Hades and Persephone
Nov. 11th, 2021 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lilomeaShe can't move her arms.
That is the first thing Kosmina notices as she breaks the surface of consciousness. Her shoulders ache; she wants to stretch them. But she can't move her arms.
Confused thoughts float up to the surface of her mind next: sense impressions from the recent past, flashes much less substantial than memories, mixed in with a slow-dawning awareness of her surroundings in the present. The sight of fine powder in the air in front of her face, a cloying herbal scent in her nose and mouth and her own hacking coughs; a low thrum of monotonous noise from all sides; an unsettled feeling of sleep, like being trapped in a dream and struggling to wake up; a dull flickering red light through her closed eyelids; a brief, bright glimpse of a porcelain basin and the smell of soap - fine, smooth soap, the kind that her mistress uses; the monotonous noise sharpening by degrees, coalescing into a low chant; her own wet hair and skin, swaddled by sudden dry warmth; the chant, deep and sonorous, smoothing out into sounds that she doesn't understand - "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira;" the light leaking in through her eyelids growing brighter, orange joining the dull red -
She opens her eyes.
For a moment, her confused and spinning world stands completely still, a bizarre image like an artist's fevered scrawling of blurred colors and deep shadows. There is an orange light arcing across the floor around her, not like a fire but like a fine mosaic of glass embedded into the ground, strange shapes like blocky writing in some unknown language limned in bright sunset. An impossible image, only achievable by magic. Beyond the arc of illumination there are huge shadows, complicated and uneven, the folds of long black robes on tall figures. Each figure rises like a mountain peak, capped at the top by a featureless white mask, floating ghostly and startling in the gloom. And from behind those masks comes the droning chant: "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira; os, us-ausra, os, us-vira." There is no end to the mountainous figures, no end to the chanting, it surrounds her in a circle like the orange shapes of light.
And - she can't move her arms. Her shoulders hurt, straining on either side of her. Her arms prickle, her hands feel numb. But she can't move them, because on either wrist there is a tight ring of metal, stained orange from the circle of light. Affixed to either ring is a chain, taut and leading off into shadow until she can no longer make them out. She is bound in a magic circle, surrounded by chanting figures.
She screams, loud and piercing.
But there's no response from the masked figures all around her. There's no change in the speed or volume of their chanting - "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira" - and none of them move toward or away from her. The orange luminescense of the magic circle glimmers like oil in firelight, but does not respond to her scream. She screams again, louder, more panicked; she pulls at the chains, tries to stand - only now does she realize belatedly that she's on her knees - but she can't move an inch. Her gaze darts around this hellish place - she doesn't even recognize it, she can't make out anything familiar from her master and mistress's house. She can't see who is behind those masks and she can't see any path to escape around them. She's trapped, she knows, helpless in this strange place and at the mercy of these people who can't possibly mean well for her.
"Who are you?" She shouts, her voice high like a cat's screech. But she might as well be shouting into a pillow: she can hear immediately the echoes being swallowed up and deadened in the unknown depths of this place. She pulls again, swivelling her wrists and wrenching with her body's full weight at the chains, uselessly. Her knees scrape on the stone below her; she's wearing a diaphanous white robe, she realizes, not her usual skirt and apron, and it is split so that its hem pools on the floor around her, not covering her legs to shield them from the stone's roughness. She was bathed while she was unconscious, she realizes - that was the white basin in her memory, the scent of her mistress's best soap - and put in this white silk robe like a bride's gown. Knocked unconscious, dressed like a bride and chained in a magic circle? Why? Why did these people take her, what do they want to use her for -
She screams again as one figure finally moves in front of her, pulling out of its robe with a pale hand something that glints with metal sharpness, a knife to slit her throat or cut out her tongue or -
The metal blade drops from the figure's hand but does not fall to the ground: it hangs from a fine silver chain, just visible outlined in the rune-light. A necklace with a pendant like a small blade, or a claw. The figure holds the chain in one hand, adjusts it with the other. Then it steps forward.
Her heart seems to pound inside her ribs like a trapped and panicked animal. She leans away from the black figure filling her world, pulling as far back as the chains will allow - but she can't move far enough away.
The figure closes in. The chanting around them is getting louder, building toward some terrible climax: "Os, us-ausra! Os, us-vira!" Its robe smells musty, cloying and smothering like velvet on a hot day - its white mask is shadowed so that the eyes behind it are just visible, cold and dark - it bends low and she tries to swipe at it with one hand, but she can get nowhere close to it - and then it drops the silver necklace around her neck.
"Os, us-ausra! Os, us-vira! La-nissim ash, la-nissda ash!"
