There are ten flies on her skull. She counts each of them as their labrums bury like hooks into fat arteries, slurping her blood like a slushie in July and, unfathomably, she does not shake them from their feast. The derivative itch is a terrible thing, and she thinks it might send her mad.
By the grace of all things good, she hopes it might send her mad.
The desert is assaulted by the canyon, with its sudden unreasonable existence that slams so bluntly into the sand. To Sabine, they look like two titans, brothers perhaps, caught in a perpetual quarrel over the kingdom they ruled. She pauses, as if anxious to pick sides in such an ancient feud, but instantly she knows she has made a mistake.
She should never have stopped. In a fraction of a second, the momentum she has been riding on disappears and all the weight of the past few days comes clapping like thunder.
Seventy-six hours, fourty-nine minutes and twelve seconds since she looked at Raum and felt the last shadow of home dribble away for good. Home had been finding dragons in the clouds after her mother had gone to bed. It had been racing up the highest tower until their lungs were fit to burst and their legs felt like tamberines. It had been the sound of knives sharpening and crows chortling and all the colours of the sea.
She does not want to think of everything she has lost, but tell me - what else is there to think of when your universe is made of four walls and a door to the dead?
Madness, then, was what she prayed for. Sweet merciful madness to wash away the love that was laughing at her stupid little heart, laughing because it had her wrapped around its finger, laughing because despite everything -
she still loved Raum.
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: this is shitty and i'm sorry it took s0 long
THIS IS ALL THAT IS PROMISED: there will be a decade you are born, and a decade that you will not make it out of alive.
When she sees the girl, at first, Seraphina is not sure if she should approach.
She has not seen her in years, since just after the Davke attack; then, she was newborn, a fragile, stumbling little life, clinging tight to her mother’s side. Still, she recognizes her now, because she sees her parents in her. Still, she recognizes her now, for who else would come to this ruined land by choice but a daughter? Still, she recognizes her now, for, in all her dreams of killing Raum and putting an end to all of this, she is her solitary regret. If she wants to protect Solterra’s orphans, and keep what children are left from becoming orphaned themselves, she must make this child an orphan – she must kill her father.
(Did he never think of his daughter, when he did this? How could he let her leave alone? She knows that Sabine was a well-kept secret, prior to this incident, but, if she spoke with her father, and Seraphina is sure that she spoke with her father, the moment she requested an audience, a target was placed on her back. How many families had he broken apart? How many lovers had been lost to his influence? How many people had he killed? And oh, if they found he had anyone he still loved - anyone, even this little girl –, wouldn’t they love to slaughter her, like a lamb at the altar, just to make sure that he hurt the same way that they did? If they knew that he had anything left to love, if he loved her at all, they would come for her, and they would use her like a knife to drive into his throat. In Solterra, vengeance was an eye for an eye.)
(She already knows the answer. Raum’s idea of love is only control.)
Ereshkigal lingers on her shoulder, leaned forward like some charcoal specter. She clacks her jaw.
Seraphina steels her nerves. For all she knows, the girl is on her father’s side – but her conscience dictates that she guide her out of the desert kingdom, lest she become prey for teryrs or vengeful spirits. She emerges from the shadow of the canyons, beaten-steel of her coat – visible in patches beneath her armor – glinting like metal in the sunlight. Her hood has fallen back to her shoulders, though she is not sure that the girl will recognize her even if she can see her face. She was newborn, the last – only – time they met, and, with her own memory a series of fractures, tangled up somewhere with a cruel, cruel man and a dead mother, she has no idea how far back a child’s memory can extend.
She wonders if she will ever greet this girl as more than a banshee, a concoction of wild eyes and jutting bones, white hair a mass of serpents. “…Sabine?”
