When she was younger, she would talk to the gods.
It didn’t really matter which of them she would speak to – Seraphina didn’t ever remember specifying. She was probably too young to care. Blessed with an antisocial, eccentric (to say the least) mother and an absentee father, she spent her earliest days in isolation, and that was when the habit started. In lieu of friends or family, she spoke to anyone that might be listening, and, even with her scant knowledge of folklore, her imaginary friends quickly became what hazy concepts she had developed of the gods. Now, she would openly admit that her perceptions of her childhood were fragmented and discordant, warped into jagged, sharp chunks that felt as though they happened to someone else by Viceroy’s influence. When she thought about herself, she felt very deeply that she was more of a spectator of her own memories. Rationally, she knew that they had happened to her, but it felt as though she’d watched them occur to someone else. These so-called “imaginary friends” were among the few memories that remained completely intact and untainted – even Viceroy considered a few things sacred, and religion was one such thing. This was likely why she still spoke with them from time to time, though it was largely confined to her trips to Veneror or her internal monologue. It was silly, when she thought about it, but the impulse was so unconscious that she hardly noticed it until long after the fact.
She’d slipped away from the politics and heat of Solterra like a ghost in the middle of the night, tracing the familiar pathways (the few stone landmarks in the sand and the stars, then trees and dusty trails, worn thin by years of devotion) to make her way to the holiest site in Novus. She brought with her the long strip of mother-of-pearl that she had taken from the shore of the Terminus Sea, a set of several teryr feathers bound up in thin golden chain, a vine of blush-white flowers that bloomed at night, a strange piece of driftwood she’d found washed up on the shore of the Mors, carved with strange symbols, and, perhaps most intriguing of all, a shard of brightly-colored red glass, like fire, found beneath the starlit sky of the Mors days after a terrible storm. These respective offerings had been hoarded over the months that followed Viceroy’s death; she felt ashamed to admit it, but she hadn’t been to Veneror for worship since just days before her mentor was slaughtered, laid out bright red and blood in the sand. (Had he known? She sometimes wondered if he knew. The last time that they had walked these paths together – the last time they would – she recalled his blazing white silhouette, his crown of draconian horns wreathed in red flames that set the first blush of dawn to shame, set the sun to shame. He’d turned to her, eccentric golden eyes brimming with an emotion that felt so very strange on him, a tiredness that she would never associate with the immortal, and spread out his great, angelic wings to their fullest extent. “These aren’t my gods, you know. These are the gods of this land. This land is not my land. This is…” He’d turned his gaze to the dawn, the sun as it split the blurry edge of the horizon. The flames danced and writhed, like snakes. “Kaerth-sihl ehl louctet fienccia nomar de.” Apprentice, the birds are burning in the midday sun. He never spoke when he knew that she’d understand it; it wasn’t midday, and there weren’t any birds, up so high. She wondered, then, if he was finally collapsing – she’d watched it for a while, like the slow wear of the crags on the ocean shoreline. Maybe there was more to it, she thought, from time to time. Some cipher or message, perhaps? But she didn’t see any meaning to his words. Seraphina should have missed him, and she did miss the quiet lilt of his voice as she ascended the mountainside, if only because the silence, save the low howl of the wind, felt suffocating.
She didn’t miss him at all.)
The shrines, covered in their tangles of overgrowth, welcomed her as she finally arose to the mountain’s highest point, wind whipping frantically through her mass of hair, left loose, for once, and tumbling to her chest. She laid her small offerings at each shrine in turn; the flowers for Caligo, the feathers for Solis, the shell for Vespera, the wood for Oriens, and, finally, the glass for Tempus. She lingered only moments at each shrine, though the longest space of time was reserved for Solis, genuine worship by comparison to simple respect – a whispered thanks that none had been killed during the fight with the teryr. She stood, for a long moment, at the base of his shrine, head dipped in prayer. When she stepped back, still in quiet contemplation of the divine, the first blush of dawn had slipped above the horizon, stripping away starlight with a soft haze.
The silence, she found – sheltered from the whip of wind – was a comfort, if a momentary one.
@Inkheart - if you still want to drop in <3
otherwise, AW!
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
Perhaps it was simply that he had spent too long in one place, and the need to run, to be an everwandering nomad again, if only for a few days, was simply too much to bare. So much, that the only way to drive it out was to pound hooves against the landscape until he feared they would splinter and shatter beneath his weight should he dare to take a single step more.
