[P] bury a friend, try to wake up

[Seraphina]

☼ fia the crownless ☼

throw the ashes to the wind
sun sinking like a stone

Midday heat streams down on Seraphina’s back as she patrols the high ridges of the Elatus Canyon. The gold of her scarf glitters in the sunlight, shielding her features from the overwhelming heat. Alshamtueur is an ever-present weight at her side, and she is grateful for the fabric that separates her skin from the steel; the sword and its sheath always radiate a gentle warmth, but it can quickly rise to a scalding heat during a Solterran afternoon. Sweat dribbles down her sides and beads on her brow, but it isn’t as unbearable as it had been before she’d obtained her hood. Now that she has the light set of armor, she can’t help but wonder how she ever tolerated the heat before.

It occurs to her that it has been a very long time since she has been on patrol. To think that this was how she used to spend the majority of her days – solitary and roaming, with nothing for company but the endless dunes and the creatures that lurked within them! She feels like a different creature entirely; her strides are longer and more fluid, her militant rigidity fading for something animalistic and prowling, and she carries herself with the easy, unfettered confidence of some apex predator, unintimidated by the dangers that used to keep her fleeting and cautious. That is not to say that she is not wary, not watchful, - an ambush is always a threat, even if she can reasonably ram her arrow into the skull of most anything that could prove itself a danger – but neither is she mechanical.

She still knows the curving, maze-like walls of the canyon by heart, and that is a bizarre comfort; she remembers thinking that the sands would never change, during her fight with Raum, and, although everything else around her seems to have collapsed in on itself, she holds to the knowledge that that much was true. (She wonders if she will see them red-stained again. She knows that she will see them red-stained again.) Her fledgling rebellion has instated itself in the maze of caves carved into the walls of the Elatus, under the safety and shade of overhangs and within the relative protection that the winding pathways provided; however, they are still small in number, and precarious. For the moment, they will need to be cautious, to bide their time…

She can hear Alshamtueur hissing at her side. She knows that it does not want to wait for its vengeance – to burn, to tear, to bleed, to destroy.

But she will wait.

(She will not do it quietly this time.)

She presses on, then – she needed to finish her survey of the canyons and return to the base camp. “Fia” had precious little time to spare.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags | @Evangelina
notes | I've forgotten how to write starters /sobs/ forgive me

@

[Evangelina]

THE SUN BREATHES RUIN UPON THE DESERT DUNES. A MERCILESS FLAME, A RELENTLESS FIRE, LAVISHED IN HEAT AND DEPRAVED ADORATION. ITS SCORCHING TOUCH WOULD LAY WASTE TO THOSE WHO FELT ITS BEWITCHING SURRENDER; LIKE THE HOT HAND OF A GODDESS, CURLING AGAINST THE SOULS OF MORTALS.  EVEN AN AUTUMNAL CARESS COULD NOT SLAKE THE DESERT'S THIRST; NOR LEND REPRIEVE TO THE PARCHED EARTH, SO BURIED IN DROUGHT AND HARSH, SUFFOCATING SAND. WHERE WAS THE MERCY TO BE HAD, IN A PALACE SO SKELETAL, EMPTY AND FORGOTTEN?

O, ALL ALONG THE savage DESERT, WRAITH-LIKE SIGHS STIRS THE GOLDEN DUNES; WHISKED AWAY BY THE RELENTLESS BREEZE, THAT DRIFTS ALONG ITS DESOLATE BOUNTY AND HISSED AND hissed AND hissed.  HERE, IN THIS VIPER'S PIT; WHERE HEAT EMBLAZONS THE WILD SOLTERRAN SKY, AND THE VIOLENT HISSING SONG OF WIND CLEAVES THE HEART, A YOUNG RUNAWAY CHILD WEAVES INBETWEEN THE CADAVEROUS PATHWAYS OF DARK AND LIGHT.  LOST.  ALONE. AFRAID. FORGOTTEN.

THE ASH-GOLD EARTH, SWIMS BENEATH THE DELICATE LINES OF HER BALLETIC TOES. ALONG THE DUNES LIKE THE PLIANT COILING OF SNAKES, SHE DANCES LIKE A SENSUOUS RIBBON COME ALIVE. HER BODY MOVES IN A CADENCE OF EBONY AND LACE; SLENDER LEGS, COMBING THRU GOLDEN SOIL WITH ALL THE IMPASSIONED HUNGER OF A DANCER.  THROUGH THE BLEMISHED PATHWAYS, AND SCANT SAHARA TREES THAT SWARMED UP ABOVE AND FELL IN DEAD, BRITTLE CANOPY AROUND HER GRACEFUL BODY, SHE RUNS. THE IVORY DAUGHTER BATHED IN LAVENDER RUIN, WITH FLOWING OBSIDIAN CURLS, AND A VEIL OF MISTY GREY-BLUE EYES, WANDERS THE DESERT, AIMLESSLY.

