THEY'RE WAITING & HOPING I'M NOT ENOUGH
Seraphina does not like to fight.
There is an artistry to it, and she can appreciate that, but she does not like to fight. If the world had been kinder to little Solterran girls or Solterran soldiers or Solterran Emissaries or Solterran Queens, she would never have become a warrior, or she would have at least grown out of it. She’d always hoped that she could find a more peaceful place in the world and become more of a scholar or a diplomat instead; Seraphina had hardly been a wide-eyed idealist when she’d come into her role, but she’d always believed that the seemingly-perpetual cruelty and violence of the desert kingdom she called her home was simply the result of too little motivation to change it, not some fact of nature. She’d always believed that it could be better.
She wonders, now.
His right wings – great, dark things, always larger than she seems to remember - flare out as she lunges towards him, and he seems to throw his weight behind them, jerking him shy of her hooves. (It is dark, and he is dark, and it is raining; she can only be so sure of how he moves.) They still scrape his left shoulder, but she has put no heart into the gesture, and she can judge from his (wither) expression that he recognizes it. His lips curl up, but she can’t quite say that he’s smiling.
“Should I count that as a mark?” She might have offered up some response if he’d given her the time. (He thinks that he is very clever, does he?) He does not.
Just as she drops back to the ground, hooves barely grazing the wet sand, he lunges.
She has just enough time to brace herself, shifting her weight in preparation for whatever he intends to throw at her; she might have moved, if she’d had the time, or used her telekinesis to throw him in a more serious battle, but she barely has enough time to think through her reaction, and this spar is hardly serious. (She notes just how sharply he twists to the left – it occurs to her later that the motion must have been dreadfully awkward, but, for now, her attention is on other things.) Her hooves sink into the sand, and she holds herself steady just as his teeth sink into her withers. In spite of the pressure it exerts upon her, the bite is barely strong enough to break her skin, and she realizes that his intent is to hold her in place, not injure her.
His grip on her shoulder remains until he pulls himself parallel to her, and, irritated as she is by the pressure bearing down on her shoulders and the sting of his teeth dug into her skin, she doesn’t attempt to break out of his hold until he lets her go.
“Should I count that as a mark?” she retorts, her voice stuttering with exertion. There is a cold mingling of sweat and rain dripping trails down her skin, and her breath feels like it is catching in her lungs. She is more than vaguely aware of the press of his shoulder against her own, his presence – shaking with heaving breaths – at her side. If she were younger, she probably would have stepped aside. Now, she stays still, strangely comforted by the gesture; if nothing else, it feels warm.
“I did have scars, you know. They were just… removed.” His voice breaks the silence, muffled by the rain.
She isn’t sure that she wants to think through the implications of that statement. Who removed them? Why did they remove them? How did you get them in the first place? She assumes that it is at least partially occupational, but she has noticed that he shies away from speaking too much of himself, leaving her with bits and pieces of a history that she can’t quite pull together. Seraphina is curious, but she doesn’t push – she knows that leaves her at a disadvantage, given just how much she told him of herself in their very first meeting, but she knows that there are some lines that should not be crossed, particularly with people you barely know.
“Even if that’s so,” she says, simply, eyeing the untouched ebony of his coat, “I still don’t see why I should try to give you any more.” Seraphina doesn’t want to hurt a friend in any way that matters; there are plenty of people in the world who would be more than willing to. She is long past thinking of a scar as a glorious thing, of the material remnants of battle as some symbol of survival. They are only a sign of damage done, and she’s tired of them. She wants to look at the world and see something other than the cracks running through it.
“Back there, you-“ He cuts himself off, and she wonders why. (He’s never been reluctant to speak his mind in the past.) “For a moment, you weren't here.” She stiffens in what is almost a wince, and it takes her a moment to decide what she wants to say. She finally opts for honesty, or something like it – there are things about those scars that Fia can’t explain to him. (That isn’t her story to tell.) She can give him something close to the truth, though, dig down to the meaning. The details are secondary, or so she tries to assure herself.
(Seraphina has never liked lying. She has never even liked hiding things.)
“When I was…given these scars,” she admits, her voice dipping to something low and quiet, “I almost bled out. It was the first time I felt that I…” She hesitates, and, when she answers, she doesn’t think that her answer is exactly what she means to say. “…I cared if I lived or died.” A moment of weakness, she thinks briefly, a hesitation that could have gotten her killed in a real fight – not that it should matter. She is Solterran. She is a soldier – and it would be her greatest honor to die defending her country. She doesn’t think that she has the words to explain the gold-plated scars, though. She doesn’t even know if there are words for it. All she knows is that
she
just
froze,
and she can’t let it happen again. Fear is as good as death on the battlefield, and she doesn’t have a good reason to fear death anyways.
(It isn’t death that Seraphina is afraid of. It wasn’t death that she feared, when some irrational, impulsive part of her expected his hooves to turn to claws and rake open her gold-scarred face – no, it is the idea of watching the world end again that turned her blood cold, the prospect of discovering what can still be stolen from her.)
“We shouldn’t linger,” she says, giving him a gentle nudge and striding forward, towards the rain-swept darkness of the desert.
@Caine || ralli, we've finished a thread
"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
Summary: Sera doesn't really avoid his attack or block it properly, and instead just allows him to bite her and hold her in place; she does brace herself a bit so she doesn't get thrown off balance or injured, which is sort of a block, I guess, in a manner of speaking. She makes a snarky remark, and then a few more honest remarks before leaving.
Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 1
Block(s) Left: 0
Item(s) Used:
Response Deadline: fin.
Tags: @Caine, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @
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
