away. She is hunting.
She catches him; emerges from the crowd, just at his flank.
“Hello, Acton,” Comes that voice, dry and frigid with cold – she wonders if he’ll remember it, even before he turns around and sees her, marble eyes ablaze with the flicker of torches.
Fancy meeting you here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tags | @Acton
notes | this should be fun
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
