[P] my eyes on the horizon

[Seraphina]

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

- HELL OR GLORY -
I don't want anything in between

The sun splits over the horizon when Seraphina crosses the Eluetheria.

The landscape before her is washed in volatile rays of red-gold that catch on the flickering waves of grass – like flames, or flecks of frothing foam on a storm-struck sea. Red at dawn, travelers beware. Well, she is no longer wary, and she is no longer afraid; as wisps of her white hair trail like strands of moonlight down her brow, she runs forward as a silver stream, her eyes ablaze in the morning light. It casts long shadows in front of her, blurred, distorted reflections of her impaled upon dancing blades of weeds – and all around her, the grass stirs like the sea, whipping to life like a brewing sandstorm. The wind is strong, this morning, and she thinks that she can smell rain in the far distance; tendrils of darkness threaten at her back, clawing like jealous fingers at the burning sunrise above her head.

The thunder rolls. She does not look back to see the lightning.

You have seen the face of god, and what? God is just another obstacle, another stumbling block, another chess piece on a vast, celestial board - god is always watching, but god cannot control you. If she has learned to live with sandstorms and teryrs, she will learn to live with the divine; they are another force of nature, after all, and she has always seen them in the world around her. The only thing that has changed is their form. (And now they are mortal, physical, living - and she wonders if that restrains them in any way, now that their entire essence is trapped in a pitiful, pitiful body.) For now, she has a kingdom to protect, revenge to take, a reputation to rebuild from the ashes…and she has no time to hesitate, and even less time for weakness.

Now, she is outrunning the rain (and the crash) – the storm hisses at her heels, but she does not falter, even as she sprints across unknown, unseen ground.

Passive, desperate urges – so animal and so pitiful, so unsightly – were left on that peak, to rot among the shadows of the stars and the empty circle of pillars. No longer is she simply the silver, no longer a false, fleeting creature, no longer so reserved and hesitant-

She is the sun queen.

She is the sun queen.

The first splash of rain catches her heels, but the clouds have not even begun to overtake the sun; the droplets, suspended in the blinding rays, run like liquid fire down her sides, blending with the salt of her sweat until it trails her, leaving metallic streaks in her coat. She blinks water off her lashes, and, pulling in her chin, forces herself to move faster -

She has not longed so desperately for her desert, for her home, since the attack.

Her pace only slows as she crests the ridge of a great, wavering hillside and comes to a steady halt at its highest point. Below her, a great herd of bison, undisturbed by the coming storm, graze; at the sound of her approach, only a few even bother to raise their heads. Behind her, thunder roars, and, as she turns to stare over her shoulder, her gaze is illuminated by the violent crash of white lightning. (It reminds her of another time, not so long ago. She was younger then, and crushed – beneath the weight of a broken people, barely a child with a massacre to swallow. There was still blood on her hands, and there would be more to come. There is still a weight on her, a leaden mantle cast across her shoulders, but it is as much of a burden as a badge of pride.) Her eyes narrow to burning slits, and her hair, untangled from its braids and curling around her in wild, banshee masses, whips wild as the lightning flashes in the distance.

Just a moment to relish the cool, autumn breeze and the cool tinge of rain before she returned to endless dunes and dry, coarse-hot air – homecoming awaits.


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notes | she's bounced back, or something.
tag | @Thranduil

@

[Thranduil]

Thranduil

He hadn’t intended to journey this far. After months of make shift shelters, and long treks through forests and desert, his bones were more than slightly weary. Their strength was worn and had grown tired of taking the load, so were pulling towards the strange new comforting bed of safety in the walls of the court. Yet the gold though had barely stayed the night in his new castle’s keep before his hooves had found themselves on open road once more.

He’d tried. The gold had slept half the night in the dark walls before he had risen. How could he stay in the court when this vast territory stretched out before him? It was an instinct, and driver, pushing him out to know where he stood. The gold, even as talented as he claimed to be, could not sketch out routes and schemes if he did not know any routes to begin with. It left him exposed, and vulnerable. Feelings which he detested, and which drove away any deep satisfying sleep.  He wasn’t a mindless trekker though. The gold as he surveyed each new landscape was not disappointed or bored by what he found, for within each he seemed to find all manner of new creatures. They (and their secrets) were collected just as the land around him, placed on a map of possibilities.

