Title: On the Deck of a Dream
“Fandom:” @kallende-dnd
Characters: Seren Swift, Ravi
Warnings: Nightmare, Angst, Grief
Words: 252
Here, have another little Seren thing that’s been hanging out in my Google Drive.
Seren feels the ship before she sees it, pitching and rolling beneath her boots. She knows, before she opens her eyes, that she is aboard The Shark again. She can hear it in the snapping of the sails.
She feels Ravi before she sees him, too; a hand at the small of her back steadies her against an unrelenting wind. Something is wrong, she realizes. Finally, she looks.
A mountainous slab of ocean hovers against a perfect blue sky, casting the ship into shadow as it smothers the sun. For a breathless moment it just hangs there, a menacing curtain behind The Shark’s pregnant sails. Then it begins to collapse.
“Seren,” Ravi says, and she turns toward his voice.
He’s pale beneath his sailor’s tan, and his eyes are bright and urgent. The hand on her back moves to tightly clutch one of her own while the other slips something into her coat pocket. She notices with terror that he’s shaking.
Seren tries to speak to him, tries to ask him what he’s doing, but the words refuse to form. Ravi pulls her roughly into an embrace.
The wave slams onto the deck just as his arms lock around her back, and Seren sits up in her bedroll with a startled cry.
There’s a moment, before her body catches up with her brain, when she can still feel Ravi pressed against her. Then the moment passes, and Seren presses both hands over her mouth to keep the others from hearing her sobs.
That Good McElroy content. I’d seen the Pipis one, the JoJo’s one, and the full time viner one all the time but I had no idea A) who Griffin was or B) what the JoJo’s thing meant anyway. I feel I’ve been blessed without realizing it.
Title: On the Flickering Floor
“Fandom:” @kallende-dnd
Characters: Seren Swift, Ravi the Boy
Warnings: All the things I’m famous for: Blood, Death, Grief/Mourning, Feelings, Angst, Emotions, etc
Words: 570
I’ve been picking at this on and off for well over a year, but the party finally unlocked Seren’s tragic backstory, so it’s time to set it free. Congrats to the Kallende squad for getting past Seren’s seven emotional proxies.
Seren had always liked things that sparkled.
The shards of glass that littered the jewelry shop’s floor blazed with reflected firelight; they gleamed with a ferocity none of the gems within could have matched. An equally breathtaking crimson ran through the cracks in this dazzlement -- a deep, glossy contrast to the vibrant orange snapping through the shattered fragments of window. Somehow, in the depths of a moonless night, Seren found herself sitting in a pool of kaleidoscopic light, glittering around her like sunlight on the sea.
It was beautiful. Everything innate to her cried out that it was beautiful.
But nothing had any right to be beautiful while Ravi lay shuddering with his head in her lap, bleeding all that crimson into the flickering floor.
“You should go,” he told her through a grimace.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Seren replied. She wanted to sound stern, exasperated. As if the reason she wasn’t leaving him was that he was being a baby -- as if he would be fine if he would only wait a moment longer. But her voice trembled, and his breath hitched, and the shouts of the Dwendolarian guards drew closer.
“I can take ‘em,” Ravi said, his grimace flashing into a smile.
Seren surprised herself by laughing, as only Ravi could have made her do with the world around them burning.
This is what I’m losing, she thought, suddenly and with finality. This is what I won’t have anymore.
She bit down on the inside of her lip, but it didn’t stop hot tears from rolling down her cheeks.
“Hey. Hey,” Ravi murmured. He took one of her hands and held it over his heart. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” Seren said, beginning to cry in earnest.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Ravi insisted, giving her hand a weak squeeze.
Seren found she could no longer speak, not without bursting completely, so she only shook her head, her hand rolling into a white-knuckled fist on Ravi’s chest.
“Seren,” Ravi said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. He smirked a little. “Jelly legs.”
Seren shut her eyes against the old nickname, and for a moment she thought she wouldn’t be able to open them again. She wouldn’t be able to move, not after this, she wouldn’t be able to get up and step into another second, and then another. She’d turn to stone.
Then she sniffed and forced herself to meet Ravi’s fading gaze.
“What?” she rasped.
“I love you,” he said.
Seren surprised herself by laughing, as only Ravi could have made her do. Then she surprised herself by sobbing, so hard her shoulders shook. And then by saying, “I love you, too,” just as she began to register the sound of boots crunching through the firelit glass.
Ravi’s hold on her hand went slack.
“Hands where I can see ‘em, pirate!” a Dwendolarian guard spat.
I’ll turn to stone, she thought. Any minute now. Any minute.
“I said hands up!”
I can’t move. I can’t.
“This is your last chance!”
I can’t.
Somehow, though, Seren did.
She lowered Ravi’s head onto the brilliant, shattered floor. She brushed her fingertips over his eyelids to close them, and her stomach lurched a little at the red smudges they left. She lifted her bloody hands to either side of her face. She stood. And when the guards pulled her hands behind her back and shoved her into the street, Seren didn’t struggle.
@finngodwetrust replied to your post: idk why i am still surprised like weekly by how...
god i wish this weren’t so relatable
"i stand -- fOr ThE pLeDgE oF AlLegIaNcE" like shut up barbara we get it you care more about a piece of cloth than you do about black people and you think our troops die to defend a flag rather than our motherfucking constitution
@finngodwetrust replied to your post “not to dream too big but maybe by the time the fob concert rolls...”
Thank you for reminding me to purchase tickets to fob I almost forgot and it was like 10:40 so I freaking out that the presale tickets would be gone but they weren't thank Jesus
@paladinical replied to your post “good morning i want to talk to people but i don’t really have anything...”
I'm doing finals and papers and finally marathoning through CoolGames
i am so sad that all of my friends are in finals rn like that sounds smug and shitty coming from little miss no finals over here but i’m 100% sincere and i wish you all the best of luck so you can come back and play with me
i have only listened to the clips of coolgames inc that are on polygon’s youtube channel but hoo boy does that sound like a podcast and a half
@finngodwetrust replied to your post “good morning i want to talk to people but i don’t really have anything...”
Finals week I want to die but BASTILLE IN A WEEK AND A HALF SO YAY
MY BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL BOYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
