EMPTY AS HER EYES

[Seva 624]

Spoiler

E M P T Y ~ A S ~ H E R ~ E Y E S

Setting her cane before herself, a de Senna of no renown marches her way across the quiet wastes of the southern reaches, her boots sinking into the pale sands to the south of the Crownlands. A slow journey, perhaps, but one that she makes often, winding from the northern reaches down across the beaches, her pale eyes gazing out yet seeing nothing but the wind that sears against them, a bitter reminder that pain is yet hers, even if vision is not. She is no hero, no woman of great standing, not even a being who harbors power beyond her make. She is a woman. A victor of struggles, one who has pushed far enough to find her movements unimpeded, even as she crosses the border between death and further death.

 

 Death and further death pay no heed, however, to those without her cumbersome countenance. A heart of stone, a beating reminder that she was born separate, her eyes not the only thing to be left lacking in some fundamental aspect. She doesn’t even flinch as her cane thumbs against an object in the middle of her trail, a lump which was not there a day prior.

 

 She releases a soft sigh, more for show than for any real reason. She feels little, a dull ache in her mind that something is wrong. That a rise must billow from her, shock and awe, that what is before her surely cannot be what it is. But she feels nothing. Numbness envelops her lips, pressed thin as a line, as she kneels down against the sand-ridden path. Her hands sink forward, extending towards something unknown, yet to be known. They brush against it.

 

 Hair, soft and calm yet for the breeze which rolls from the sea to the sands, stricken by the barest inflection of sediment caked into the scalp. Hair that billows downwards, pouring over shoulders too cold to hold. Phoebe’s fingers brush over a waxen figure, painting nose from eyes, lips from chin. Too soft to be here. Too gentle to be discovered. She lingers in the sun, rot yet to come if only for the salt which envelops the very land, sucking moisture and life from even the detritus which might engulf her.

 

 Phoebe hums and sets her cane to the side, her other hand joining the first. There is numbness, apathy, a lack of any and all respect that she surely should feel. She pulls away from the face, hesitantly, only stopping to slide the lids shut on eyes which she would never know the color of. Her hands move onwards, shifting from the flesh of what was to what is, fishing around pockets sewn into the silken dress, too fine to be of any help to a wanderer. Buttons, insignias, signs. She searched yet.

 

 There was nothing.

 

 How she felt in that moment, uncertainty bridging over her self-diagnosed, putrid heart. She clasped a hand over her own chest, as she reached out to fold the girl’s hands over her own, a subtle prayer that she felt she could not make for her. She sat for a great while, staring gently down and through what must be a grievous sight. Her eyes vacant, silvered gaze which ran gently over the world, unassuming, unthinking, without judgement. Like her heart, which too drank in the truth of the world with profound stillness. A hope without hope. A sight without sight.

 

 She knew there was a wound. There was no need to check. She only needed to know that which was, which made the girl real. Which made her a person who had existed. There was no name, no sign of identification. Crownlands or Rebel States, it mattered not. She was alive, and what lay before was not. A trick of fate, an irony she could not understand how to laugh at. She, who harbored within her that cold, thick heart, settled gently before she whose heart had, once, beat and felt as any other. Love. Passion. Joy. Hope.

 

 Still, there was nothing.

 

 She moved, without knowing, without understanding, and stood. Her hands dragged, weakly, her thin frame heaving against that which had lain, to settle to the side of the path. She dressed the woman as she would a finer lady, clasping her cold hands together over her chest, and ensuring she lay gently in the sand.

 

 In time, she would call for someone to fetch the corpse. To find her allegiance, to learn of her death. To find some sense of justice. Phoebe could not sense this justice. She performed the rites, like a ghost, one who had seen life pantomimed and so mimicked in turn. There was no war, etched in these sands.

 

 Yet, she halted once more, knees faltering as she tried to stand. Kneeling here, by the sea, by the end of life as she knew it, she turned and gazed down, her hand reaching out to brush against hands which still knelt in prayer as she had left them.

 

 “ . . . We shall live on.”

 

 She stood then, and turned, taking her cane and setting it before herself. Those who knew the de Senna might wonder what this gentle word meant. What scheme was she plotting, what truth lay under her facade, this witch who pretended to be human?

 

Yet, far less empty than her eyes.

[Mescaffier 6197]

Spoiler

my dotta!!!