the androgynous keeper of plushfrogs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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rainbowfic2015-01-12 02:47 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-01-12 02:47 am
knew what they had to do;
Name: Mischa
Story: tales from the drowned world
Colors: white opal (living inside one's own mind), atomic tangerine (civilization), halloween orange (There’s no way to run or hide when the thing you fear’s inside.)
Supplies and Styles: none
Word Count: 877
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None, I think?
Summary: In a court on the verge of civil war, two women have very different ways of fighting - or staying safe.
Notes: Short character study pieces.
1. a lion-hearted girl ready for a fight;
The first thing that Lady Neha Taviot ever learned besides the name of her father was that the House of Storms was ever ready for war. Harinder’s daughters stand ready, like their father, and it mattered not that the war had come and gone at the dawning of the world. Be vigilant, she had learned, growing up in the shadow of her elder brother: choose your battles, and then Kyrion was gone, she was no longer a child and had challenged for her place as heir, her right as the strongest.
The most beautiful woman in the world picks her battles carefully. The war has come and gone and the war has not yet come: but she is one of the many daughters of the Watchful Sword, and war is in her blood. She watches the Empress grow paler beneath her makeup, watches the webs Her Radiant Majesty weaves, and still knows that war is coming, the day when the balance is broken and House will sail against House to protect the empty throne.
When she attends court, she picks her weapons carefully: the pattern on her layers of silk midnight-blue and silver robes, the jeweled pins in her hair, the kohl that lines her eyes and the lacquer on her lips. Like her sisters, she knows how to fight on any battlefield, with any weapon, can bend the fury of the storm to her will, but Neha is also a courtier, the battle she chooses to fight is with words and impressions, spoken and unspoken.
Neha holds her head high, as she glances in the mirror the night that her brother returns home from exile - recalled by the Empress herself. She paints her face for war, the layers of her silk perfectly in place, as she steps into the palanquin to bring him home: Kyrion is welcome once more into the House of Storms, not merely a vagabond slipping quietly into the capital to be lost amidst the crowds, and she means any observer to know.
2. to your hiding place;
When all eyes are on the (dying) Empress Sana, no one notices her handmaidens, especially not a girl that tries her best to blend into the background. Haneul Abjit has never been a great beauty, nor especially clever or well-spoken, and though no one speaks of it, she can’t even call on the blood magic that’s the birthright of her House, has never been able to even understand a ghost. There’s nothing except what she lacks to make her stand out amidst her family’s schemes and contracts: Unclaimed, because the Lady Iseul had returned to the halls beneath the great river without ever giving away the secret of her child’s father, and without the power that should have been hers.
Dutiful and obedient and invisible, with nothing of her much-beloved mother in her: Haneul knows she is powerless, and sinks colorless to not attract any attention. Forgettable, shallow courtesy is her shield, burying resentment and any trace of personality beneath the pleasant mask: nothing interesting to see here, move on. She is not her mother, brilliant and bold and always laughing: she is not her aunt, Empress Yun, steadfast, sweet, and strong, twins who shared their breaths and died as twins do: she is nothing and no one, nothing more than pretty, and being nothing is far safer than being something.
But she shivers when the High Lord of House Valeth looks her way, robed and hooded in black: secrets run in their blood, beneath the blank face of their mask, she has no idea which of her secrets they see, entirely laid bare. They see, she’s half-certain but afraid to ask, avoids them in the palace halls like everyone else does, too afraid to meet their gaze and see all her lies laid bare.
(at least she’s not the only one).
Haneul brushes the Empress’s hair, one hundred strokes of the brush through blond hair as she was taught, and pretends not to hear her consultations with the Archon of Sarantian, pretends not to see that he comes more and more often - she knows that he is the most skilled healer of all the All-Compassionate’s priesthood, the most skilled healer, and she knows that the Empress is slowly dying. She doesn’t meet the Empress’s gaze either, keeps propriety her shield, brushes and brushes as gently as she can, brushes and braids and covers with a jeweled veil and diadem, pretends not to know that the Empress would have been happier never wearing either again and never ruling again.
These aren’t secrets, that she knows. Not really. She just sits there, full of pleasantries and ten thousand courteous ways to speak of the weather and how threatening the sea is today, and no one notices her. She pretends not to hear the Empress murmur, as if to soothe her, as she turns to fetch more pins, “You should have been my granddaughter,”
Haneul is scared of what the High Lord of the House of Shadows sees, with their shadows and the secrets in their blood: she’s even more scared of what the Empress, daughter of light, sees, and what the light reveals.
