CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
You are the earth. But also the sun, and the sky. You are elements, bound and fused together. And you must never forget you can be everything all at once. At night, he dreamed of spirits in the wind. Of monoliths and structures, towering towards clouds, sometimes ashen, sometimes cardinal and cerise, where they reached and soared, where they drowned and cloaked. He dreamed of leathery wings and draconic calls over the abyss, fathoms and shadows he’d chase below, until he could spread his own wings and follow them into the ether. He dreamed of metallic plumage resting across his withers, the warmest of smiles tucked against his cheek, of tenderness and love. He dreamed of a sagacity resting across the tip of brows and the arch of a hidden grin, of a wisdom he’d eternally cherish, yearn, and crave – wanting to listen to the sounds of the rapt syllables, the riveting phrases. He dreamed of whispers on the breeze, of harpsichord angles and angels twisting, interwoven into their own chords until they breathed his name in the still of twilight. He dreamed of mountains, great and small, the abyss of blood and sand. Of a void he could never have again, except in memories, reaching for the stars and finding them too far away, even for him to seek. Of a canvas brought to life only in slumber, for it couldn’t exist thereafter – consumed, swallowed, and gone. At dawn, the boy rose and flew, feathers extending towards the sun, eyes searching, scorching, for worlds he once knew. For veils to lift from their shrouds, peek over his gaze, and tell him he was home. That they were no longer wraiths and ghosts. That there was no shame in the etching of family, in seeking out all he understood, in fervent, desperate wishes that couldn’t come true. That their catacombs didn’t line halls, that their sepulchers weren’t resting in oblivion. That he might be able to reach and snatch, grasp and tear, and pull them into his heart, into his soul, where they could perpetually remain. Maybe this time he pushed himself too far. Perhaps he ignored the warning signs, the billowing of the chilling, glacial winds, the way exhaustion pulled and tugged across the seams of muscles, along the arches and ridges of his spine, against the fortified enamel of his bones. The rising notes of aches and pains chiseled their way through his skull, pounding on membranes, vivid, stark reminders he needed to cease – And still, he didn’t. Because down below looked like sand, dirt, soil, loam from a land he once knew. He once loved. And if he could just fly a little farther, a little further, than it would be worth it. They’d be there. His kin. It wouldn’t have all been for naught. The Oasis below did look strikingly familiar – and he coasted on zephyrs and clouds, drifting, drifting, drifting, until the ripples and cascades weren’t the pools from his desert. But it was far too late, and there was no end to his descent, until he felt the ground beneath his hooves, and his knees buckled. His body, his weight, fell forward, and his chin rested in the sand, sides heaving, lungs coveting, wings like jagged, fallen knives. He could barely shift his head, to peer towards the water, and realize his mistake – the delusions, the mirages – and the sand was warm beneath his cheek, when hope ran aground and his heart gave out. The reddened gaze closed, trying to hold back the reality, the inward workings of despair, gripping through marrow and flesh. But you must remember to rest.
OF NOUGHT BUT EARTH CAN EARTH MAKE US PARTAKER,
BUT KNOWLEDGE MAKES A KING MOST LIKE HIS MAKER.
in the end, the World takes everything. Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
She is not a ghost.
Though she moves like a shadow on the sands – though she moves like a specter, a quiet and solitary expanse of grey, white hair swirling about her like ectoplasm, like gossamer, though she looks at the length of her face in the water and finds it sallow and dark-eyed, worn weary with shadows suggestive of far too many sleepless nights, though she moves awkwardly in her own skin, in her own limbs, in her own body, where she her movements were always so swift and measured before, though the silver of her coat gleams like a dull knife, though her hooves are still apt to suspend her measures above the ground – she is not a ghost. Worst and most fundamental: what ghost could swell with life? She is never sure if this is meant to be blessing or condemnation, the answer to someone else’s prayer (certainly not her own) or a kind of violent and jarring laughter that means you aren’t dead yet, however much you might like to be.
For years she is sure that has found herself thinking this is not happening, this cannot happen, this can’t be right - and now she believes it, or else that her life has contorted like an image in a misshapen mirror into some divine joke. Some nightmare. Sometimes she still thinks that she might wake up and find herself elsewhere, in a different place and a different time; sometimes she thinks that she will surely wake up one morning and be the Seraphina-who-was, not the Seraphina-who-is.
