[attr="class","apptraitscont"]

warm-natured, amiable, and possessed by a boyish charm that transforms him into a well-intentioned, if eccentric older brother figure to anyone vaguely younger than himself, serafim strix likes people, and likes to be liked. [break][break]

serafim strix is also a lie.[break][break]

imagine this: a storm strikes a fishing vessel out at sea and cleaves it in half. something stirs. something wakes.[break][break]

it is said the captain was the sole survivor.[break][break]

( a fabrication: he drowned in the storm. ) [break][break]

if he walks differently, talks differently, even looks different, well. it isn't as if anyone will know, will they? dead men tell no tales, after all.



he's lying, he has to be. you confront him over a drink, and he peers at you through the bottom of his glass of whiskey, smiling like you're the funniest person in the world.[break][break]

"it's all a game, my friend," he says in his honeyed, lilting voice. he leans forward, the movement jostling the cane by his side. for a moment, your attention is drawn to its white, whalebone handle, carved so sharply it must almost hurt to hold. then, he is close enough that you can see the dusting of freckles across his cheekbones, the way the light paints his eyelashes gold. [break][break]

he raises a hand to his lips, conspiratorial. "it's a stage— a story, even! please, are you really telling me you've never wanted to be someone else?"




a snapshot from a year ago: [break][break]

a ship's navigator rattles a rusted compass. there's an ink splotch on his sleeve, a pencil tucked behind his ear, and he's squinting against the sun. a sheaf of papers is half-hidden under the map: research papers for the university, essays written under different names, for different people. at least he's paid decently for it, having to deal with the tedious nonsense that ambitious witches care little for, though he'd much rather be daydreaming about the plays that crowd his skull. [break][break]

there's a touch of irony to it, that he writes so eloquently on matters of magical theory when he has only heard his familiar's voice once — a ghost of a laugh when he was fourteen, and then never again.[break][break]

he spies a patch of grey on the horizon, a faint smear of charcoal on a plain canvas. do you think he knows? do you think he could predict what will happen, the pain of shrapnel through hip bone, the way blood blossoms underwater? what dies, what lives?[break][break]

below, the crew hauls a fresh catch onto the deck. he eyes the mass of slippery, wriggling bodies, the way sunlight reflects off silver scales, considers their glassy, wide-eyed gazes. he looks back down, makes a note for later — i am reminded that like a dance, there is an art to this: on land, i am always drowning.[break][break]

i am always drowning.

[attr="class","appplayedby"]played by [attr="class","appooc"][attr="id","pegasuscol"]lav