2﹕flowers.
✭ pairing: senna x seren (s/i)
✭ word count: 1997
✭ note: second piece for the pride prompts!! this time featuring my darling wife. very very long ago (summer of 2020) one of my friends decided that senna would call me 'lotus' as a pet name, and that changed the trajectory of my life forever. anyways, my main grievance with this fic is that i realized a little too late that there is a vastayan temple in the lore called "the temple of lilly and lotus" that i could've had senna n seren visit instead of this random made up one. it would've been easier to write and farrrrr more realistic. but y'know! what can you do. enjoy my imaginary nameless greenglade temple.
✭ tag list: @dragonselfship and that's it for today
[ reblogs always appreciated // prompt list can be found here! ]
To her, Senna is like a flower.
Not in the sense that she's delicate. No, certainly not. But in the sense that she's uniquely beautiful—her eyes are the color of electric green Gladiolus blooms, her skin as soft as rose petals. She's as thorny as a rose, too, but Seren’s hands are eager to bleed.
She's as breathtaking as any spring flowerbed, but the blossom that reminds Seren of her the most is the lotus.
She recalls reading about them in the Botanicum; the lotus flower represents a state of mental purity and spiritual perfection. They grow from dark, muddy waters, and yet they emerge without so much as a stain on their petals. They symbolize rebirth, and what better flower to associate with Senna than one that symbolizes the very core of her existence? She, too, emerged from the darkness as something beautiful.
Seren enjoys using natural things—flowers, animals, and so forth—as pet names. She’s very deliberate about the ones she chooses for specific people, like how she occasionally refers to Lucian as their sunflower because sunflowers symbolize loyalty and honesty. With that in mind, it’s surprising that she’s never called Senna by lotus, but that’s only because Senna beat her too it. Shortly after Seren began referring to Senna as lavender (after the lavender perfume she would often wear), Senna began referring to Seren as lotus. Both nicknames stuck, and they persist to this day.
A few months ago, Seren asked Senna where the whole lotus thing came from, and at first, she said she wasn’t sure. But after a while, she began calling on the flower’s spiritual meaning as well, saying that she thought Seren was both strong and beautiful, so the name felt fitting.
That flustered Seren. To be referred to as strong by the strongest person she’s ever met is truly a special feeling.
Today, they're in Ionia. They came here on a business escapade that has more or less turned into Seren giving them a tour of her old stomping grounds. She hardly remembers why they’re here, but she knows that, for once, she’s very happy to be home.
They’re camping out in Navori, just beside the Greenglade. Lucian is away at the marketplace. Retrospectively, Seren should’ve really gone with him to keep him from getting lost or robbed, but she is confident in his safety and trusts that he’ll return by nightfall. Meanwhile, it’s just her and Senna.
Senna is sitting beside the dying fire, polishing the cracks and crevices of her cannon. A relic weapon made from the shattered pieces of dozen others, it often requires extra maintenance to remain functional and presentable. Seren is sitting on the grass beside her bedroll, staring up at the trees, watching the leaves flutter in the warm afternoon breeze. The silence between them is comfortable and familiar, but that doesn’t keep Seren from growing bored of it.
“Are you busy?” Seren asks, picking up her head to look at Senna.
“Sort of,” Senna responds lowly. “Why?”
Seren looks down at the cannon and the dust-covered tag that Senna is clenching in her fist. Then, she looks back up at Senna.
“You’re not busy,” Seren tells her, lips quirking into a sly half-smile, her signature ‘we’re doing what I want to do because I said so’ look. Senna sighs out of her nose, but she listens to her regardless. “There’s a temple near here. Do you wanna go check it out?”
“Depends,” Senna moves her cannon off her lap like it weighs nothing. “Is this going to be like the time you got all of the sentinels kicked out of the Kinkou Monastery?”
Seren laughs heavily. That was- what? Two years ago now? “No, no! This temple is open to the public. I used to go there all the time when I was younger.”
“But when was the last time you went there, actually?” Senna presses. “In human years, please.”
Seren pauses for a moment. It takes her quite some time to translate her vastayan lifespan into human years, but eventually, she comes up with a rough estimate. “Two-hundred, give or take. But I promise the rules haven’t changed!”
“You said that about the monastery, too.”
“I may have lied about that,” Seren says, her chest clenching when she sees disappointment cross Senna’s features, “but I thought it would’ve been fine, since I knew a few members of the order who used to let me hang around the gardens… but that’s neither here nor there. Ionian temples are peaceful places that are open to all. It’s really pretty there. I think you’d like it.”
