They say time heals all wounds. Maybe that's true. But even healed wounds leave the body scarred... different. A healed body will never be the same as it was before the wounds. This is Seraphina. Healed, but different than before.
Before she had been a great warrior, body poised and ready for action at any turn. She had proudly put her past behind her in order to create a new existence with her sheer might. It worked for a while; she was able to force a place for herself in the world, but at a great cost. She had been unreachable - the only language she had understood was battle and blood. She had fought for what she desired, but once gained it was never as sweet as she had imagined. That had been her life - one disappointment after another. Even her children had never tugged at her heartstrings like she had imaged they should.
Only now does she realize her folly. Only now can she see that it was an act. Now she can clearly see that her past had created the blind and angry creature she had been in her youth. Now she sees that she had not left anything behind, but carried it with her. The greatest of burdens.
But with realization comes redemption. She enters the grassy meadow, a place she knows well, as if for the first time. Her golden eyes which had once been so sharp and cold now have a softness to them, a warmth that had never been genuine before. Her tawny feathers flutter gently in the breeze that sways the grasses and her talons, once lusting for the blood of enemies, now grasp at the cool and soft ground beneath them. She closes her eyes for a moment and feels that she has become a part of this land around her.
Slowly the ancient one begins to move again. She shifts her wings and slowly and deliberately moves in the direction of others that have sought out this land to graze or converse. Many of the ones that she might remember are long gone, but she finds that the idea of meeting someone new might be just what she needs in this moment.
Seraphina