She has lived through so many changes and each one buries decades beneath her skin that do not match the actual years that have passed. The first one she had called the Unbecoming, the day the old world died. For many, it was devastating; it was the end of the beautiful lives they had built around themselves, the splintering of something comforting, something familiar. A continent ripped apart. They had been torn from family and friend, scattered across a land that was new and unrecognizable – terrifying in its strangeness. They had been pulled from homes, and those homes had been ruined in their wake, undone and then used as the bones of a new society. It had been so much change, too much new, and it overwhelmed them.
For Syrine, it was different.
When the world unhinged, when the magic in the mountain pulled her to it, she was set free. The Cove had always been home, home from the very first moment she opened her eyes and swallowed the scent of ocean brine. But home and comfort were two very different things. She cannot remember her mother, and she never knew her father, no gentle caress from warm, satin lips. But she will always remember that soft shade of purple and how the color looked when it was edged so carefully in stark white lines. She will always remember how it felt with his mouth against her skin, and his iron buried like blades in the thrum of her veins. At first, she had not understood why it always rained on her, why the sun never split the cloud above her head to dry the steel and tawny of her delicate back. But he was eager to show her why, eager, when he drew patterns in her pretty flesh, ribbons of red against the white and grulla. It was because the world wept for her –because even the sky grew weary of watching such things.
When the plague came, she did not suffer like nearly everyone else had. She had no loved ones to lose, no father or mother, not even a single friend to give any piece of her heart to. She had not been immune to the pain of others, but it hadn’t ever reached into her chest to take in the same way - and even the sick hadn’t seemed to want her. No fever or fatigue, no cough, no bloody spittle on pale grey lips. Only the rain that always fell across her shoulders.
Perhaps it washed her clean.
Now it was the dark, it was a forever-night that had stolen into the day and never left. It was empty and starless and almost always cold, especially when this rain continued to fall as it always had. It was the monsters that roved the shadows and gnashed their hungry jaws, it was the screams that flitted through the trees instead of birdsong, it was the flowers that hadn’t bloomed this spring.
It was everything undone, everything backwards.
But it was always, always something.
She picks her way through the meadow, grateful that the wildflowers have all wilted in the evernight, that there is no pale purple to watch her pass. The grass is all dry and crumpled, and even without the light she can tell that nothing is as green as it should be. There is a sound to her left, a sound from the shadows that turn the meadow into a roiling sea of eversame dark, and she turns to face it with eyes wide and blue and glacial, framing a white face freckled with bits of soot and steel. She is tense as she searches, waiting for the dull gleam of iron or the flash of lavender. But neither comes, so foolishly, slowly, she takes one hesitant step toward the sound while her little rain cloud continues to cry jeweled tears that fall in unsteady rivelets across her delicate face and along either side of her spine.
“Is someone there?” Her voice is like a chime, soft and resonant when the wind carries the words away, and it isn’t until she inches forward another few steps that she can make out the shape of a girl. She blinks, and rain gathers like tears along the soot of her lashes as she frowns and worries and decides what to do. But there is something safe in the way that she is a girl, in the way that she is brown and red instead of purple, that there are elegant horns atop her head like a crown instead of blades of iron made to split skin. So she summons the courage she has never in her life known, and when she creeps close enough that the shadows melt between them, there is something more fragile than a smile on the grey of her mouth. “Hello,” she blinks again, stopping before her nearness soaks the girl in unwelcome rainwater - this evernight is cold enough without it, “my name is Syrine.” A pause, but it is as brief and uncertain as butterfly wings. “Are you alone here too?”
For Syrine, it was different.
When the world unhinged, when the magic in the mountain pulled her to it, she was set free. The Cove had always been home, home from the very first moment she opened her eyes and swallowed the scent of ocean brine. But home and comfort were two very different things. She cannot remember her mother, and she never knew her father, no gentle caress from warm, satin lips. But she will always remember that soft shade of purple and how the color looked when it was edged so carefully in stark white lines. She will always remember how it felt with his mouth against her skin, and his iron buried like blades in the thrum of her veins. At first, she had not understood why it always rained on her, why the sun never split the cloud above her head to dry the steel and tawny of her delicate back. But he was eager to show her why, eager, when he drew patterns in her pretty flesh, ribbons of red against the white and grulla. It was because the world wept for her –because even the sky grew weary of watching such things.
When the plague came, she did not suffer like nearly everyone else had. She had no loved ones to lose, no father or mother, not even a single friend to give any piece of her heart to. She had not been immune to the pain of others, but it hadn’t ever reached into her chest to take in the same way - and even the sick hadn’t seemed to want her. No fever or fatigue, no cough, no bloody spittle on pale grey lips. Only the rain that always fell across her shoulders.
Perhaps it washed her clean.
Now it was the dark, it was a forever-night that had stolen into the day and never left. It was empty and starless and almost always cold, especially when this rain continued to fall as it always had. It was the monsters that roved the shadows and gnashed their hungry jaws, it was the screams that flitted through the trees instead of birdsong, it was the flowers that hadn’t bloomed this spring.
It was everything undone, everything backwards.
But it was always, always something.
She picks her way through the meadow, grateful that the wildflowers have all wilted in the evernight, that there is no pale purple to watch her pass. The grass is all dry and crumpled, and even without the light she can tell that nothing is as green as it should be. There is a sound to her left, a sound from the shadows that turn the meadow into a roiling sea of eversame dark, and she turns to face it with eyes wide and blue and glacial, framing a white face freckled with bits of soot and steel. She is tense as she searches, waiting for the dull gleam of iron or the flash of lavender. But neither comes, so foolishly, slowly, she takes one hesitant step toward the sound while her little rain cloud continues to cry jeweled tears that fall in unsteady rivelets across her delicate face and along either side of her spine.
“Is someone there?” Her voice is like a chime, soft and resonant when the wind carries the words away, and it isn’t until she inches forward another few steps that she can make out the shape of a girl. She blinks, and rain gathers like tears along the soot of her lashes as she frowns and worries and decides what to do. But there is something safe in the way that she is a girl, in the way that she is brown and red instead of purple, that there are elegant horns atop her head like a crown instead of blades of iron made to split skin. So she summons the courage she has never in her life known, and when she creeps close enough that the shadows melt between them, there is something more fragile than a smile on the grey of her mouth. “Hello,” she blinks again, stopping before her nearness soaks the girl in unwelcome rainwater - this evernight is cold enough without it, “my name is Syrine.” A pause, but it is as brief and uncertain as butterfly wings. “Are you alone here too?”
syrine
with a whisper, we will tame the vicious seas
like a feather, bringing kingdoms to their knees
@[The Monsters] please mess with her personal rain cloud
@[elodie]