CERTAIN GAMES ARE PRACTICAL
the way animals gnaw on what's inedible so they'll become better knives.
It is night, and the moon hangs heavy over the edge of the water, like a droplet of morning dew on the tip of a leaf. It is night, and Seraphina is standing with her hooves half-buried in the pale ivory of the coast, Ereshkigal hunched like a shadow between her shoulders; her feathers are coated in a thin gloss of sand, and it is so pure and white that it catches in the moonlight like some makeshift, gritty glitter. It is night and the water is almost disturbingly calm. It is night, and there should be waves, at least a rolling tide, but the dark expanse of the sea is still, interrupted only by a flash of scales or a fin breaking the surface. It is night, and the water is like a mirror, reflecting a cloudless sky. It is night, and there are two moons – one above, and one below.
She stands inland, brow furrowed. She is used to the murky froth of the Terminus, a sea which is as grey and unpleasant as oceans come; most days, it is full of chop, with the occasional riptide sweeping through the dusky water as a tantalizing but deadly interruption. A silent sea feels like a threat.
But, then, doesn’t everything on this island feel like a threat? Seraphina can no longer discern her paranoia from well-founded caution; she knows Tempus’s tricks, because she’s lived through them before (and sometimes she wonders if that ink-monster would have killed her, had it caught her), and she knows better than to trust the good intentions of the gods. She also knows that, reasonably, not everything in the world – or on this island – wants to hurt her, but sometimes it is hard to believe. (And, besides, she knows that it is far safer to assume the worst.)
“We should keep hunting,” Ereshkigal whispers, close to her ear. Seraphina wants to; she longs for blood between her teeth in a way that she has never longed for it before, in a way that she doesn’t want to want. Seraphina doesn’t want to; she is tired of fighting when nothing ever comes of it, and she is tired of the rage that is eating up a black, gaping hole inside of her chest, and she is simply tired, from the white strands of her hair let to fall loose and unkempt about her neck to the heavy sag of her shoulders to the red rims of her feverish, fire-and-ice eyes.
“We should,” Seraphina agrees, although she doesn’t want to; she doesn’t want to stay here, either. (She doesn’t know what she wants, beyond what ends with blood and broken bones – she wants to want something else, but she doesn’t know if she can.) Ereshkigal spreads her wings, and she is about to fly, but, just as the mare turns, to cast herself into the woods again, something further down the coast catches her attention. “Ereshkigal. Do you see that?” The vulture settles back on her shoulder, leaning forward, and nods.
“Something in the water,” she says, with a giggle, “but there are – so many things in the water. Things that would eat you up. And they’re probably hungry. I'm hungry.” She bites back the urge to roll her eyes at the vulture’s posturing, and, instead, she strides forward along the shoreline, forcing herself to ignore the way that running scratches at the inside of her throat, makes her limbs feel loose and unsteady; at least she’s well-accustomed to exhaustion. (Enough, at least, for it to leave her primarily unhindered, though not untouched – for now.) Trees pass in a dark blur. The sand in a sea in of itself beneath her, with its little ridges and curves like the crests of waves.
Finally, she stands down the shoreline, where pale beach gives way to black crags of rocks, sharp and shiny as obsidian. The water remains eerily still, but it laps a bit, where the water meets the coast; but more important than the water is what is within it. It glows electric blue, as though a nebula has spilled out along the edge of the water. This goes on for a good thirty feet in every direction, and it bobs and dances wherever the water meets stone, little creatures disturbed by the faintest of ripples. Seraphina stands on the edge of the stone shoreline, looking down into the water, and discerns that this mass is not one thing, but an accumulation of thousands – millions – of tiny beings, like stars in the night sky. It is not a dark night, but the glowing mass of things still stands out against the deep navy-violet of the water, like a beacon.
She doesn’t know enough about the sea to know what they are. But they are bright, and they are beautiful, and she lets herself linger in their light for a moment, buffeted by the salty breeze.
@Isra || <3 || "seek" sophia holtz
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
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
