the lord's gonna come for your first born son / his hair's on fire and his heart is burning / so go to the river where the water runs
I am watching a drowsy brown spider amble up the furled petals of a snowdrop when I see the vulture.
It is not an altogether unnatural sight. Slowly I push up from my crouch, my hooves slipping in the frosty grass, and move my head in gradual degrees to follow the bird's shadow as it arcs across Caligo's night.
Vultures are drawn towards fresh death. In this bone-chilling cold, deep in the wilted brown expanse of Eleutheria, death is as frequent as white capped mushrooms after a rain. The fact fails to move me. In my youth I had abhorred death; in my maturity, I greet it like the comforting sight of a hale old enemy.
The vulture seems to have banked towards a skeletal tree, though the gnarled branches barely protrude above the jagged mass of shadows it hides within. The shadows are where the distant treetops of the Viride join with the horizon, conglomerating into a blot of black ink that slashes up into the velvet sky.
My eyes strain to make out anything more. I have lost the bird yet still I scan the tips of the skeletal branches, watching for movement. I am deeply interested by the vulture as I am deeply interested in anything living I can find in this decaying, haunting land. I am like a child greeting its first spring; nothing can keep me away. If I only close my eyes, I can pretend that there is not a dark head of curls hovering worryingly in the dim distance, the twist of her frown permanently imprinted into my mind.
Of course, I could not have made it here alone.
Louise is with the caravan. There is a driver and a footman and even a doctor's young apprentice, all bundled in thick woollen blankets, all huddled miserably like logs in a woodpile in the narrow seat I had kept warm on the jaunt here. The edges of the Eleutheria is not far from the edges of the Ieshan lands, which is not far from the edges of where I am usually allowed to roam. Put together, it is a succession of not-very-far distances joined up to make a fair distance, navigable only if I am not the one doing it, and accompanied by a minimum of four others responsible for delivering me back alive.
It was the most agreeable arrangement I had managed to settle on with the new doctor.
I wish to see the vulture up close. From the bare glimpse I had gotten of it as it had winged past me, it had seemed different from the average, pink-skinned sort. A bloody red eye, a black striped head, and a raising of the hairs at the back of my neck.
"Louise," I shout. The echoing trill of my voice across the plains is thrilling. "Do not follow me. I wish to continue alone. Come only if more than half of the hour has passed."
My lake-eyed maid's answering cry, made small and reedy by the whistling wind, comes mercilessly quick. "Prince Adonai! You cannot be serious!"
"But I am, and if must be, then it is an order." There is nothing she can say to this. I am being unfair. Grinning, I imagine the furious silver stream of her breath as she tucks her anger deep inside herself, to be saved for when I return, and then brushed off quick and flouted against me like a jousting lance. I will laugh as it rests across my chest, and then her frown will break, and everything will be just as it has been for a hundred days and a hundred nights.
Sometimes, I wonder if death would be more bearable.
The distance to the skeletal tree is shorter than I anticipated. Its branches cast cloying shadows over me as I crest the small hill it sits atop, wreathed silver by the light of a full moon. My breath is faintly panting yet the exertion has done only good for my circulation. I can almost feel my legs, and my cheeks are scraped raw by the wind. My heart ricochets inside its ribcage and this is good as well; there are days when I barely feel it, days where I question if it is even beating.
I crest the hill. I am far from the first to do so.
A stab of exultation gives way to a stab of shock, and then to a stab of pain. There is a stitch in my side and were it not for the sight of a stranger before me, I would not have had the pride to ignore it. Above me in the overhanging branches comes the faint whisper of wings flapping together, and I look up, quickly. There is the vulture; its beady red eyes seem to flay me open and I almost flinch. Yet I do not, because here, in front of me, is a woman.
I walk closer.
As I do—my jaw rends tighter and tighter as I begin to put together the pieces. Pale white hair braided into fine white loops cling to her silver-grullo neck. Legs latticed by a patchwork of silvery stripes fade from grey at the thighs to black at the hooves. Her noble figure is criminally thin yet there is a faint swell to her stomach that must be from poor nutrition; it cannot be from being full.
I am taken aback and more. I am horrified; I am feverish; I am certain. She is not a stranger. Standing before me is the phantom of the Silver Queen, Seraphina.
When I speak, it is not to utter her name. It is not even to ask, "were you not rumored to be dead?" because similar things have been asked about me, and I am aware—painfully aware—at how difficult it is to arrive at an answer. It is never enough to say, I am not. I am still alive. Somehow, it is always a disappointment.
I wet my lips and taste blood from a split in the flesh. Frost lines the hem of my fur cloak. "You will freeze in this cold if all you are planning to do," I say softly, moving up to stand besides my past queen, "is stay there."