He wasn't sure where he was headed, or why, in fact, in retrospect, he would look back upon this day and find it within himself to wonder if it really had been something planned, some force of the gods that led this to happen, Vespera's will, or simply happenstance. He had been here before, once or twice, he could not be sure.
The shrines didn't mean much to a child, and he was far more preoccupied with the shiny stones and fun caves that were scattered about than any form of worship. And he had never returned since, never finding within him the want or even the simple idea of doing so.
But it seemed that his hooves still remembered the paths required to bring him across the Steppe as swift as was able, the mane of a lion buffeting behind him he ran into the summer winds so swiftly, the gale tearing at him and for but one moment, making him almost appear regal. Teeth bared to reveal the mighty canines and wolf teeth that gave the somewhat small male an air about him that for but one moment, if this was the only glance you ever had of his form, you might speculate that he was a lion in an equine's body, a mighty king of the wild.
But then he found himself stumbling up the mountain paths, climbing higher, higher, ever higher, and one could once again see the weakness that ever pervaded his form, the exhaustion written so clearly in his eyes. The shimmer every now and then of desperate tears that wanted to cascade down his form, because he was simply so overwhelmed by it all that his visage found itself contorted as he huddled upon a ledge of the mountainside, crying quietly to himself for no reason other than to cry. And the image of any sort of king was quickly quashed beneath the young man, almost still a boy, 's crushing fear of the world.
But higher and higher he still climbed, dried tear tracks marring his brown coat, mane matted and in desperate need of grooming and coat quite scruffy. He looked like a veritable mess, and one had to wonder why he would run so far from his home in search of nothing that he knew he was searching for, and if you asked, you would hear nothing, but perhaps the quiet whimpers of 'I don't have a home, so what's the point?'
But even if the words were true, he still didn't know why he ran. The swamp may not be his home, because he didn't know if he even deserved one (why would you you pathetic piece of shit), but it was still the place he intended to return to when this trek was done. It was still the place he was going to go back to in an attempt to hide among a place that could perhaps offer some comfort in familiarity.
So he still didn't know why he ran.
Why did he run from it?
Why did he burn through what energy he had in a desperate race against nothingness to get to these lands?
He didn't know.
He never would.
But perhaps that wasn't what was important.
For as the small, young man, weary from his journey, unkempt from anxiety and distress, and with dried tear tracks running down his face simply because everything was too much, crested the lip which brought him to the highest point upon the mountain, he found two things simultaneously.
One, before him lay the shrines he distantly remembered from his youth. Places to worship the gods, overgrown with wildlife but beautiful in their disrepair. And he felt his lips turn up for but a moment, some distant, genetic memory of love for the gods causing him to feel a short flicker of compassion and worship for this sight, one beautiful in its own way, in the love with which it had been crafted.
Two, he wasn't alone.
And yet, perhaps it was the fact that he was still momentarily overcome by the view of the shrines before him, he was not frightened by that fact.
The soft tint of dawn, as soft as a baby rose's touch to one's lips, was just a whisper upon the horizon as his gaze fell upon the woman. The strength in her body was clear, and perhaps it ought to have frightened him away as it did in his encounters with the one who ruled him, but there was something far more overpowering in her form that drove away any nervousness at being in the presence of another who was so much stronger than he.
Hooves clacked lightly against stone as he approached, not looking at the woman directly and instead allowing his gaze to roam freely over the shrines. He came to stand near her, not quite touching, but calmly at her side.
It was strange, really. How quickly emotions could change.
Less than an hour ago, he was crying from a confusing mixture of fear and general distress.
Moments ago, he was soothed and calmed by feelings of love for something greater than he could ever imagine.
And now... now it felt like his heart was being crushed, so overwhelmed was he by some sort of sorrow he knew not, feeling like it was trying to break him from the inside out as it clenched its claws tighter and tighter around his chest as he looked about the shrines, and to the woman next to him who seemed... so very similar to he, in her own way.
His broken gaze, now glimmering with raw, unshed tears of grief for something he could not quite understand, was turned back to the shrines for which he had brought nothing, and his voice was just as broken as it was quiet in it's whispered query to the other equine.
"Are you lonely, too?"