She never does, of course. She never does. And now that would just be running – and half of the horror of this thing that she still refuses to put words to, in spite of the swell of her sides, is that she cannot escape it, like every other burden pressed down on her shoulders. She cannot run from it. She has responsibilities, of course (which are not the same as love, which is sickening knowledge enough), and obligations. All, she knows, that she can do is – grit her jaw and force herself to persist, and do her best to do right.
It won’t be enough, of course. (It will have to be.)
It is Ereshkigal, strictly speaking, who sees the stallion first. Seraphina sees a sudden splash of dust, though she does not look up quickly enough to see him collide with the ground. The vulture, however, is in the air when the winged stallion descends towards the Oasis, and Seraphina can hear the echo of her laughter in her head like someone is dragging their nails inside of her ears; the sound is distinctly sadistic.
If she were close enough to make out her features, she thinks that she would certainly be dragging her tongue along her teeth hungrily. “Did he fall?” “Somewhat.” A low cackle. “His own fault.”
Though she stood opposite him on the bank of the oasis, she moves towards him quickly; she is hovering in an instant, nearly without thinking, and, rather than walking the bank to reach his side, she simply moves over the water. He is a mass of ungainly wings and bent-buckled legs, sides heaving, eyes closed. She thought that she saw him twitch, before she reached him. At least his heavy breathing tells her that he is still alive.
She did not have to go to him, but she would not leave him here like this – not in the danger of the Mors, though the oasis is one of the kinder parts of the desert. Not when his bones might be broken, for all that she can tell.
If she were still herself, she is sure that she would know what to say. She used to greet newcomers constantly as a guard, or a soldier, or an emissary, or a queen; even as a rebel. Now she is none of those things and almost nothing at all, and she has fallen out of practice at it. She bites her tongue, hesitates, fumbles over something some basic inquiry that should be utterly simple.
Seraphina still doesn’t know how to be – tender. Or kind. She barely even knows how to express concern in any way that feels genuine, not forced and clumsy. When her voice comes out, it is not quite any of those things; she only succeeds at soft.“Are you alright?”
He doesn’t much look it.
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
CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
Sometimes he wished he was.
Instead of claiming to feel and hear vestiges, their voices, their sounds, their moments of glory, and their maddening instances of defeat. Sometimes he yearned to be the one succumbed, so they still had beating hearts and blissful lives, and maybe he could alone in the sepulchers, watching them from afar. They would’ve been committed to brighter, better ambitions, blistering ambitions set in the familial brow – with gnashing teeth and clenching jaws and stalwart commitments. Sometimes he thought of rampaging through devastation and ruin all over again, simply so he could join them, and never be alone. For some days the determination was worn, and the fire had turned to cinders, cold and afraid, ashen and barren, endeavors inept and ineffectual. For he was searching for things he could never have, and until someone told him, until someone screamed it in his face and against his soul, he’d keep looking, keep waiting, keep watching – for a glimmer, a sign, of something more than faith. Even that, at some point, had to become tangible.
He didn’t see the bird. He didn’t see anything at all – not with his eyes shut and his remnants all but abandoned, a press of a knife down the back of his throat. The aches and pains were familiar, residual, from when he pushed too far. The inward ones were too, a different mark of scars and lacerations, chiseled, sculpted, and carved on the back of his ribs, from where everything hurt but he couldn’t permit his face to wear the onslaught, the misery, or the anguish. His sides slowed, lungs and nares absorbing the much-needed air, but his wings remained unmoving, as if the effort were too great for now.
The boy would give it some time before trying again. Before flying into the sky and leaving everything behind. Before following traces and filaments that weren’t real. Before giving up – but gods, it was tempting and enticing to lay upon the ground, to wait for it to absorb him.
Another maneuvered nearby; the instinctual twitch of his ears caught the sensations of movement in the sand, and he should’ve reacted instantly. He should’ve hoisted himself up quickly, swiftly, in case this being was a threat, and he was the next target (that’s how demons and monsters worked; he knew, he’d escaped them all).
But he didn’t try this time. Maybe he’d let them take him, consume him whole, flesh and bone, and the ache in his heart would cease.
