Serafis

He was older than her. Not by much, but his maturity bled through him, and by comparison, she felt a mere child.

But upon being found by him, his maturity was but a facade. His face dropped, eyes wide with shock as he staggered towards her small body and lifted her from the ground. She felt tight in his embrace. Felt the shudder and the cough of his body against her own, tears dripping onto her shoulder and rolling cold onto the ruined fabric of her clothes.

Serafis was taken too soon to truly recall the horrors of the castle. Looming, shadowy figures drenched in moonlight and the creaking of doors. A woman’s whisper and the same feeling of tears upon Serafis’s tiny cheeks.

Alaunus would not let her from his sight. He brought her to her new safe haven and gave her a small, awkward introduction. He knew her struggle more intimately than any other, but how she turned to silence, and managed a smile, he would not know.

Serafis shone like the night sky. A golden galaxy of stars pressing fingertips to her body and letting her shimmer. Her gaze turned up, she heard the footsteps cut through the night’s silence. Her head lowered and she spotted her brother. Her curious nature had her mouth open, poised for a question, deciding to let Alaunus settle himself by her before continuing.

“Are there a lot of us out there, do you think?” She asked. Her voice wavered with a tinge of sadness that she could not think to explain. She held her head high. Alaunus pondered whether or not such posture was inherited. He hoped she did not inherit a thing from such a cursed family.

“I have little doubt. Many of us must roam free.” He returned her question. Though in truth he did not know, himself. How many of his siblings were set past the city walls and left to...he did not wish to ponder it. The thought scalded him, warned him of its spiralling effect. But he watched the optimism in her gaze hold strong. She held a will of diamond, a heart bursting with a courage beyond Alaunus’s own grasp. He wondered, perhaps, this is the spirit of a child left to flourish without restraint. Should he have been happy with that idea?

Serafis adored the sun. Her personality was a vibrance far unlike her brother’s. She loved to dance in the beams of sunlight and let the jewels upon her body glimmer with warmth. Any journey she travelled was met with a beautiful birdsong, but all in the clan agreed she was a terror with a weapon. Alaunus would wince while she trained. Her muscles clenched with pain as she contorted her face with a shout of force. Her beauty truly belied her warrior spirit. She would back down from no challenge. No target was out of reach for her. She was prepared to destroy everything to achieve it.

But at the end of a day of challenges, she would huff, teeth glinting in the dimming glow of the sun, and plop her worn body beside her brother’s, leaning on him, the love bursting from her heart and palpable in the air.

She was a creature of love.


By PunchingSolas