THEY ALL WANT TO KNOW WHAT I'LL DO WHEN I'M 'OUT THERE' god with me: I'll die, and I'll return; I'll wound, and I'll be wounded; I'll swallow the white throat of fear.
She wonders how she will look at him, when she finds him.
Solterra has a new king. He is not Raum, and that should please her; she is not sure that it does. Perhaps it is the cold, ugly stirrings of something like envy, the trampled embers of her own ambitions sparked to some unpleasant half-life by the idea of someone else wearing the crown that she bled for; of course, she gave it up. Two massacres under her guidance were proof enough that she never should have been trusted with such weighty responsibilities. Two massacres under her guidance were proof that she was not god-chosen, that Solis had never favored her – and the word on the wind was that the sun god himself had plucked this new king, foreign though he may be, from Solterra’s ashes and placed the crown on his head.
But many men claimed to be chosen by god. Many monsters were blessed with magic. The months she had been gone had been, as far as she could discern, quiet. Quiet never tested a ruler; quiet proved nothing.
Seraphina is no queen. She would never be queen again. Still – there is nothing Seraphina cares for like she cares for Solterra, so, citizen or not, queen or otherwise, she would find the Day kingdom’s new ruler, if only to see for herself what made him worthy of the crown.
Which brings her to the winding, labyrinthian streets of the court at night, the scent of incense and spice like a thick perfume, the quiet, crackling flicker of dull braziers – and the sky alight with the moon and a hundred thousand little stars, bright enough to illuminate the court even in the darkest hours of the night. Ereshkigal is above her, a blot of black that swallows up starlight; even from below, Seraphina can make out the bloody red glint of her eyes, so bright that they might as well have been glowing. She still dislikes the demon. She is violent and cruel and unnatural, a mocking and raucous and inescapable presence – but the months have taught Seraphina to trust her, if only because they both share the same ruthless thirst for justice.
It is the vulture who finds him, and Seraphina is quick to follow in her wake – rushing, silver, spectral as a ghost. When she emerges from the darkness, something about her is haunted, or haunting. Her features have not entirely lost that starved gauntness, though she still possesses her warrior’s physique; and her eyes are still starved, like eyes on a corpse. Still. She moves like a living thing. Her hooves dance the cobblestones without touching them, her form suspended centimeters over the ground. She is unarmored; her hair is loose. Only Alshamtueur burns at her side, its soft, rhythmic clink against her hips the only acknowledgement that she is a living thing. It gives a soft sizzle when she sees him, like a quenched flame.
And there he is, bathed golden in the light of a hanging lantern. His eyes are blue as the Oasis on a clear day, and his hair gleams, metallic and pale as platinum; but more striking are those golden tattoos – or, she thinks, scars…but beautiful and deliberate, unlike the one that mars the side of her face, and unlike those pale and ugly things that are hidden from the eyes but cover her skin in knots and ridges when you brush up against her. In all the ways that she is silver, at best gold-painted, he is as golden as the sun, as alike to the fire in Solis’s sky as anyone could hope to be. She is not sure if she loves him or hates him for it.
She regards him, her bright, unnatural chips of eyes unreadable yet gleaming almost feverishly, like mismatched flames in the flickering light of the brazier. Her magic flares about her, not threat but her own essence – her mane drifts as though the fingers of some phantom wind are combing through it, though the night air is almost unnaturally still and dry. (Day by day, it seems to become stronger; she no longer knows where the magic ends and she begins, and, now that she has returned, she wonders how she lived in its absence; it beats with her heart, pumps with her blood, lives alongside her each time she takes a breath.) Ereshkigal perches between her shoulders, and her outstretched wings, as she lands, might as well have belonged to Seraphina. She settles, leaning forward, and for once the demon is solemn, her dark form like that of an adjudicator – like the hellish judge she truly is, when not so trapped in beneath the feathers and talons of a mortal form. Ereshkigal’s gaze knows more than it ever should; her beak has fallen half-open to show the sharp points of her teeth. “So,” Seraphina says, “you are Orestes.” She tastes his name in her mouth. On her tongue. Against her lips, her teeth – her accent turns it over like a dune, a breath of desert wind. It tastes foreign in her mouth, and she hasn’t quite decided how that she should say it. For now, his name means nothing; for now, it feels as fleeting and intangible as the desert wind. She can only wonder what it will come to mean, with time, in the same way that Zolin or Raum or Sol or Seraphina has come to mean something, with time.