A soft voice followed, and he opened one crimson eye to land upon another wholly unfamiliar. A glimpse of silver, of argent, of ivory laden amidst the snow, and the lid fell again, lashes pressed against his cheek. He thought about lying, like he’d always done before. Yes. Of course I’m all right. Then they’d leave him alone, and he’d be free to carry on, to drift aimlessly, an unrelenting force of nothing. But the deception stuck to his tongue, and veracity slipped forth instead, changing, changing, changing, for he had naught else to do. “No.” A pause, another intake of breath, the inhale not soft, not light, but a rumble in his throat. “I thought – “ and he didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
I thought this was home.
Except it couldn’t be, because he’d watched it die.
in the end, the World takes everything. Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
Ever so slowly, she forces the magic out of her. It feels dizzying and makes her head spin, much like applying pressure to a bleeding wound. (She doesn’t know what her magic longs for, exactly, or what it wants, but she knows that it is always more.) Her hooves stop their drifting and settle on the sand again, though she still seems unnaturally light, and, as she moves, they barely leave a trace; and her white hair settles back into its tight braids, lies flat against her neck where it had begun to float. Ereshkigal spirals above them, circling the young stallion like she might a corpse; fortunately, Seraphina thinks that he is well beyond noticing. (The demon’s sense of humor is, to say the least, morbid and sadistic.) She doesn’t humor her with a comment.
The truth of the matter is that she doesn’t want to be seen like this.
As she approaches him, she tries to disregard the swell of her sides, the way that she does not move quite so easily as she used to. She tries to disregard the way that the thought of anyone seeing her like this still makes her stomach knot with something like shame, though she knows that it shouldn’t. Most of all, she tries to think of how it is more important to be useful than it is to be ashamed, though that does little to settle the gnawing in her stomach.
One of his eyes flickers open to look at her. She notes the color: bright crimson. Like a poppy, or a rose, or like blood. Juxtaposed against the blue mark on his forehead – she imagines that it is a tattoo, but she has no way of knowing -, it seems particularly sharp, though it only remains open for a moment before it falls shut again. It isn’t a cautious gesture. She wonders if he is so badly injured that he cannot even keep his eyes open (he doesn’t look it, but, then, she can’t make out most of him) or if he is simply beyond caring about any threat that she might pose.
He is quiet. And then: No.
It’s what she expected, perhaps even what she knew - but she isn’t accustomed to anyone admitting it so easily. He pauses, and she wonders if he will say anything more; a deep, rattling breath escapes his lips before he says, I thought- and then cuts himself off short. She waits a moment for him to finish, or maybe she just hopes he’ll finish, and maybe she waits too long – the silence stretches out between them awkwardly, unfilled space. Finally, Seraphina shifts from hoof-to-hoof, swallowing, and she considers what to say. It is surely useless to try to comfort him; she has never been any good at that.
She gives a soft sigh. It isn’t quite exasperated – it is the kind of sound that you make when you don’t quite know what to say, but you can’t bring yourself to stay silent. She doesn’t know what to say to comfort him, so she decides to settle for something a bit easier, to ask him if he is physically alright. “Did you hurt yourself, when you fell?” At least, if he is, she can do something for that.
Her voice is still soft, and still cold around the edges, no matter how she might wish it were warmer, or less empty.
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
CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
Perhaps she was lucky then, this stranger, for Mauna had no predilection towards judgement at the moment, caught in his own orchestrated bedlam; hastening away mirages and ghosts, and then calling them back. Incapable of rendering them into nothing but memories, he stayed contained in their orbit, in the shuffle of time and space and present, locked in the past and not understanding keys to the future. It was within moments like these, coming upon the unfamiliar, where he slowly strived to wall away the grief, the forlornness, the stark, cold, twitch of bones and tissue, so the filaments weren’t so chilled, so there was more to his life than the essence of absolutely nothing.
Mauna waited for her to leave – expected it. Many others had. It’d been the pattern in his life, to be introduced, to widen his eyes and watch them saunter into his realm as if from a dream, wonderful and brilliant, strong and beholden – and then gone, torn at the strands, seams, and edges. His mother. His father. His uncles. His siblings. His friends. Until he stood and flew alone, no matter where he ended up.
You can go, he wanted to say. You can leave, he yearned to announce. To give permission to do the inevitable, to permit the pattern to ripple and undulate before anything else occurred.