SHE IS ALONE.  SHE IS AFRAID. SHE IS STARVING. THE SAND BITES RAW UPON HER BLEEDING LIPS. THE FEARSOME BLUE SKY, SO VAST AND IMMENSE, REFLECTS THE EMPTY BARRENESS OF THE DESERT BELOW; CHOKING HER HEART INTO A SOBBING CRY.  AND YET DESPITE HER LONELINESS, DESPITE THE ENDLESS ISOLATION SHE FEELS, SHE HOLDS HERSELF WITH THE SILENT FIERCENESS OF A REBEL CHILD;  TOO WILD, AND TOO FERAL, TO BE TAMED BY THE VULTURES OF THE DESERT.

SHE MOVES ALONG THE SHADOWED CAVERNS, HER SMALL BODY SWALLOWED BY THE MASSIVE RED WALLS. THE PARCHED EARTH SUCKS AT HER SOUL.  THE STENCH OF DEATH CLINGS TO HER SUPPLE PHYSIQUE, CURLING AROUND HER SHOULDERSBLADE LIKE THE PALE FINGERS OF HADES. EVEN HER LIPS WERE GHOSTED OVER BY THE WINTRY KISS OF RUINATION, AS THOUGH SO CLOSE TO DEATH, AND YET SO YOUNG A CHILD; left for dead, to be picked apart by the scavengers.

IT IS IN THE MIDST OF EVANGELINA'S SILENT REVERIE, THAT HER ICe-BLUE GAZE CATCHES THE CHILLING FLICKER OF SILVER AND PALE PLATINUM; AN ATHLETIC FRAME, THAT PACES SLEEK AND SLENDER AGAINST THE CRIMSON-SHADOWED CORRIDORS. DRIVEN BY THIRST, OVERCOME BY CHILDISH IMPULSE, EVANGELINA FOLLOWS THE SHADOWY FIGURE INTO THE DARKNESS OF THE CANYON. AN INNOCENT LAMB, EVANGELINA'S WHISPER DRIPS WITH THE SOFT LAMENT OF A LONELY CHILD.  "PLEASE MA'AM... DO...YOU HAVE ANY FOOD?"

[Seraphina]

☼ fia the crownless ☼

throw the ashes to the wind
sun sinking like a stone

The little click-clack of motion behind her – quiet, at first, then faster, an echo against the high canyon walls.

“Please ma’am…do…you have any food?”

Before she so much as turns, Seraphina’s mind grasps the hilt of her sword, but does not pull it from its sheath; her neck arches, serpentine, and she first throws her gaze over her shoulder. A child. A year or two old. She turns altogether, then, the thick gold of her scarf twining around her features; she is hooded, at first, but turns it down as she moves, fixing the girl with the full force of her multicolored eyes and horrible, gleaming golden scar.

The girl smells of death.

She is a delicate, birdlike creature, too dainty for this desert by far – perhaps she would grow into something with the feral grace and compact strength of the Davke, but, for now, she is but a girl, a little slip of rose and deafening violet. She is too small, too thin, defeated by the all-consuming might of the desert, but there is still a little something feral to her movements. She wonders if she is a wild child. She wonders if she is alone.

It occurs to her, like a dull echo, that this would be just what Raum would send to infiltrate her defenses. A child used as a weapon of war would be apt to train children as a weapon of war; she had heard of his fondness for orphans, like all the king’s crows. (She could have killed Reichenbach right now, killed him - for his spies and his dragons, for his crows. What did he think would happen, taking in those children and raising them as knives? Oh, but he loved them. Or so he had said. Or so she had always been want to believe. But no matter how he had loved them, he had always loved them to be used, and that was his crime. Love, she thinks, should not be a matter of use.) But Seraphina is not Raum, and she is not Reichenbach. Even if this child were some infiltrator, taken under the wing of a tyrant, she would not turn her away – because she has been in the service of a tyrant before, had his metal pressed around the curve of her throat.

Besides, she thinks. They have not had time to gain notoriety yet; their presence is likely unknown to the tyrant king, clever as he would like to think himself – as much as he would want to think that he has won, that the silver’s body lies broken and rotting on the pocked fields of the Steppe.

“Not here,” she answers, the foggiest hint of something gentle or soothing lining the deep lilt of her voice, “but I can take you to food.” There is plenty of food, she thinks, in the caves – baskets of dates and figs, cactus fruit, sliced-up and dried root vegetables. She cannot, of course, expect the child to follow her on goodwill alone; she has the looks of an untamed thing, a passing spirit. Seraphina plucks a leather waterskin from the buckles of her armor and holds it in the air between them, carefully unscrewing the cap. “My name is Fia. Are you thirsty?” She offers it to the girl. Dehydration kills faster than starvation in the desert, she knows, and, while what water she had would likely do little to quench her thirst, it would be enough to ease the journey back to camp.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags | @Evangelina
notes | you're beautiful <3

@