There is no use in considering. She knows nothing of him yet; only that she will come for his head, should he go the way of his predecessor.
Her gaze rests on him a long moment; and then, abruptly, she turns. “Walk with me,” she says, and descends one of the serpentine side streets without so much as another glance over her shoulder; it is not a request.
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
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LONELY WOLF, LONELIER THAN THE ANGELS; HE HAPPENED TO COME TO A VILLAGE. HE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE FIRST HOUSE HE SAW. ALREADY HE LOVED ITS WALLS, THE CARESSES OF ITS BRICKLAYERS. BUT THE WINDOWS STOPPED HIM.
Orestes does not often sleep.
He likes to think it is because there always duties to attend to, from paperwork to logistics to politics. Orestes likes to think he does not sleep because he does not have the time. After all, he has found it difficult to deal with the nobility of the Court, not that he had expected any differently. He devotes hours to studying the few remnants of Solterra’s old library, or the private collections past monarchs have gathered. Orestes calls often upon a tutor, teaching him the art of Solterran script and the old language, and studies such intricacies late into the night by candlelight.
While all these things are true, they are not the reason he wanders the streets of Solterra after the rest of the city has gone to sleep.
They are not the reason he passes out of the citadel, greeting the guards by name, to enter the windswept streets. He stops for a moment in the main street, his eyes closed. The wind tangles in his mane, sweeps down his flanks. It brings a bone-deep chill to him. When he opens his eyes again, they are bright with something like tears.
No.
Orestes wanders because
he is the only one
that remembers.
They haunt him like ghostly ships on the horizon, with surrender-white sails. He always sees their gem-bright eyes, struck through with fear. He cannot help it, but when he tries to sleep the memories come to him, worn with time, worn with distance, worn with the loss of magic. Orestes no longer remembers most of their names; perhaps it is Solis's, to spare him the pain of loving them. Perhaps it the curse of the mother sea, as she whispers a forgotten language in his dreams, a language he no longer understands. Her magic is not in his blood anymore, and reaching for it is like reaching for a phantom limb.
This particular night is worse than others. This particular night he does not remember his name, the name given to him by the Khashran, the water people. The fact hurts worse than a wound, when he attempted to call it to mind, bring it to tongue, only to discover the resonant nothing. Orestes. Orestes, Orestes, Orestes. But there is more that he can no longer say, because he no longer knows it.
Yet, Orestes cannot let them go easily; he holds on with resolute determination, of battles lost and the rare battle won, of the way his father had been as white as innocence, the way the herd had pleaded he not go surrender. They will kill you. They will do worse than kill you. He remembers that, when he had gone alone, walking up the worn steps of the cliffside to the precipice of them to meet with the golden son of Oresziah—he remembers they had chanted it, like a prayer, his name, but he cannot remember what they said as the wind whipped it up from the sea and let it sing in his ears.
Stop. Looking out at the darkened city, he begins to walk. Orestes breathes and with each exhalation banishes the memories to the best of his ability. He can feel his heartbeat in his pulse and with each and every steady thrum he aches, and aches, and aches. He is full of regret, of apology. I am sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. He could not save them and with each night he is forgetting, forgetting, forgetting; the final betrayal; the final failure.
He studies repaired streets as he walks, he studies the sun sigils stitched with golden thread into red banners. The wind rips them taunt and then turns them limp; it howls against his ears and he wonders if the desert feels as empty as he does.
Another exhalation; Orestes begins to busy his mind with thoughts of this life, this day.
He thinks of Solterra’s children. The new Souls he Keeps; the only way his own Bound soul finds rest. He thinks of Jahin, with eyes like amethyst; one of the few that understands genocide. Baphomet, ambitious and burning. Aghavni, the emerald-eyed dove, the remnant of a lost dynasty. El Toro, the white knight, the champion and the unsure. All of them and more. All of them and more. Orestes thinks of the Court he hopes to save, of the traumas he wants to correct—
and for just a moment, as he turns down a dark street, he thinks of Marisol’s soft grey eyes.
For some reason, he is not surprised when Solterra’s banished queen steps from the darkness of an alcove and confronts him. It is a simple sigh that escapes Orestes, soft and quiet, as if to say of course I would find you here; of course this meeting would be tonight. He ought be unsettled; but the soul in him is too old for such anxiety. No. He has died too many times to be surprised by how tormented spirits will forever haunt the corridors of injustices; of their brutal condemnation. Like a ghost, she wears no expression, aside from the nearly feverish glow of the eyes. When Orestes looks at her, it is with the same feeling that fills him as he recollects the fading figures of his past. When Orestes looks at her, he sees a woman forged, a woman of silver and steel and all things hard.