There was a sigh, and he realized he hadn’t finished his sentence. The thought was already vanquished, pierced away by reality, by tangibility, by the vestiges of dragons and wars, by stones and false paragons, by gods and deities who were suddenly not worth all the power, glory, and faith everyone had instilled within. It was too late now, to go back to where he’d begun, and so he remained very still for another instant longer, until she spoke again, and politeness urged him onward, slightly upright, rolling so he no longer sank his head into the sand, curling his forelegs before his chest.
Uncertain how to answer her inquiry, he lifted his wings – and they spread forth like eagle contortions, noble and wise and everything he wasn’t, until the plumage stretched and unfurled, yielding nothing but the residual aches for flying, for urging, for trying for far too long. The rest of his body felt the same, and so he shook his head, lowering the feathers until they could rest again along the soft soil. “I don’t think so.” Just his pride. Just his aspirations. Just everything else notched in between.
His eyes finally went to her – fully seeing the mare for the first time. The youth hadn’t been mistaken on the patchworks of silver, but he’d missed the gilded, then blue eyes and lines; the swelling in her sides, hallmarks of upcoming progeny. The apprehension curled and contorted through him again, and his jaw clenched down instinctively, as if fighting off another torment, another self-inflicted onslaught, another brutal, brooding assignation. A sigh went through him too, before his gaze pinpointed away from her, and over the world. “Where are we?”
in the end, the World takes everything. Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
He stretches himself out, frame tilting upright as he extends his massive wings. It does not last long; once he has assessed his own condition, he shakes his head and sinks back into the sand again, informing her that he doesn’t think that he is injured. “Good.” Her response is simple. Flat. She doesn’t add anything to it, either; she simply waits for him to collect himself, to see what he has to say. Seraphina is curious enough about why he is here, and where, beyond “the sky,” he came from, but she has a feeling that this is a rather poor time to ask. His landing was all but a crash, and his demeanor is melancholic. (She has known enough of it herself to recognize it.) It seems useless to ask if he meant to come here. He clearly doesn’t – and she needs only hear the sound of his voice to know that he is no native of the other courts.
She bites down a wince when his eyes flicker away, conspicuously, from her swollen stomach, her jawline gritting. (It tastes bitter in her mouth.) She wants to say I didn’t choose this or it isn’t my fault, but there’s little use in trying to explain her situation to a stranger, however defensive it might make her feel. He sighs in a way that seems to rattle his entire body, and he asks her where they are.
That is a question that she has heard from lost strangers what feels like a hundred thousand times. At least she has rehearsed an answer. “This is the island continent of Novus. We are in Solterra – the domain of the Day Court, the kingdom of the sun. This oasis is called the Vitreus, and it is in the heart of the Mors desert.” She recites the details easily, as though they will mean much of anything to the stranger; but at least, she tells herself, they are a start. She considers, for a moment, and then makes a hesitant offer, though her hesitation is not evident in her still-quiet voice. “If you would like, I can guide you to the capital city. It will be easier to get your bearings there.”
She no longer has any love for the sandstone city that nearly bore her, the place she once called her home and kingdom; she has no love for the colosseum, or the remains of the library she nearly burnt to ash in her love for it, or the palace, or the high walls, meant to repel invaders. She looks down its serpentine streets and shaded alleyways, and all she can think of are statues and fire and Raum. She used to be able to put it behind her. Now, it follows after her like a ghost.
(She hates him all the more for taking that from her, too. Her name, and her life, and her crown, and her people, and all the things that she had come to love – but her anger has nowhere to go. He is dead, and there is nothing she can do to change the past. All she lives for now is penance in a land that makes her skin crawl.)
But she will take him to the city, if he wishes. The Mors are dangerous, and so is the court – but it might welcome him with open arms, if luck and persistence are on his side.
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
CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
The answer he received sounded prepared, practiced, funneled along a thousand other ears and eyes. A semblance of bitterness curled through his jaw, but that wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t this stranger’s fault that he was utterly lost, flying until he could no longer stay aloft, desperate to maintain some sense of fortitude and might. It wasn’t the mare’s fault that he’d been bound to searching for ghosts, instead of those who remained, existed, on this mortal plain, and not the one thereafter.
