Seraphina's Lament by Sarah Chorn

Author:Sarah Chorn [Chorn, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Neryan

They left the cabin three nights ago, embarking on a journey that would usually take them a day; but with Seraphina’s slow, painful progress and her frequent need to rest, it was taking them so much longer. He couldn’t help but chafe at their slow pace. It wasn’t her fault, not like she could help it, but he hated this walk; this journey between what had been and what would be, with this narrow dirt track a seemingly endless causeway between the two.

He didn’t want to be doing this, any of it. Every part of him wanted to run in the other direction, but Seraphina had her mind set, and more than that—Mouse was out there somewhere, and he wouldn’t leave without her. He was stuck.

This was his own kind of hell, being stretched thin as a spider’s web between two poles, his soul straining, churning, and turning inside him. Water puddled at his feet with every step, surging up from somewhere deep within the earth, and he was powerless to stop it. He was bursting, each waterlogged step just another reminder of how torn he was.

What was happening to him? He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t sure who he was, or what he was becoming. What happened next? What happened after he stopped changing? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He had to know.

He felt like he was boiling.

He kept his thoughts to himself, and walked. They didn’t speak; none of them had any words to share. Vadden wore his silence the same way he wore his skin, it had become part of him. Seraphina had cloaked herself in darkness and courage, grim determination in the set of her lips and her narrowed eyes, and he… he was just breaking. He felt like a butterfly caught in a thunderstorm, his wings shredding in the wind, and wondered when his companions would hear that long, slow tear as they were ripped off. He wondered how long he could be split down the middle before he fell into madness.

Mouse was gone and he suddenly couldn’t escape the thought that they were all being ripped apart. Torn. Sundered. It was eating him alive.

Seraphina’s slow step-drag-stepping behind him, her occasional grunts of pain that she couldn’t quite muffle, seemed to underscore the darkness of his thoughts. She refused to ask for help, and after she had snarled at him once for offering it, he’d stopped going near her. There was a wall between them, erected by silence, years apart, and their last argument, a discomfort that chafed at his soul. They needed to stay close together, her fire balanced his water; but being close to her was uncomfortable in the extreme, their relationship had never been a struggle before. Recently they were more like strangers.

Now, on the third night, she was falling far behind them, her grunts not so muffled anymore, her back bowed and legs bent, pain radiating off her, smothering all her determination.

“There’s a farmhouse up here, if I remember right,” Vadden said.

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