He sees pain.
In another life, she'd have been beautiful. In another life, she'd have had the world. He marvels at her for a moment; the way her companion's wings spread from her shoulders like those of an avenging angel. Orestes wonders if she has come for justice, or to haunt him. But the fear does not come. No. He simply studies her as he studies the ancient language of her people and her god; with the bright, wild eyes.
The streets are quiet, now. Quiet, quiet, echoingly quiet. She says, So, you are Orestes.
Orestes, yes, brilliant gold with all his passion, burning the colour of the sun. The soft light his tattoos emit illuminates her face and he likes to think it softens it. Yes, Orestes, who wanders now with the forgotten names of a people he had been born to save. Yes, Orestes, who has lost everything but that part of his name and the hope that now—only now—he may make tomorrow better.
She commands him. If he were another man, it may have made him burn. But he gives her the respect that is due; he dips his head as he would to another monarch, and follows her with the liquid fluidity of a cat. Past the lantern they go, into a place where the light of the stars does not reach. So it is only him, soft and bright as a dying fire and her, the cool of a whetted blade.
He says, “And you are Seraphina.” He does not know why, when he says it, Orestes thinks it is an acknowledgment that there will be on more name in his mind that keeps him awake at night, one more haunted face. He asks, "What can I do for you?"
As he will always ask, again and again and again, until the weight is not so heavy.
IN THE ROOM SAT PEOPLE, APART FROM GOD NOBODY EVER FOUND THEM SO BEAUTIFUL AS THIS CHILDLIKE BEAST. SO AT NIGHT HE WENT INTO THE HOUSE, HE STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, AND NEVER MOVED FROM THERE ANY MORE. HE STOOD ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, WITH WIDE EYES, AND ON INTO THE MORNING WHEN HE WAS BEATEN TO DEATH.
BUT THE CRUDE PARTS COME HOLY, THEY SAY, WHEN IT'S HEWN FROM A JAGGED, A DIFFICULT QUALITY OF LIFE, AND OF DEATH, AND THE SONG SUFFUSED -- —listen. I believe it; what else are we for? if not finding a use. And a music for this. And everything’s grief.
He follows her without resistance. She is not sure if that will be a blessing or curse for him, in the end.
It unsettles her. He cannot be much older than she was when she took the throne, not by a passing look at him – but he is heavy. Wears his own kind of collar. She can see it in his blue-eyed stare. It unsettles her that he follows, and that she, she thinks, would have followed too. (Hadn’t she always been following, all her life – if not the king, if not the Viceroy, in his footsteps?) It unsettles her that he is young, and that he is burdened, and that he follows.
(She cannot help thinking -- this crown will break whatever part of you that you have left.)
They are moving, and Ereshkigal is springing from her shoulders, flying low enough to hear the sound of her wings between them; they are almost too broad for the space provided in the alleyway. There is silence, at first. She doesn’t know how long it lasts, and she doesn’t care to break it.
Then - And you are Seraphina. It feels strange to be recognized again, least of all by her own name. She doesn’t bother to confirm his statement, not with so much as a dip of her head; he is too certain to need it, and, besides, he is right. She takes his recognition as a final sign that there is no more escaping from herself, no more time to play dead. She isn’t sure if it is gratifying, a kind of sadistic, shameful ecstasy, or crushing. When she was Fia, she was free in a way that she had never been free as Seraphina. Fia wore no collars. She did not have to watch her every word, though she still measured the consequences of her every action.
Freedom was weightlessness. She did not have to carry the burden of every single sin she’d grown; she could forget about the collar, and the war, and Zolin, and Viceroy, and the Davke, and Avdotya, and Denocte, but never-
Never Raum. But at least she could delude herself into thinking that she was someone else, to shove the blame off her shoulders until perhaps she could deal with it. Now that she was back, she was not so sure that she ever could. Fia was awake every night, mulling over plans and papers and the lives she’d sent out to be lost in the war against Raum, but Fia was not awake every night in a cold sweat, smell of flowers in her mouth, asking herself why she was still alive – why the fates, or the gods, or pure chance had been so cruel. She didn’t want to be. Not really. Not anymore. For a time, she had thought that she could-
But there was nothing more or less to her than Seraphina. Seraphina collared. Seraphina shackled. Seraphina scarred. She had never been meant to save. She had never even been meant to live.