It is not an altogether unnatural sight. Slowly I push up from my crouch, my hooves slipping in the frosty grass, and move my head in gradual degrees to follow the bird's shadow as it arcs across Caligo's night.
Vultures are drawn towards fresh death. In this bone-chilling cold, deep in the wilted brown expanse of Eleutheria, death is as frequent as white capped mushrooms after a rain. The fact fails to move me. In my youth I had abhorred death; in my maturity, I greet it like the comforting sight of a hale old enemy.
The vulture seems to have banked towards a skeletal tree, though the gnarled branches barely protrude above the jagged mass of shadows it hides within. The shadows are where the distant treetops of the Viride join with the horizon, conglomerating into a blot of black ink that slashes up into the velvet sky.
My eyes strain to make out anything more. I have lost the bird yet still I scan the tips of the skeletal branches, watching for movement. I am deeply interested by the vulture as I am deeply interested in anything living I can find in this decaying, haunting land. I am like a child greeting its first spring; nothing can keep me away. If I only close my eyes, I can pretend that there is not a dark head of curls hovering worryingly in the dim distance, the twist of her frown permanently imprinted into my mind.
Of course, I could not have made it here alone.
Louise is with the caravan. There is a driver and a footman and even a doctor's young apprentice, all bundled in thick woollen blankets, all huddled miserably like logs in a woodpile in the narrow seat I had kept warm on the jaunt here. The edges of the Eleutheria is not far from the edges of the Ieshan lands, which is not far from the edges of where I am usually allowed to roam. Put together, it is a succession of not-very-far distances joined up to make a fair distance, navigable only if I am not the one doing it, and accompanied by a minimum of four others responsible for delivering me back alive.
It was the most agreeable arrangement I had managed to settle on with the new doctor.
I wish to see the vulture up close. From the bare glimpse I had gotten of it as it had winged past me, it had seemed different from the average, pink-skinned sort. A bloody red eye, a black striped head, and a raising of the hairs at the back of my neck.
"Louise," I shout. The echoing trill of my voice across the plains is thrilling. "Do not follow me. I wish to continue alone. Come only if more than half of the hour has passed."
My lake-eyed maid's answering cry, made small and reedy by the whistling wind, comes mercilessly quick. "Prince Adonai! You cannot be serious!"
"But I am, and if must be, then it is an order." There is nothing she can say to this. I am being unfair. Grinning, I imagine the furious silver stream of her breath as she tucks her anger deep inside herself, to be saved for when I return, and then brushed off quick and flouted against me like a jousting lance. I will laugh as it rests across my chest, and then her frown will break, and everything will be just as it has been for a hundred days and a hundred nights.
Sometimes, I wonder if death would be more bearable.
The distance to the skeletal tree is shorter than I anticipated. Its branches cast cloying shadows over me as I crest the small hill it sits atop, wreathed silver by the light of a full moon. My breath is faintly panting yet the exertion has done only good for my circulation. I can almost feel my legs, and my cheeks are scraped raw by the wind. My heart ricochets inside its ribcage and this is good as well; there are days when I barely feel it, days where I question if it is even beating.
I crest the hill. I am far from the first to do so.
A stab of exultation gives way to a stab of shock, and then to a stab of pain. There is a stitch in my side and were it not for the sight of a stranger before me, I would not have had the pride to ignore it. Above me in the overhanging branches comes the faint whisper of wings flapping together, and I look up, quickly. There is the vulture; its beady red eyes seem to flay me open and I almost flinch. Yet I do not, because here, in front of me, is a woman.
I walk closer.
As I do—my jaw rends tighter and tighter as I begin to put together the pieces. Pale white hair braided into fine white loops cling to her silver-grullo neck. Legs latticed by a patchwork of silvery stripes fade from grey at the thighs to black at the hooves. Her noble figure is criminally thin yet there is a faint swell to her stomach that must be from poor nutrition; it cannot be from being full.
I am taken aback and more. I am horrified; I am feverish; I am certain. She is not a stranger. Standing before me is the phantom of the Silver Queen, Seraphina.
When I speak, it is not to utter her name. It is not even to ask, "were you not rumored to be dead?" because similar things have been asked about me, and I am aware—painfully aware—at how difficult it is to arrive at an answer. It is never enough to say, I am not. I am still alive. Somehow, it is always a disappointment.
I wet my lips and taste blood from a split in the flesh. Frost lines the hem of my fur cloak. "You will freeze in this cold if all you are planning to do," I say softly, moving up to stand besides my past queen, "is stay there."
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
