Unholy, disgusting thing: A Selene flashback + S moodboard

Oakwerth, 240 years before leaving for Riven.

In the heart of desolation, she is intimate with the cadence of waiting— whispers of wind that taste like stagnant breath, the tremor of ground that shift beneath her feet from the scourge awakening— and that, the unbearable wailing that carves new pathways of sorrow through her once lithe heart. Her routine is mechanical by now, developed the same as her abandoned inventions, and she does nothing if accept her fate. Bone-weary and frail but armored with unworldly determination, she rations her blood; this much for spilling, this for ingesting. She does not spit, she does not curse. She grits her teeth, and bears it.
Boots laced past her thigh, her coat obscures her many knives and her other, sharper edges. The leather feels heavier tonight, and heavier yet come tomorrow.
She pauses in front of the door before pushing it open, casting her eyes on crumbling paintings and vowing once more. I will mend it.

Her shoulders droop as she peruses bookshelves of forgotten parlors, mausoleums of what used to be. All my fault, she thinks, although the tingle in her spine (the one that keeps it straight) tells her it's a lie. All this weight, all this damnable weight, perched on bones as frail as a veil of mist, hanging in the air, as insubstantial as a dream upon waking. She grits her teeth, and bears it. An immovable object meeting an unstoppable force; she is both, and the same, and will forever remain, just so.

With graceful footfalls that still remind her of ballrooms and garden gatherings, she heads for the one soul she still knows, that knows her in return. She feels the past will soon be forgotten, she senses it in her friend, who is slowly turning, refusing to see it; she grits her teeth, and she bears that, too.
The scent of decay hangs heavy in the air, and the metallic tang of blood rests on her tongue, a melange that caresses her senses like a lover's touch turned cold as a corpse. In hushed breaths, almost cutting the air, she mutters and grumbles in an attempt of levity that will soon be reigned and restrained.

“I do not seek to shackle the sky, nor would I dare attempt such a feat. But would it be too much to ask for a single day where the clouds doth part? Is there a sun? Do I dare to remember?”

A laugh greets her from behind a closed door, frail as her bones, and she is reminded of the weight. She already knows what to do.

She slides down to sit on the wet ground, her head falling against the wooden boards of the derelict wall. She stares up, up, up past where the roof should extend, into the gray and dusty heaven- its freedom an illusion as it remains forever confined by a canvas not its own. Still, she yearns. This is the sum of her existence, a fractured offering given without restraint, but not without its own desperation.

“I know that you hunt for us, for our home, but I'm sorry. Please. This is all that I can do,” Iosefka pleads and hands her another vial of hunter's blood, “Now, go. And good hunting.”

She accepts in good faith, after all, it is all she can do without tearing everything apart, rendering flesh from bone or heaven from earth, whichever comes first. Composure is key, but not without its own ringing doubt, a discordant note amidst the melody of her resolve. She will never be more than a fissure in the perfect porcelain.

She steps out into the city with confident strides, hand wrapped so tightly around her gun she believes herself part of it. Moonlight now cascades over the streets like liquid silver, casting elongated shadows that twist and contort in a dance of misery. The smell of saltpeter stings in her nose, and her pebbles clack, loose in her pockets. Two alleys down a mother pleads for her child, and the child melts into the grates. A bullet for one, and blood for the other. She doesn’t think she can bear it this time, legs giving out and heart torn asunder, but she does, she grits her teeth and she does it, for another step, and another after that, until it becomes mechanical again, until she can envision something far away and further still, not quite the heavens, but something just as beautiful.

She is a silhouette against the backdrop of despair, a lone figure etched against the cruel and dark parallel of a city once held aloft by ambition, now contorted by chaos, transformed by crisis. It went too far.
With each step, each gunshot and parry, she bears witness to the remnants of lives shattered, memories reduced to hoarse echoes, cried from her mouth and then from anothers, until one is silenced. The quiet is just as cruel; she grits her teeth, and bears it.

She asks again sunrise after sunrise, steeped in blood. She screams, pleading, weary and thin: What should I do? How do I end this?

It never answers, only asks the same of her, the same, the same, night after night.

Instead she offers her promises to the sun, their silent pact woven through stolen breath and fleeting glances. I will mend it. The hours unravel like the threads of a fraying tapestry, until it is time again. She dreams of simplicity, of lace and wine-stained lips. Night has almost fallen.

She grits her teeth, and bears it.