And he'd never even realized he was until the words were already past his lips. And he didn't even recognize the broken whisper for his own until he had to close his mouth after speaking.
JUST LIKE FIRE, BURNING OUT THE WAY
IF I CAN LIGHT THE WORLD UP FOR
JUST ONE DAY WATCH THIS MADNESS
COLORFUL CHARADE NO ONE CAN
BE JUST LIKE ME ANYWAY
Pain. Her mind is otherwise clear but pain refuses to leave her in peace, instead threading its way up her front right leg from her humerus on up. It travels through her shoulder and splinters there, the primary senses traveling her nerves up to her mind, pulsing, throbbing. The ache is bearable, for some time has passed since she fractured that rather important bone. But when there's nothing to soothe the pain or aid the remodeling, time seems of little importance.
Her wings beat against the uncooperative air, the wind trying to tell her which way it thinks she should go. Her pinned ears and flared nostrils, blazing eyes face off against it, her feathers deftly powering her ahead. She has one place and one place only she wishes to be - the Peak. Doubtless the God will ignore her as he always did, and it is a wonder she has not lost faith. I have a bone to pick with you. The thought is a snarl in her mind. Her battle against the Elder Teryr had certainly not gone as planned. It wasn't that she thought of defeating it, but being crushed and struck senseless before even devising an attack had NOT been what she'd envisioned.
And so she swirls down from the clouds, seeing the place she wishes to land below. It's not that she expects an apology from Solis for what happened, but that doesn't mean she isn't prepared to confront him about it. A dutiful supplicant, she cannot fathom why her chosen God would chose to abandon her in such a painful and embarrassing way. As she descends, she spies two others that have also come to worship. One she immediately recognizes. The other, a somewhat hairy bay stallion. She lands roughly but a few paces away, three legs and wings supporting her injured leg. She approaches, limping as imperceptibly as she can manage. "Seraphina." It doesn't quite come out as a hiss, but disdain wraps itself snuggly around the pretty mare's name. The obsidian dame curses that she should have been so brutally wounded and embarrassed in front of this rival.
Her golden eyes turn upon the young man. "Greetings, I assume you are both here to praise the glory of Solis?" She does not let on her displeasure with the God who failed to protect her from the ancient beast. There's no use in saying anything negative about him in front of others. Her own struggles would be kept private.
She didn’t notice the boy until he spoke – perhaps she was too engrossed in her own worship to notice the world around her, or perhaps his steps, labored with something heavy though they were, were quiet enough to avoid her perception. In any case, his voice sends her head whipping, mismatched eyes widening fractionally for a shocked second as she stares him down. Bay, with frantic, fearful copper eyes and a shaggy coat. He looked far too pitiful to be a viable threat, however, and she was quick to settle, allowing his words to linger in the back of her mind like a lump of steel tied to a flailing limb, dragging her down beneath the surface of some deep, dark pool. Seraphina looked away, averting her gaze to stare at her hooves because she couldn’t stand to meet something in his eyes, in his choked, frail tone. Lonely? That would imply that she needed someone, and the first thing that Viceroy had taught her, and perhaps the most important, was that the worst liability of them all was to need absolutely anyone, because then you would become reliant. (An almost imperceptible, vicious curve of her lips, then gone as though it had never appeared to begin with.) If it did not imply need, it implied want, and want was nearly as bad. Want - or so she had been told – interfered with need and responsibility, so she had tried to choke the want from herself, too. It was easier that way, better that way. And yet…
Sometimes she was sure that she felt its creeping influence on her heels again. “I…” She started, grasping for the right words, “I’m-“ A sound from nearby her sent her gaze behind them, and any vulnerability was gone from her features like light from a flipped switch. Seraphina was cold again, practically frozen over, as she beheld Inkheart, an expression of stiff apathy working its way into her silver features and settling, discontent to remove itself again. “Inkheart.” Seraphina greeted her with the same stiffness that the mare offered her, taking a mental inventory of the wounds that mar the mare’s sleek obsidian coat; it seemed that even her devotion hadn’t saved her from the worst of the teryr’s offenses, and she wondered if she would be so quick to bite at her advice in hindsight. She kept herself curt, however, and stiffly polite, stiffly courteous - perhaps falsely so, because she hears the disdain dripping from Inkheart’s tone like rain from a metal gutter. (This was a sacred place. She had no anger towards her, per say, but, if she did, now would hardly be the time to express it.) “You assume correctly – it has been too long since I have brought an offering. I suspect that you are here to do the same?” She would hardly phrase it with such a flourish, but, then, she was not a prophet or a soothsayer, not a priestess and hardly a devotee – she was, however, born and raised in Solis’s light, and the foreign mare’s holier-than-thou attitude towards their religion sent something of an instinctual prick up her spine. Her gaze flitted again to the stranger in their midst, and she silently hoped that he would simply agree that he was here to worship Solis– lest they both, presumably, become subject to one of the diatribes that she could only imagine ran through Inkheart’s head.
