And wild for to hold. [retro]

Serafíne

When when when does Sera ever say: what does this mean, what does this mean, what does this mean. What she says is: how does this feel in my body now, how does this feel against my skin, where is the pain and where is the sensation, what can happen next.

Everything.

Whoever is buried under there, hunter or otherwise, the man who pursues her, the hind she pursues, she wants him whole. She wants him free. She wants them all free, wants to weave a rope out of that golden hair that comes away and she thinks and strains and dreams and focuses and she: keeps spending herself and spending herself in the act of that focusing - pushing more and more of herself into the spell meant to knit together the bleeding ground.

(Extending the Healing Rote.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

rose

How real this vision is; how real the certainty that the bones are whole now, are clean, even dirt-packed and lovingly muddied; how real the certainty that the hunter, the man, helpless in his grave beneath the wound-splitting earth (also healing, knitting as if it were flesh; it is the flesh and that is why his blood is seeping through Serafíne's fingers, and we have used the word viscous, but attend carefully, attend carefully to the blood, because it is too thick; it is as something jellied, something preserved) thrashing upwards even as the ground closes.

As Serafíne heals, the visceral signature of her Will like a gulp of vanilla smoke, it gets more difficult to open the ground up because (the king is the land | the land is the king) it wants to close up like a trap, but the gold the ground heals too and the heartbeat kicks up and misses a beat and then another and

cardiac arrest

(her hands)

stop

stop

stop

stop

the silence pipes into her and for an instant (this is a vision) surely Serafíne can feel, can skim, a sense that she has been scooped into an emptinesss, and within that emptiness there is music beginning, see? And then

there's the heart again. There, her hands make contact through that gold-hair net-rope thing, and she has opened and healed enough to:

find the man. Just there; his face might as well be clay, so caked is it with dark earth, but his lips part and dirt falls onto his tongue as he tries to take a breath, can't open his eyes too much dirt too much dirt too much dirt.

This is a vision.

Serafíne

The heartbeat stops and her breath stops she knows the rhythm and the empty spaces between the rhythm, the lacunae, and maybe she is crying (assuredly she is crying) in those moments of silence when the ground oozes that thick and jellied blood and her breath comes sharper, you understand, for the cessation of things as she digs and

digs and

digs and

digs down through the wounded earth like a diving bell and some part of her must know that this is a vision, but every part of her also knows that it is so very real right now.

Here is his face it is made of clay it is clotted with earth it is formed beneath her hands and she starts to smear away the dirt, to shape and form his face beneath his hands, to empty out his mouth, to breathe to breathe to breathe for him.

"Wake up." Serafíne is saying; she is burning, her voice is burning. "Wake up wake up wake up," she is breathless and full-of-noise, she is urgent and she is needful, "what are you here for. What am I supposed to see."

Serafíne

PERCEPTION

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

WP!

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

rose

He is no golem, and there are textures at play as Serafíne smears away the dirt. There, sharp cheekbones; a young face, but weathered (grit and mud and rock and his bones were splintered but now he is candled with the touch of her magick the bloody kiss she pressed through the earth), the twitch of eyelids, a cough and a gasp, and his eyes crack open but mud falls into them. What is he here for? What is she supposed to see? He says a word, but the word becomes a ribbon, and the ribbon wraps around Serafíne's throat. It does not strangle; it merely wraps, feels a little like silked fur. She would know this man if she saw him. She would know him, because when he finally forces his eyes open completely and she sees them, their color is

The ribbon says: There is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

He chokes another word and this one becomes a stone. When the stone hits the ground, frost seres out from the impact, all winter-green and cold and still and sudden and frost touches his hair, and everything green withers.

He says, and this time Sera can hear his voice, a honey smooth voice afraid as anything, "The ground will sever its own arteries unless."

A drumbeat, and

And then the vision is gone, and she is on her knees in the grass with her hands in the dirt and the young woman who yelled at her bent over, hands on her own knees, gazing intently and with angry bee-sting sure concern, and behind the young woman the Nymph still half-loosened from her prison, right? The little lights, burning - no

only one little light burning

and everything stilling. Serafíne can feel the woman's Will at work, the taste of roses and sugar, the sweet after-lingering taste of some candied natural concoction, liquour, oh, sweetest honey. The woman is looking at Serafíne, to see what it is she does. See? Yes.