Perhaps that was the cruelest part of persisting. It was always meant to be beyond her means.
He asks her – what he can do for her. What can he do for her? Nothing, she nearly says, because she will never belong to a king again, not as servant or as burden, but she swallows the words as soon as they begin to form in her mouth, considering. There is no reason to be cruel. (There is nothing that he can do. Not for her. But perhaps for this kingdom, and that is more important besides.) In her time as queen, Seraphina never imagined that she would meet her successor. (Raum’s, she thinks, then – not hers. But she is the only one alive to take the blame or carry the burden. But -
She can never allow herself to forget history, or strike it from the records. She can never delegitimize him either, call him anything short than a true sovereign of the Sun kingdom. Much as she hates to. Much as their name is tainted enough. Much as there was nothing but Night – impenetrable, all-consuming Night – to him at all.)
She always assumed that the crown would be taken from her corpse. She supposes, in a way, that it was. She is not sure that she has been alive since Raum struck her down. She is not sure that she is alive now, gliding just a stride ahead of Orestes, her hooves not so much as brushing against the sandstone. Each step seems to make her more ghostly, the white tendrils of her hair flowing around her washed-grey form as though she moves while suspended in water. She never assumed that she would see Solterra under another Sovereign. She is not sure that she ever wanted to, either. A part of her is almost repulsed by the idea. The half that is still ambitious.
Still. She had her trial. She failed it, too, on every level – it would be cruel to so much as try to suck Solterra any drier, and for what? Some imagined, better future. It would never come. She had-
She’d only ever failed. What can I do for you? She hates the question almost as much as she hates that question the Sun God asked her so many moons ago, that question that still rings in her head and keeps her up at night. Punctuated by screams. Punctuated by stone faces, stone eyes. Punctuated by the feeling of strangulation, like that collar is still pulled tight around her throat, and if she doesn’t wake up – and she is sure, one day, that she will not wake up – and touch the span of her throat, it will choke her to death.
But any irrational displeasure that she feels at his inquiry doesn’t make it to her eyes. It stays closed up tight in her chest, clutched somewhere beside of her heart, that space where she has learned to put aside all those little things that she knows cannot be allowed to find their way out. The only thing that Seraphina has ever been good at is hiding her anger – Fia did not hide it, but Seraphina does, and she does it well. If she hadn’t, it would have swallowed her years ago. If she hadn’t, she would have been dead long before now. (And maybe she would have been better for it, or more noble, or stronger. That is another thing that she will never forgive herself for.) It’s never been much use, anyways. She always hoped that she could rule with a kinder touch. Perhaps it was that little part of her that always longed for – a kinder touch, a more romantic ending, where words could put an end to things – that caught Maxence’s eye in the first place.
(He’d been wrong about both of them. She could laugh, and it would come out bitter and twisted and wrong, full of all of that hate that she has packaged away. A traitor for a Regent. A failure for an Emissary.)
They are – right near where she wants them to start. Her pace wanes, but does not stop. “I simply wish to know what kind of man you are,” Seraphina says, slowly, her gaze drifting across the narrow alleyways – out into the streets as they emerge. “Tell me, Orestes. What do you see, when you look at this place?”
If she is looking for any answer in particular, it does not show on her face. Not in her eyes – though they turn, ever so slowly, to stare at him.
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
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LONELY WOLF, LONELIER THAN THE ANGELS; HE HAPPENED TO COME TO A VILLAGE. HE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE FIRST HOUSE HE SAW. ALREADY HE LOVED ITS WALLS, THE CARESSES OF ITS BRICKLAYERS. BUT THE WINDOWS STOPPED HIM.
Perhaps it is the scar on her face—from Raum's mighty slash, he heard—that makes Orestes want to tell her how each golden mark on his flesh had been seared there. Each delicate brush stroke, so fanciful, so beautiful, had been designed to cause him agony. They had placed the sun upon his brow with golden paint to bind his Soul, not to mark him as Solis’ promised child. They had weighed his legs with images of the sea so that he might never swim again. He nearly says, “My marks were not by choice, either.” But does not. It is nearly as much of a tragedy that they are so beautiful, so easily mistaken for tattoos rather than bindings; it is nearly a shame that he wears the Sun Kingdom’s sigil upon his brow, as if he had always been meant of it.