So the boy strived to listen, to understand, for it to sink and simmer in his mind – Novus, Solterra, Day Courts, kingdoms of sun. The only thing that made sense was the latter statement – because he’d been born in a similar sovereignty, where the sky stretched overhead and the reddened, desert floor was a merciless haven for those strong enough to withstand it. It was in his blood, in his veins, the towering flames, the molten earth, the way dragons called, the way soil shifted and sifted beneath his feet. “I had a home very similar,” he finally offered, his gaze drifting back over sands, over winter ethers, over an oasis that was not his own. “But it is gone now.” And so were the inhabitants, the families, the comrades, the bloodlines. Until he, or very few others remained – tied and tethered to memories no one else could share or comprehend.
Alone and adrift, no matter where he landed.
He considered her offer quietly, mulling it over in his head. He was half-inclined to stay perfectly still here, and wait for the opportunity to fly off again, to try and strive and find something beyond the pale.
But gods, he was tired.
Of many things – moments tasting like failure, scattered stars that showed no route, no path, no way, endless suns that all looked the same.
He rose then, legs fumbling and quivering but committed to the task, a slow and steady breath unfurling from his lungs. “Sure,” he exhaled, wondering if it was a mistake. If this was all a blunder, and he was making one more error in a series of flawed circumstances.
OF NOUGHT BUT EARTH CAN EARTH MAKE US PARTAKER,
BUT KNOWLEDGE MAKES A KING MOST LIKE HIS MAKER.
in the end, the World takes everything. Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
His gaze steadies on her, though he only speaks some time after she has given her explanation; she supposes that he needs time to process. I had a home very similar, he says, but it is gone now. There is a moment where she pauses, allowing his words to settle in her head. His home – gone? At first she wants to think of it as metaphor, but the look in his eyes suggests something more physical.
She cannot fathom the idea of a place simply disappearing. But, then again – she knows nothing at all of the circumstances. (She isn’t quite inclined to ask, either; to pick at a bruise.) “I’m sorry,” she says, on instinct. It probably means nothing; what good have condolences ever done in the face of any tragedy? She does mean it. She is not malevolent enough to wish for anyone’s pain. (Ereshkigal’s ragged voice cuts into her thoughts like the screech of torn metal. “Don’t lie,” she says, and laughs lowly. “I remember you, when we met.” Seraphina tries not to remember herself, when they met; and more than that, she refuses to remember the way that her anger has eroded her. Did erode her. Is still, more than she would like to admit, eroding her.) Condolences mean nothing, and she tries to come up with something better to say.
The result almost certainly falls flat. “I…” Her voice trails off into a quiet and lingering hesitation, like she isn’t quite sure what to say (and who would be, when faced with the prospect of an entire land, destroyed, some refugee stranger-in-mourning?), “…can’t even imagine.” Or maybe she can. She’s seen her home burnt to the ground, seen statues made of living flesh, seen a tyrant remake the character of the desert twice over; and every time it changes, she finds herself asking if what comes about in its wake is the same as what existed prior. But perhaps the comparison is insensitive. Seraphina can imagine Solterra burnt, bloodied, on her knees, whittled away, collared – but she cannot imagine it simply gone.
She cannot imagine returning. She cannot imagine having nothing to return to, either.
When he consents to her offer, she is relieved. It prevents her from of attempting to come up with any better consolations. “Walk with me, then,” Seraphina says, and, with a nod of her head in the direction of the capital, starts off across the sands. “You can ask any questions that you have as we go.”
She will leave him, she is sure, when they see the city gates. She is no longer any good at staying – at seeing anything through. (That has to change; but she is not willing to change it for any other living creature than the two growing in her stomach.)
But, for now – even as some faded, disappearing thing, she will be whatever company she can provide.
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
09-19-2020, 06:36 PM - This post was last modified: 09-19-2020, 10:35 PM by Seraphina
CROWNS HAVE THEIR COMPASS-LENGTH OF DAYS THEIR DATE-
TRIUMPHS THEIR TOMB-FELICITY, HER FATE-
If only it had merely been rearranged, reassembled, or altered under a new regime. Instead, the land had been inhaled by smoke and flames, by infernos, by greed, by avarice from a choking, clawing god, laden with false convictions and assurances. If only everyone else hadn’t been swallowed and consumed, earned their sacrificial bravery, resurrected again across lakes and ponds in a certain circle of hell; where his mother had regained her mobility and voice in two words towards him (be good) before returning to her demise, where chains had clung, and the void might as well have strangled them all over again.