She looks like her mother, Seraphina thinks. Like her mother – graceful, like her mother. Beautiful, like her mother. When she looks at her, she thinks of Rhoswen as she last saw her, of Rhoswen as she will always exist in the back of her head, infinite and burning-
But she has her father’s eyes, like chips of ice. So blue. So blue, and so nearly terrible; if they were not in her own face, or her mother’s, or some mixture thereof, they could have made Seraphina shudder, because they are so like his eyes. (They haunt her nightmares. His eyes, his face, the terrible curve of his lips. His voice. Every bit of it a violation, a violation - her violated corpse, her violated reputation, every bit of her that was her carved out and left empty, even stolen.) As they are, she just looks at her and pities her, because she will always have to carry her father’s sins like a funerary veil. She carries Viceroy’s. She carries Zolin’s. When has the world ever cared that they hurt her, too? When has the world ever cared that they were not her own to bear?
Never. The world will not care that she is not her father, either. (Did Raum ever consider that? Did he ever care? Does he care? She can’t imagine it.)
She stands before the girl, her gaze lingering on those blue, blue eyes. “I’ll accompany you out of Solterra. Follow me.”
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
Light fractures against the pitted contour of red-canyon-rock. Far above, thin clouds track the sea; seeking the briny kiss of a Noahic covenant that was promised to them long ago when the shadows were longer and the hours crawled without measure.
She thinks of their journey. She thinks of how they must peer down at her pygmy silhouette and think nothing - oh - nothing of her at all. She thinks of her own journey. Of her Mother's. Of her Father's. Of--
Of the eyes that glitter like a lacerated gemstone in the cove of shadows beyond the sun. At first she thinks that her prayers have been heard (by which God, she does not care) and that she has succumbed to a merciful breed of madness. But then, they blink - and at once she sees the hunched form to which the belong. A bird. A witness to her grief that snaps and slavers at the bit. There is nothing ordinary about its eyes; for despite the vacuum of bitterness that howls in the space between her forefinger and thumb, Sabine is unpredictably cognizant of the way it watches her the way she imagines death might watch the dying.
With the clack of its unhallowed kerosene-keratin beak, the girl dares to wonder if this winged creature is made not of flesh and blood -- but of something older, higher, darker. An omen to bring what has only ever been inevitable.
Then -- suddenly, as if speaking in the tongue of her oracular dread, the shadows open their mouths to dislodge the secret within. For the vulture (the prophet) is not alone; it remains inanimate as its perch is expunged from the darkness and laid bare before the child's eyes.
The figure is still moving in the half-beat of a second when Sabine feels her heart stumble and drop. Her fear falls into the vast gunmetal silver that yawns over muscle and bonemarrow and sin; it hitches on the hook of that compressed cobalt gaze. She cannot see, she cannot see and there is a block of thick-red rage in her teeth at the way he blinds her so. Even now, even here, so many miles and so many days from his city of horror, he still takes - takes - takes.
But the black words forming sluggishly on her lips are lopped in half by the sound of her name as it pitches downward, like a cleaver against meat. Sabine. Blunt and unripe, it sounds like a question and an answer all at once. For that was no voice of her father. That was not a voice she knew at all. Sabine blinks, startled and transparently caught off-guard, taking one long step back before she looks again; closer this time.
Her thoughts reach a crescendo of shame when her eyes latch onto things she had not before noticed. The torch-bright glare of the right eye glinting yellow, the elfin curve of femininity, the column of stripes that train across her neck, her legs. Fool, she thinks, Sabine you are a fool. She does not consider her dehydration, her fatigue, her lament. Who could blame a child for seeing a father where a stranger stood?
The woman speaks again, staring with those estranged eyes and Sabine cannot help but feel like a book beneath that stare; flung open and deciphered. She wants to tell her not to read on, to stop before she unravels her sad small story and leaves her to face the final chapter alone. But how does she know her name? Where does she want her to go? The girl is too young to recall that first night. That wet, terrible night. It is, perhaps, one of the few mercies she has known.
Sabine does not move at the command of this woman. She feels her shoulders tremble, and hears her voice crack, "who are you? And how do you know my name?"
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