It is the reason Orestes believes fate exists. Because if it didn't, the two of them--Zolin's child-soldier and the Prince of a Thousand Tides--would never be walking shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at a terrible, beautiful city.
The vulture flies low in the alleyway. Between them there is only the sound of their hooves on the cobble-stones and the whisper, whisper of wings on air. He is fine with walking in silence, and does not press the conversation as they walk through his—and her—city.
Orestes feels Ariel waking up. The lion is rising from where he sleeps in the citadel and trotting into the courtyard, then down a street. There is no question in their bond, no statement. Orestes simply knows he is coming. There is, perhaps, a bit of judgmenet; and that is all. Orestes realises his bonded believes him foolish, for walking side-by-side with Solterra’s exiled queen. Is her presence not a threat to his legitimacy?
And perhaps it is Orestes faith in fate that keeps him from thinking too darkly on that question.
I simply wish to know what kind of man you are. Tell me, Orestes. What do you see, when you look at this place?
What she asks is impossible; it is full, full, full. Orestes glances out at the streets, bathed in the silver light of the night. There are lanterns lit incrementally along the street that cast dancing shadows. It is strange, he thinks, that they ought meet beneath the waning light of Denocte’s goddess. But perhaps all secretive, dark things do.
Orestes steps forward, and they are both in the light again. There is a blanket of silver-dust stars and a crescent moon; they wink and laugh from incredible distances. From the corner of his eye Orestes catches the brilliant glint of feline eyes, and Ariel pads beside him with all the silent elegance of a true cat. Still, he says nothing. The lion glances at Seraphina, however, with measured distrust.
He sees many things.
Finally, Orestes tells a story.
“I am from a land very far from here, Seraphina. It was nothing like Solterra; much colder, with a wicked sea and black cliffs and two people that warred until one of them was destroyed. I saw one of my people once, taken by our enemies, and broken like a wild beast. I have never been able to shake the memory from my mind; the way that they fought, and fought, and fought despite being encircled by spears and fishing nets.” Orestes is nearly musing; but not quite. There is a dark undercurrent to his voice. “But it was also one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. It is rare that you see a life so vivaciously trying to survive; it is rare that there is something fearless, and pure, with the odds stacked so against it. Most things crumble beneath the weight; they accept their fate because there is no other choice.”
It is also something that haunts him. That much is clear from his tone. He remembers holding the rest of them at bay, pleading they retreat. There is nothing we can do Orestes had said, and always seemed to be saying. She is already gone. They had called him a coward for that. But he had saved their lives; for a day more; two days more; a week; a year. Never long enough.
The quiet stretches, and stretches, and stretches. His eyes take in the empty streets; streets that have seen civil strife, tyranny, genocide, war. Streets that have seen hunger, and concubines, and childish cruelty. He can almost taste the suffering; he can almost hear it, in the ghostly whisper of the wind through the alleyways and flickering flames. “When I look at Solterra, I see the spirit of a beast that refuses to accept defeat. I see people that strive to live vivaciously, with mettle and grit and tragedy.”
Orestes rolls his shoulders and sighs, deep, deep, deep. The exhalation is that of an old man, or the ragged sea. “I can’t tell you what kind of man I am, Seraphina. It is only something I try to show. I know I am not who Solterra would have chosen. Many of them resent me as a foreigner, and believe I do not respect their culture. But I stay awake at night and think of what Solterra could be; I stay awake at night and think of where she has been. When I look at these streets, I see a future.”
The once-prince looks at her then; perhaps for the first time, really looks at her. Orestes cannot imagine the trials she has suffered; he cannot imagine having had everything wrenched from you, having grown up as she grew up, a child soldier. He would never offer her pity, no, but looking at her breaks his heart in the same way the sound of the sea does.
Orestes asks, very quietly, “What do you see?” Ariel is there, reclining upon his haunches, his eyes following the conversation. They return to Seraphina again, and again, and again. But he does not say anything, not aloud.
Orestes, be careful.
But was he ever?
Or did he just let his heart
bleed, and bleed
and bleed?
IN THE ROOM SAT PEOPLE, APART FROM GOD NOBODY EVER FOUND THEM SO BEAUTIFUL AS THIS CHILDLIKE BEAST. SO AT NIGHT HE WENT INTO THE HOUSE, HE STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, AND NEVER MOVED FROM THERE ANY MORE. HE STOOD ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, WITH WIDE EYES, AND ON INTO THE MORNING WHEN HE WAS BEATEN TO DEATH.