Story: tales from the drowned world
Colors: white opal (living inside one's own mind), atomic tangerine (civilization), halloween orange (There’s no way to run or hide when the thing you fear’s inside.)
Supplies and Styles: none
Word Count: 877
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None, I think?
Summary: In a court on the verge of civil war, two women have very different ways of fighting - or staying safe.
Notes: Short character study pieces.
1. a lion-hearted girl ready for a fight;
The first thing that Lady Neha Taviot ever learned besides the name of her father was that the House of Storms was ever ready for war. Harinder’s daughters stand ready, like their father, and it mattered not that the war had come and gone at the dawning of the world. Be vigilant, she had learned, growing up in the shadow of her elder brother: choose your battles, and then Kyrion was gone, she was no longer a child and had challenged for her place as heir, her right as the strongest.
The most beautiful woman in the world picks her battles carefully. The war has come and gone and the war has not yet come: but she is one of the many daughters of the Watchful Sword, and war is in her blood. She watches the Empress grow paler beneath her makeup, watches the webs Her Radiant Majesty weaves, and still knows that war is coming, the day when the balance is broken and House will sail against House to protect the empty throne.
When she attends court, she picks her weapons carefully: the pattern on her layers of silk midnight-blue and silver robes, the jeweled pins in her hair, the kohl that lines her eyes and the lacquer on her lips. Like her sisters, she knows how to fight on any battlefield, with any weapon, can bend the fury of the storm to her will, but Neha is also a courtier, the battle she chooses to fight is with words and impressions, spoken and unspoken.
Neha holds her head high, as she glances in the mirror the night that her brother returns home from exile - recalled by the Empress herself. She paints her face for war, the layers of her silk perfectly in place, as she steps into the palanquin to bring him home: Kyrion is welcome once more into the House of Storms, not merely a vagabond slipping quietly into the capital to be lost amidst the crowds, and she means any observer to know.
2. to your hiding place;
When all eyes are on the (dying) Empress Sana, no one notices her handmaidens, especially not a girl that tries her best to blend into the background. Haneul Abjit has never been a great beauty, nor especially clever or well-spoken, and though no one speaks of it, she can’t even call on the blood magic that’s the birthright of her House, has never been able to even understand a ghost. There’s nothing except what she lacks to make her stand out amidst her family’s schemes and contracts: Unclaimed, because the Lady Iseul had returned to the halls beneath the great river without ever giving away the secret of her child’s father, and without the power that should have been hers.
Dutiful and obedient and invisible, with nothing of her much-beloved mother in her: Haneul knows she is powerless, and sinks colorless to not attract any attention. Forgettable, shallow courtesy is her shield, burying resentment and any trace of personality beneath the pleasant mask: nothing interesting to see here, move on. She is not her mother, brilliant and bold and always laughing: she is not her aunt, Empress Yun, steadfast, sweet, and strong, twins who shared their breaths and died as twins do: she is nothing and no one, nothing more than pretty, and being nothing is far safer than being something.
But she shivers when the High Lord of House Valeth looks her way, robed and hooded in black: secrets run in their blood, beneath the blank face of their mask, she has no idea which of her secrets they see, entirely laid bare. They see, she’s half-certain but afraid to ask, avoids them in the palace halls like everyone else does, too afraid to meet their gaze and see all her lies laid bare.
(at least she’s not the only one).
Haneul brushes the Empress’s hair, one hundred strokes of the brush through blond hair as she was taught, and pretends not to hear her consultations with the Archon of Sarantian, pretends not to see that he comes more and more often - she knows that he is the most skilled healer of all the All-Compassionate’s priesthood, the most skilled healer, and she knows that the Empress is slowly dying. She doesn’t meet the Empress’s gaze either, keeps propriety her shield, brushes and brushes as gently as she can, brushes and braids and covers with a jeweled veil and diadem, pretends not to know that the Empress would have been happier never wearing either again and never ruling again.
These aren’t secrets, that she knows. Not really. She just sits there, full of pleasantries and ten thousand courteous ways to speak of the weather and how threatening the sea is today, and no one notices her. She pretends not to hear the Empress murmur, as if to soothe her, as she turns to fetch more pins, “You should have been my granddaughter,”
Haneul is scared of what the High Lord of the House of Shadows sees, with their shadows and the secrets in their blood: she’s even more scared of what the Empress, daughter of light, sees, and what the light reveals.