[P] we all live in a house on fire-

[Seraphina]

I'VE NOW SPOKEN FOR MANY WHO SPOKE TO ME
We've changed what we could; but if you don't know you were fated can you know how light you are? I'm still going barefoot and so are my dead

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He follows her.

Even before he does, Seraphina thinks that he will. She does not know Toro well, though she has gathered his temper and his pride, and she knows that he has killed a sandwyrm, run alongside her with a god – the rest of him remains a mystery to her. But when she sees him, when she sees what he has been reduced to, she knows that he will follow. A warrior should not be starving for scraps at the hooves of a tyrant, left with nothing to fill his growling stomach but the rage. But that is where she is, too, isn’t it? The silver has gone haggard and hollow-eyed, and, if necessity would allow it, she would be skeletal – like some depictions she has seen of death, curled up beneath the gold of her hood. If it meant that more of her people would be fed, she would be happy to starve for their sake, even forego water as long as she could…

This was, after all, her fault.

But she needs to be a weapon, primed and polished and sharpened enough to spill blood. And weapons cannot quite be starving, so she is not all ribs, though hers are certainly visible. She wants to starve. She wants to hurt.

She wants to hurt, but, if she lets herself hurt as much as she would like, she will die, and she cannot fix this if she dies.

If she dies, he wins.

She walks the alley, her hooves an echo against the sandstone streets. It is quieter here, out of the crowds of the main streets, but it feels to her that the whole city is quiet, like some hunched animal, lying in wait – it is a silence that comes from near unbearable tension, an ulcer near bursting, rather than any palpable calm. The sun still beats down on her shoulders, but it is interrupted, on occasion, by the overhang of canopies and balconies on the higher stories of buildings. Doors are boarded up – windows, too. She is put in mind of a city during a plague.

When they have moved far from the main road, and when she is sure enough that they are alone, she turns to look at him, her face still shadowed by that golden hood. Her eyes dart the length of his frame, then move to the small, pale creature at his side. A lion cub, she thinks. (And, for a moment, she thinks of Maxence, the lionskin on his back-) As white as his bonded. Small, pitiful, starving – he is all ribs and soft fur. “A companion?” she inquires, with a curious tilt of her head; she hopes that the little one is less trouble than Ereshkigal. “I had to kill a teryr a few days ago, in the canyons – we’ll feed him.” It had been a messy, ugly situation – but one that could be solved more easily than she was comfortable with by using her telekinesis and her arrow. The carcass had yet to be devoured by wildlife, but few equines had use for the meat; she was glad that it could feed something.

But that was not why she had called on him.

“I’m going to kill Raum,” she says, bluntly, and her voice is eerily calm. That is not to say that Seraphina is unconcerned by killing, though she doubts that Denocte’s Ghost would leave much of a stain on her conscience; but she knows what must be done, and she intends to do it. She sees no point in subterfuge. “He’s gone too far. But I can’t kill him on my own – will you help me?” Her request is simple, succinct; but there is a tremble to it, a quiet rage that is ill-contained beneath her steely composure.

He killed her, he killed her people, he was starving the cub and the man before her -


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tags | @El Toro
notes | many moons later, while you aren't even in a place to reply...

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