He was grateful when she didn’t pry further, because some had before and the wounds had cut and slashed, deeper into the scars, brought them out, fresh and whole. Her apology was noted with a lift of his head, hooves dragging through sand, then eyes snatching back towards the land. “It’s not an experience anyone would want.” Save for the gods – and he almost said it, almost uttered the syllables, but he didn’t know how much the world shuddered under deities here. If there were some like Kisamoa, I am Kaos, bent to break apart beauty, to render kingdoms apart with one specious declaration. He’d only been a child. He hadn’t been capable of doing anything. But here, would warnings be sufficient?
Or did it matter? Did any of it at all, when it came to a celestial being’s strength and ability?
He took the direction in silence, in exhaustion, in the weight fatigue drew over lines of muscles, flesh, and sinew. Perhaps he was fated for a tour, or merely an escort, given her circumstances and his own. He raised his head once more, realizing there’d been other awkward, discomforting notions laden in his skull. If his father were here, he would have been automatically scolded for the blunder. “I’m Mauna.”It means mountain nearly fell from his lips; as if it meant something, held significance, when he didn’t feel like a summit or a peak. He could be regarded as a pebble, a piece of drifting ash. “Thank you for finding me.” Manners, finally sinking in, as he followed, and his first inquiry about the land wasn’t truly measured towards it at all. “Who are you?” A name to a face, rather than the eventual parting as strangers. He’d already had an infinite number of them in his life.
in the end, the World takes everything. Somewhere else, I am alive still, saying.
She wonders what it was like, to watch his world destroyed. It is not an experience anyone would want, he says, which is obvious - and there is nothing in his voice that reveals a thing, beyond that it was terrible. She wonders what it was like, though, to watch the world wrenched raw. The gods create. She has seen Isra’s magic, which changes what it touches entirely; she has seen Asterion’s influence on the ocean, and heard strange things of magic in Delumine. She has seen the sun god spin gold from nothing, seen him grant wishes as quickly and thoughtlessly as he takes them away. And she has seen that island, which sheds its skin with each passing season.
None of them create an absence. None of them make something disappear.
As they begin to move, she tosses half a glance over her shoulder at Ereshkial, who is quick to follow in their wake; dark and sharp as an arrow-head. He introduces himself as Mauna. It isn’t a name that is quite like anything she has ever heard before, and she nearly wonders what it means. (Before Eik asked her, once, while in the library, she had never thought much of names or what they meant; now she does on impulse, though she tries to forget the incident that bore it, because it is always followed by a cruel reminder that Eik is gone, and she is changed, and nothing will ever be the same again.)
He thanks her for finding him - and then he asks for her name. “You’re welcome,” she says, a politeness borne of obligation rather than any real emotion. It is easier than admitting to her name; she doesn’t want to. “I’m-” she forces out, and then she pauses, sucking in a deep breath. Even if she tells him her name, it will mean nothing to him, she knows - but she is sure that it will come to, if he stays in Novus for any significant period of time. It is the name of a dead woman, besides. A ghost. It is a ghost’s name, and she tells herself that cannot be one, because she is carrying children. “I’m Sera.” Not Seraphina, the burning one, silver queen of Solterra, or Fia, the gold-scarred revolutionary, a flame; just Sera, a simple name, meaning nothing. (She does not feel like any of them, lately. All those names may as well mean nothing at all.) “It’s good to meet you, Mauna.” Perhaps she is still speaking from obligation; but her tone is not unkind.
Her next words come out reluctantly; but she presses them out of her mouth regardless. “I….don’t want to pry, but your homeland...what was it called?” She says, and then, adds quickly, so that he would not think that the question was cruel, or else pointless, “Perhaps you are not the only refugee who has come to Novus.” Even if he isn’t, she does not expect to recognize it herself, unless he is far-removed from the other refugees; she does not meet nearly so many wanderers as she used to, and she is no longer present in any form of public life.
Still. Seraphina has finally come to realize what a cruel thing it is to be lonely - and perhaps, perhaps, she can give him some hope that he is not alone.
(Perhaps, she thinks, the hope is only crueler.)
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
You are the earth. But also the sun, and the sky. You are elements, bound and fused together. And you must never forget you can be everything all at once.