@Auru @Inkheart - sorry this took forever lovelies <3
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
He hadn't meant to frighten her, he hadn't been trying to be sneaky. But he of all people should know that it was far too easy to be so engrossed in something, that the approach of another went unnoticed. Her head snapped around, and he flinched back as if to protect himself, shoulders hunching as his ears twisted away from her. A single tear escaped his eyes, the crushing pain in his heart overflowing as the organ sped up with adrenaline. But she was soon to settle, and he? His heart was too heavily weighted to keep up its errant beat, to keep up its speedy march. And he placed down the hoof he hadn't even realized had been raised, ignoring the wet tear track down his cheek and simply looking at her, watching as her eyes flicked down to the hooves she stood upon, as if she was unable to meet his gaze.
Unable to meet his gaze? Hah, that was a change of pace. The corner of his lips twitched upwards in something resembling pity as his brow twisted itself together, smile a mixture of wry amusement and soft understanding. He had some idea of what she was feeling.
He didn't come any closer, allowing the mare her distance for thought and introspection. He only turned so that he might better face her, anxious nature momentarily quashed beneath the heavy lead weight that lay in his breast, as if trying to crush the organ within in its vice like grip. His hooves were soft taps on the stone, as light as his thin frame in his movements.
Her visage seemed to twist at times while she thought, her inner thoughts bared to the world through her face. He couldn't follow her train of thought, he was never so good at that. But he could watch, and wait. He could wait. His own smile dipped downwards, losing the wry twist further and further as time went on.
"I-"
Another tear dripped down his face, the opposite side as the first. Her voice sounded lost, searching, a little confused.
Almost broken.
He understood that.
He didn't have to know her history to understand.
"I'm-"
A sound shattered the vulnerable air, broke through the realm of understanding and brought back the masks. Ripped away the soft trust of two souls who had taken a moment to expose themselves, or at least try to, with no suspicion and no doubt, only the gentle wish to meet the other where they stood.
It was ripped away like flesh from bone.
"Seraphina."
The mare before him went as cold as ice.
"Inkheart."
And Auru felt every muscle in his frame go tight with tense fear. Understanding bled from his features to be replaced by fright and shock as his head whipped around to look at she who had entered the premise, his body turning with the movement. He felt the breath flee his lungs as the gaze of the winged mare of obsidian and gold turned to him.
"Greetings, I assume you are both here to praise the glory of Solis?"
Something whispered in the back of his mind.
Solis...
"You assume correctly - it has been too long since I have brought an offering."
Ah, the god of warriors. No wonder the mare held such strength in her form.
No wonder he felt too small in comparison to the two mares before him now.
"I suspect that you are here to do the same?"
Ah, right. This was a place of worship. A place where people far and wide came to in order to leave gifts for the gods. In order to leave something of value for those who commanded order in this world.
He had nothing.
He had brought nothing.
He hadn't had a thing he could bring.
He hadn't even been planning on coming here. Only running, running, running.
He didn't-
He hadn't-
He bit on his lip with the tips of his enlarged canines, pulling the flesh between his teeth ever so. Enough to bring just a little pain. Just enough to help him focus, even as the breath that flowed through his nostrils felt like too little, too little to sustain the frantic pounding of his heart as it tried to punch its way from the cage of his ribs. He couldn't say anything, his throat swollen shut and voice stifled. He only turned his gaze away from both mares, giving something that could be interpreted as a nod, and shuffling slowly towards the shrine he presumed to be Solis's. It certainly looked like the shrine of a warrior god.
He kept his back turned to them, but kept his ears turned to them as well. Listening, listening. He could barely focus on the shrine before him, everything in him turned to the two women so much stronger than he, even if to the casual observer he seemed intent on ignoring them.