Like a shroud pulled over her head, the world goes utterly black.
That is the first thing Kosmina notices as she breaks the surface of consciousness. Her shoulders ache; she wants to stretch them. But she can't move her arms.
Confused thoughts float up to the surface of her mind next: sense impressions from the recent past, flashes much less substantial than memories, mixed in with a slow-dawning awareness of her surroundings in the present. The sight of fine powder in the air in front of her face, a cloying herbal scent in her nose and mouth and her own hacking coughs; a low thrum of monotonous noise from all sides; an unsettled feeling of sleep, like being trapped in a dream and struggling to wake up; a dull flickering red light through her closed eyelids; a brief, bright glimpse of a porcelain basin and the smell of soap - fine, smooth soap, the kind that her mistress uses; the monotonous noise sharpening by degrees, coalescing into a low chant; her own wet hair and skin, swaddled by sudden dry warmth; the chant, deep and sonorous, smoothing out into sounds that she doesn't understand - "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira;" the light leaking in through her eyelids growing brighter, orange joining the dull red -
She opens her eyes.
For a moment, her confused and spinning world stands completely still, a bizarre image like an artist's fevered scrawling of blurred colors and deep shadows. There is an orange light arcing across the floor around her, not like a fire but like a fine mosaic of glass embedded into the ground, strange shapes like blocky writing in some unknown language limned in bright sunset. An impossible image, only achievable by magic. Beyond the arc of illumination there are huge shadows, complicated and uneven, the folds of long black robes on tall figures. Each figure rises like a mountain peak, capped at the top by a featureless white mask, floating ghostly and startling in the gloom. And from behind those masks comes the droning chant: "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira; os, us-ausra, os, us-vira." There is no end to the mountainous figures, no end to the chanting, it surrounds her in a circle like the orange shapes of light.
And - she can't move her arms. Her shoulders hurt, straining on either side of her. Her arms prickle, her hands feel numb. But she can't move them, because on either wrist there is a tight ring of metal, stained orange from the circle of light. Affixed to either ring is a chain, taut and leading off into shadow until she can no longer make them out. She is bound in a magic circle, surrounded by chanting figures.
She screams, loud and piercing.
But there's no response from the masked figures all around her. There's no change in the speed or volume of their chanting - "Os, us-ausra, os, us-vira" - and none of them move toward or away from her. The orange luminescense of the magic circle glimmers like oil in firelight, but does not respond to her scream. She screams again, louder, more panicked; she pulls at the chains, tries to stand - only now does she realize belatedly that she's on her knees - but she can't move an inch. Her gaze darts around this hellish place - she doesn't even recognize it, she can't make out anything familiar from her master and mistress's house. She can't see who is behind those masks and she can't see any path to escape around them. She's trapped, she knows, helpless in this strange place and at the mercy of these people who can't possibly mean well for her.
"Who are you?" She shouts, her voice high like a cat's screech. But she might as well be shouting into a pillow: she can hear immediately the echoes being swallowed up and deadened in the unknown depths of this place. She pulls again, swivelling her wrists and wrenching with her body's full weight at the chains, uselessly. Her knees scrape on the stone below her; she's wearing a diaphanous white robe, she realizes, not her usual skirt and apron, and it is split so that its hem pools on the floor around her, not covering her legs to shield them from the stone's roughness. She was bathed while she was unconscious, she realizes - that was the white basin in her memory, the scent of her mistress's best soap - and put in this white silk robe like a bride's gown. Knocked unconscious, dressed like a bride and chained in a magic circle? Why? Why did these people take her, what do they want to use her for -
She screams again as one figure finally moves in front of her, pulling out of its robe with a pale hand something that glints with metal sharpness, a knife to slit her throat or cut out her tongue or -
The metal blade drops from the figure's hand but does not fall to the ground: it hangs from a fine silver chain, just visible outlined in the rune-light. A necklace with a pendant like a small blade, or a claw. The figure holds the chain in one hand, adjusts it with the other. Then it steps forward.
Her heart seems to pound inside her ribs like a trapped and panicked animal. She leans away from the black figure filling her world, pulling as far back as the chains will allow - but she can't move far enough away.
The figure closes in. The chanting around them is getting louder, building toward some terrible climax: "Os, us-ausra! Os, us-vira!" Its robe smells musty, cloying and smothering like velvet on a hot day - its white mask is shadowed so that the eyes behind it are just visible, cold and dark - it bends low and she tries to swipe at it with one hand, but she can get nowhere close to it - and then it drops the silver necklace around her neck.
"Os, us-ausra! Os, us-vira! La-nissim ash, la-nissda ash!"
Like a shroud pulled over her head, the world goes utterly black.