Senna stares at her for a moment, pondering. Seren’s almost-smile widens into a big, toothy grin. She knows that her wife can’t say no to her.
“Okay, fine.” Senna sighs. She rises slowly, reluctantly, and by the time she's finally standing, Seren has long since sprung to her feet and pulled her things together.
Senna insisted that they bring their weapons with them. Seren thinks that it's foolish, considering the Black Mist seldom reaches beyond Valoran nowadays, but Senna has always been of the mentality that it's better to be safe than sorry. Seren agrees with it, to an extent, and she also understands why and how Senna adopted that mentality. So, she never argues. She does little except gaze upon her with a subtle sadness.
They now walk through some of the most beautiful and peaceful glades that Runeterra has to offer, lugging around a cannon and a pair of gleaming daggers. Seren has never shown up to a temple armed, so all she can do is hope that the monks and caretakers won't see them as threats. Sentinels of Light aren't seen as threatening, right? The Kinkou had seemed to think they were. Oh, to Hell with them.
The walk is calm and quiet. For most of it, they're silent, drinking up the sights, the sounds, the beauty of it all. For Senna, it's one of her first times passing through here, but for Seren, it just might be her three-thousandth; every piece of land is engraved deep within her memory. She could walk these trails with her eyes closed. They pass a familiar landmark—a large stump, about twice the width of Seren's torso, wrapped in a thick cover of red and orange vines—and Seren suddenly remembers how often she used to come this way when she was younger. She'd spend days at the temple, idling under blossoming oriental trees, lounging beside the ponds. Doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling everything.
"I use to spend so much time here,” she tells Senna. “The Greenglade felt like the safest place for me when I didn’t have a home.”
Senna hums, nodding along with what she’s saying.
“Whenever I needed something, like food or clean clothes, I’d go to one of the markets just beyond the wood. Whenever I needed the company of something other than animals, I’d go to the temple and hang out with the monks.”
They pass over a small, rickety, wooden bridge. The path turns from mossy cobblestone to dirt. They’re getting close.
“The monks were always happy to see me. A stray, gangly vastayan child. I swear, I almost became the garden pet.” Seren laughs dryly, but her smile fades in a moment’s time. “I watched a lot of monks, gardeners, and caretakers come and go in my time. Time went so fast when I was living in my own head. A hundred years was nothing, but for them, it was just over a lifetime.”
Silence blankets them again, and Seren realizes how grim her rambles had gotten. Her face heats up, shame bubbling up in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she glances toward Senna, who’s expression softens before her eyes. “Was that too much?”
Senna shakes her head earnestly. The look on her face is nothing short of kind and patient. “No, not at all.” She says. “I like listening to you talk.”
Shame is replaced by yearning, giving the warmth in her cheeks a whole new meaning. She smiles shyly before glancing away.
Eventually, they pass two sculptures; candid portraits of two figures carved from pale marble, one human and one vastaya. Seren remembers asking the monks about the vastaya when she was a child. His name was Mik’ua, and he was a poet and a warrior from the Kepthalla tribe.
The statues mark the beginning of the temple grounds. Beautiful, sprawling gardens surround the pagoda. Seren hears a soft gasp leave Senna's mouth, and a smile grows on her own face.
"Told you it was pretty," Seren says.
"I believed you," Senna replies, tone hushed and awed.
The temple's inhabitants pay them little mind. Seren recognizes a few of them from her last visit. They offer her gentle smiles as she passes them. She can tell that Senna is at peace here, but she is also surprised by the others' hospitality. She can't blame her; she's seen many of Ionia's uglier inhabitants, from the very rude members of the Kinkou order to Seren's own family, but these lands can be kind, too.
In the middle of the gardens sits a small pond, which is surrounded by all sorts of colorful flora. Seren bounds over to it, leaving Senna to do whatever it is she's doing—admiring various sculptures and engravings, it seems. Seren crouches beside the water, her tail flicking back and forth in a playful manner as she scans it with her eyes. To her delight, amongst the reeds and water grass sits a dense patch of lotus flowers. A lopsided grin pulls at her mouth as she reaches out to touch the nearest flower. She runs her fingers over the silken petals, admiring their brilliant whites and pinks, and noting how they contrast the muddy depths below.
