[P] break first or break fast

[Seraphina]

BUT IT ALSO REMINDS ME OF TOWNS
likely burned to the ground before they were emptied, or at the very least erased from the map. if you're small your best trick is to become invisible. even insects know this: how many generations for a moth to resemble lichen.

In the few, ragged memories that she retained of her mother, Angelie was often telling stories. With the virtue of age and experience, Seraphina often wondered how such a delicate, fanciful creature had survived in Solterra, particularly under the rule of Zolin. (Perhaps she was simply better at hiding her own harsh angles – certainly, as a young girl, before she was Viceroy’s, Seraphina had never thought that the world was particularly cruel.) Some of them were Solterran. Others were foreign. Regardless of the origin, there was a specific kind of story that she always remembered liking, and that was the story of recognition. The weary traveler, after years of trials, finally finds her lover, but he does not remember her; and she weeps, and her tears return his memories, and they find their way home, though their world has changed forever.

The world will change, the stories said, but you will not be alone, if you are willing to love enough.

It is those stories that come to mind when she sees a figure cascading over a dune, howling a name -

“Orestes-!”

but she is not her Orestes, and this is not a story of recognition. They are just two strangers on a stormy coast, meeting over a mistake. The mare realizes it, too – she can pinpoint the exact moment that the hope withers away in her expression. Bitterness grows up in its place, and disappointment. When she speaks again, it drips from her voice.

“I thought you were someone else.”

She doesn’t know how to respond. I know? But that seems cruel. So she lets the waves make up the space between them, and she studies her, with her soldier’s eyes – her powerful physique and cropped mane imply a warrior, and she suspects that those horns of hers would make powerful weapons on the battlefield. Her tail is leonine, and there is something fitting in the comparison; though those crimson eyes are shadowed with disappointment, and, perhaps, a hint of shame, they feel sharp. Seraphina wonders what she is, where she has come from; she would make a good Solterran, in different times.

Now, she wants to howl at her to leave, to run as far as she can – only death awaits on the sands.

And then she speaks.

“Don’t you know, the water is dangerous?” There is something to the woman’s tone that she dislikes – it makes her think of a slap across the jaw. “There are water horses out there that will sweep you away in a song and eat you alive.” She looks at the sea like one might look at a coiled snake, ready to strike at your ankles, and steps out of the shallows.

For a moment, Seraphina is quiet. Ill-contained irritation – a sin of Fia’s, lately – curls up in her chest and lingers, biting at her throat. Authority, she has discovered, is difficult to let go; though the silver spent her childhood in a state of blind obedience, she spent just as long as an Emissary, and then a Queen. And the desert nation had never cared for a queen with a collar around her throat – what respect she had finally earned had been won with tooth and claw and a demeanor that was sharper and colder than polished steel. But he had taken that from her, too, and left behind a hooded shadow, a wasting girl with hollow eyes. She can’t blame the woman for thinking her a pitiful little fool.

(And maybe she is. But she knows one thing – she does not fear water horses. To fear them, she would have to fear dying, and she is already dead; Seraphina is dead on the Steppe, covered in jewel-flowers, and Fia, the little flame sprung to life in her place, has no future. Like all fires, she will burn out with her tinder. She has plenty of fears, but, even as a girl, death was never one of them. It was not Solterran. It would have been even less appropriate for a soldier.)

(And, if there was a small part of her that, when the black came rushing for her like a tide, when Seraphina died – if there was a part of her that sobbed and begged and bargained for her life, if there was a part of her that wailed for anyone who could listen to come, not to save her but to keep her warm, so she did not die alone – well, that part of her had died with Seraphina, and Fia didn’t have time to entertain such fragile things.)

She turns her eyes on the stranger, ripping them from the tide, just as Ereshkigal circles low and, with a few great pumps of her sand-stained wings, lands on her back, just between her shoulders. For a moment, her wings remain outstretched, and they could have been the silver’s; but then they tuck in at her sides, and the illusion is gone, as though with the tide. The vulture watches the mare with her beady red eyes, but she does not speak – Seraphina gathers that she is probably just waiting for the right opportunity to strike, but she is nevertheless grateful for her silence.

One less thing to grate at her nerves.

“There are more dangerous things in the world than water horses,” she says, finally, her voice a sharp chill against the warm sea air, “and they can still be killed with an arrow through the skull.” And, for her weariness, she would not hesitate to kill one if it came for her – there is nothing flashy about her gift, and certainly nothing beautiful about it, but it is deadly, and that will have to be enough for her. (She has always been a weapon. How long until that last, soft part of her became one too?)

She adds, then, hesitantly, “This might not be the best place to look for your… Orestes.” She knows nothing of this stranger, of course, or the man (she assumes) she seeks, but she knows that, if she is searching for him in Solterra, her efforts will likely be fruitless. “Most people are fleeing Solterra, if they can – or going into hiding. The nation has been overtaken by a monster, and he slaughters – or tortures, or starves – anyone who does not bow to him.” Her gaze darkens, and she looks back towards the sea – away from the city.

She does not move from the water; it continues to lap at her ankles, gritty and warm.

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@Boudika || this post sure did take me *checks watch* almost a month,,, and I had it planned out since the night you posted your reply,,,

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

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