Even he hadn’t planned to go quite this far though. Yet he was driven, and not towards some bright gleaming opportunity, but away from a dark reminder. Pale sun still bathes the plains in a dry warm light, making the grasses glow in reflection, but on the horizon towards the mountain peaks the world was being ripped apart. Thunder rolled, while the wind of the plain whips up the grasses in a fury, pulling in the same, each lock of cream hair in his mane, never letting it rest. With each passing moment towers of clouds, more vast than the mountains themselves were building and rising above, threatening and dark. At the first whipping wind, when bellowed out across the plain, the gold had pulled short. The light hearted steps which had carried him thus far had grown heavy, and the spark in his eyes becomes a smoldering burning molten core. Any animation he usually carried was mellowed, and oppressed by the rising pressures.

What sobered the gold is hard to define given the context you’ve so far witnessed. So far this world would only know him for what he wanted to be seen as, a trickster in a glimmering spotless gold coat. It was never taken off, never shrugged off the shoulders, and in such it had become for the gold like a second skin. What they hadn’t yet noticed was just how strange the coat was, how thick, how high the collar, how concealing- all qualities which needed no explanation, but which had a very telling one. It wouldn’t be this particular storm which would reveal just what lay beneath the coat, the last of summer storms had already crashed ashore, but the thunder and wind pulled at its fabric as he held the collar tightly closed against it. Nothing perhaps out of the ordinary, a unicorn walking through the bison filled plains, calm and sober, but when he stopped, you might glance it. When he stopped square, exhaling, and turned his crowned head raising back to face the storm, there, in his eyes, you might find some glimmer of what lay beneath the coat.

He turned away again and it was gone. The land began to rise, pulling up from the plains in a massive wave, and the wind hitting it, rushed up its sides. Limbs felt the energy build, mane and tail were pulled and snatched by the wind, up, all driving up. With a whip of his tassled tail and snort the crowned gold could not remain unanswering to the pressures and challenges. It had built, it loomed, and he in his small existence before the dark thunderheads resisted (for it was not that day, it was not that same season, not the same moment), so he gathered his head and surged up the mount, letting the wind pull him onward, stretching to meet it like an outreached hand.

So wrapped in the wind (leaning into the hand it extended), he nearly missed the silver. Cresting the top, the gold woke from his trance and slowed in a typical jaunty fashion. Skipping down in speed as his horned head rose up to check himself.  Harks tip up and lean forward, drawn to the strange sight she gives, and for a moment he stops, a second’s hesitation holding him. Here at the top the storm’s voice was less collected, and it spun the wind, whirling the gold’s mane about his horns and crown, dancing it over his leafen star. With the storm pulling at her too, she seemed to be a piece of silver thunderhead fallen to earth. Curiosity at another begins to awaken him back from the gray landscape he’d found himself. The gold head shakes against the wind, scattering the last of the claims it tried to have on his consciousness as he began walked closer to the silver.

Coming closer the gold tries to collect it all, tries to force what usually came so naturally, the rolling arrogance, the haunting grin, he tries, but it comes in pieces, broken by the need to force it. The storm of thoughts that normally spun in his mind had been silenced by its companion on the horizon and were slow to rise back up. So instead he carries an ease, and look of humored undertones with not a trace of sass or maliciousness on his tongue, as it was the most he could find and scrape together.

“Now do tell little sliver thunderhead-“ Voice calls out smooth and drawn in a sweeping tone, but sparking with a light hearted curiosity. “-why do you stand against the wind?” It wasn’t his usual jab or antagonizing quip, but it hinted at them. Unlike them though it was a mildly serious question, masking much more, as he joined to stand beside her, though he didn’t expect a true answer (perhaps his luck might change though). An altogether strange meeting, but one he did not back away from. Unlike others he’d yet met, in just the glance of her he could feel Thunderhead was keeping her emotions and thoughts much more closely guarded for no one looked out over the horizon like that without pondering something more of life (at least so he assumed, perhaps he did not act arrogant but he still thought as such). Horned head turns to look at the true thunderheads, now beginning to crash into one another and the chaos of lightening which ensued. No, you can see the world at a distance, nor stand staunchly against the wind, without feeling the gravity of the world and your life. The gold knew such as well as any…

Or she could be planning to romance the bison there below. Write a poem, serenade him. He was a very handsome bison. Either way, it would still make a very entertaining conversation.


OOC :: I told you I would write you a novel <33
"Speech"

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.

Image credit.

@Seraphina