"Senna," Seren calls over her shoulder. "Senna, c'mere!"
Senna is very quick to oblige, abandoning whatever she was looking at to join Seren at the water's edge.
"Would you look at that," she remarks as she crouches beside Seren's hip, a light chuckle in her voice. "A lotus for my lotus."
Seren snorts. "Holy shit, that's cheesy." She sits back, releasing the flower from her grasp. "Especially for you."
Senna laughs in reply, shouldering her playfully. "What? I'm allowed to be sweet."
"You are, you are." Seren agrees with a smile. Wow, she thinks. Someone's in way too good of a mood.
Senna places a hand on Seren's knee, and Seren coves it with her own, squeezing. "I still can't believe that I became lotus and you didn't."
"I feel like we've had this conversation before," Senna says. "I still can't believe I became lavender. I wore that perfume maybe three times."
"Shut up!" It's Seren's turn to shove her about, digging an elbow into her side and prying a hearty laugh from her. "It's your signature scent. That and, like, salt and blood. But those don't make great pet names, do they?"
Senna resigns, shaking her head. "No, they don't."
There's silence for a while. They sit hip-to-hip, their hands interlocked, eyes grazing the beautiful landscape before them. Beyond the pond filled with lotus flowers is a blossoming oriental tree that sprinkles its petals into the water. Above them is a perfect blue sky, with white puffs of clouds providing enough coverage to keep them from burning up. A cool breeze blows through Seren's hair, carrying with it the scent of flowers.
"Thank you for bringing me here," Senna says after a long moment.
"Of course," Seren replies, turning to give her a quick peck on the cheek. She pauses momentarily to admire how it makes her smile. "You should listen to me when I say to take more breaks."
"I'm working on it," Senna hums. She leans into Seren's shoulder, which, even after a decade of marriage well spent, makes Seren's heart stutter.
Seren doesn't say anything else, and neither does Senna. They enjoy this fleeting moment of peace in each other's presence.
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@lotus-n-lillies || douma says;;
❛ do you think even the worst person can change…? That everybody can be a good person, if they just try? ❜
Such an odd question, to think of anyone the blonde would bother asking such a question to, it would be the most forgiving of people within Paradise. Being naïve was simply Kotoha's nature, something she'd been far too known for and even insulted for at times and yet here she sat, fingers gently weaving through birch blonde hair during her second favorite time of the night; Inosuke had long since been put to bed, the young mother cautiously listening for any signs of the babe waking while she indulged in Douma's company just outside of her personal quarters.
Times of silence, while far more common now than they once were, still left her on edge, nervous about familiar yelling and the sounds of things breaking should she relax just too much and the thought alone brings her back to the man's question. She'd wanted to be hopeful, to say of course someone can change if they truly wish to, but she knew fully that if was was the key word in that regard. If terrible people could suddenly up and change, then why did she have to run away from the man who vowed to protect her, why did she force herself to tolerate constant abuse for months, years even before she'd had Inosuke and realized just how special life truly was.
Did Kotoha do something in a previous life that was so horrid she needed to be punished with the idea that perhaps she simply wasn't worth changing for the better for, that she'd deserved every insult, every strike, and then she gazes forward at the familiar pallid skin of Douma and finds herself struggling to form a proper thought, or at least one that would hold some form of meaning that is. “ I... I think if someone wants to be better, to be good, then it's possible, but... ”
A pause, panic creeping within her heart and clutching it with claws that left a vile taste upon her lips. So many horrid thoughts plagued Kotoha's mind, often leaving her with restless nights and so she goes silent, tries to formulate her thoughts properly. “ I think they need to want to be a good person, not just for other people but for themselves too, however they also can't expect a quick change, and... They can't expect others to believe they've changed without showing it. ”
A simple response, or so it seemed far too simple the moment the words tumbled from her mouth and yet it was her opinion on the matter, her thoughts that he'd asked for. In a way it felt bittersweet to voice such, ironic in a sense given she'd spent so long thinking perhaps the man she'd originally married would have changed the moment he had managed to track her into paradise, him and his wretch of a mother both seemed to have done so and yet that façade crumbled just as quickly as the duo had managed to disappear, where they'd gone she'd never inquire simply for fear of never feeling safe from the two again.
No, Kotoha thinks to herself, not everyone is capable of being a good person, not if they don't allow themselves to be. However that's a thought to remain within her own mind, a secret closely kept to only herself.
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