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rainbowfic2015-03-12 03:35 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-03-12 03:35 am
Entry tags:
letting go
Name: Mischa
Story: tales from the drowned world
Colors: dove grey (You do not see the river of mourning because it lacks one tear of your own.), halloween orange (I'm all alone, and I think someone left me.)
Supplies and Styles: canvas, seed beads
Word Count: 780
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicidal ideation: death of a teenager (who was considered an adult in-setting: the description of his death is fairly creepy).
Summary: From water we came: to water we will return. An outsider to House Valeth witnesses the funeral of one of their scions.
Notes: I have no idea what I'm doing with this. Filling in more gaps in the backstory.
From water we came: to water we will return.
These are the only words that Sanya knows: where she had come from, the harsh sea-cliffs of the east beneath the dominion of House Taviot, funerals had been silent save for that one refrain and the words of the priest of the Lord of the River. But House Valeth is strange, to a woman who had never been a noblewoman, who had dreamed simple dreams of marrying a sweet boy and children, many children, of living somewhere that wasn’t clinging to the cliffs: never anything more, until the Lord of the Crossroads had seen something beautiful in her scarred face and narrow hips and she’d thought his broken smile sweet somehow and believed the mistake that loving a god could bring her what she wanted.
She is not of House Valeth, for all that she is now, and will never know their secrets: she doesn’t understand why they are so silent in life and yet sing at funerals, when all the mourning she has known has been silent. Everything else of theirs is so silent, layers and layers and layers of secrets and she cannot know a single one, standing inside yet outside. So many funerals, there’d been since the storm, so many songs for the lost under the protection of the House of Shadows, and this last was for their own child.
Vasilis sings with them, high and uncertain as a child who doesn’t entirely know all the words, and she holds his hand and doesn’t ask for him to teach her the words or even what they mean. Secrets between them, as there would always be, as secrets isn’t in her blood, her bone, her flesh, the blood of no god runs in her veins. She will never know those secrets and never understand.
Sanya hadn’t liked Myca Valeth, who had been only a few years younger than her, sixteen and barely a man when he’d died: he hadn’t been an easy one to like, prickly and sharp-tongued and aloof, but even her heart can ache a little, for the ones he’d left behind and even for him. No one deserved to die like he had: it would have been kinder to have drowned then to die choking on your own blood, forbidden magic carved letter by letter into your skin while your cousin held you.
(a secret, another secret, but she’d heard the Stormbringer weep, choked angry sobs and tears from a new-blind eye).
But what he’d been in life didn’t matter anymore: from water they came and to water they would return. Bodies burned to ash, and the ashes given back to the great river, as the soul entered the Lord of the River’s halls beneath the great river: this was familiar, at least, familiar no matter where she went, even without silence to ground her. Ashes given back by the closest person to the deceased still left in this world- and even prickly Myca hadn’t been completely alone, for all his best efforts.
Melantha Valeth, fragile and still-eyed, dances at the edge of the river, her grace even more otherworldly as water laps at the hem of her white robes: Sanya doesn’t even have to remind herself that the girl is more than half out of this world already, twins live and die together, even when one against all odds lives. It’s not a secret that the House elders delayed Myca’s funeral to the last, still uncertain that they wouldn’t, in the end, have to burn both twins and scatter their ashes together, still uncertain that Melantha would keep breathing. Would want to keep breathing.
Sanya doesn’t know the meaning of this dance, either, can only watch as Melantha spins across the water, the river bearing her weight as she dances, scattering ashes, a moment, a heartbeat, a breath, of flowing elegance and otherworldly grace, just before she collapses on the riverbank like a doll with its strings cut. Still breathing, still alive, but would always be more than halfway gone, as her silently weeping mother (just as much an outsider as Sanya herself is) gathers her up in her arms and holds her close, rocking her, trying to remind her and failing that she isn’t alone.
Melantha’s lips move, but Sanya can’t hear her and can only barely see her as she holds tightly to her son and knows not what else to do: the pattern of her lips says we died and we lived, but the sound is nothing, the sound is secrets and loss, distilled into movement and grace and the song as the entirety of House Valeth sings, united in their grief.
Story: tales from the drowned world
Colors: dove grey (You do not see the river of mourning because it lacks one tear of your own.), halloween orange (I'm all alone, and I think someone left me.)
Supplies and Styles: canvas, seed beads
Word Count: 780
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicidal ideation: death of a teenager (who was considered an adult in-setting: the description of his death is fairly creepy).
Summary: From water we came: to water we will return. An outsider to House Valeth witnesses the funeral of one of their scions.
Notes: I have no idea what I'm doing with this. Filling in more gaps in the backstory.
From water we came: to water we will return.
These are the only words that Sanya knows: where she had come from, the harsh sea-cliffs of the east beneath the dominion of House Taviot, funerals had been silent save for that one refrain and the words of the priest of the Lord of the River. But House Valeth is strange, to a woman who had never been a noblewoman, who had dreamed simple dreams of marrying a sweet boy and children, many children, of living somewhere that wasn’t clinging to the cliffs: never anything more, until the Lord of the Crossroads had seen something beautiful in her scarred face and narrow hips and she’d thought his broken smile sweet somehow and believed the mistake that loving a god could bring her what she wanted.
She is not of House Valeth, for all that she is now, and will never know their secrets: she doesn’t understand why they are so silent in life and yet sing at funerals, when all the mourning she has known has been silent. Everything else of theirs is so silent, layers and layers and layers of secrets and she cannot know a single one, standing inside yet outside. So many funerals, there’d been since the storm, so many songs for the lost under the protection of the House of Shadows, and this last was for their own child.
Vasilis sings with them, high and uncertain as a child who doesn’t entirely know all the words, and she holds his hand and doesn’t ask for him to teach her the words or even what they mean. Secrets between them, as there would always be, as secrets isn’t in her blood, her bone, her flesh, the blood of no god runs in her veins. She will never know those secrets and never understand.
Sanya hadn’t liked Myca Valeth, who had been only a few years younger than her, sixteen and barely a man when he’d died: he hadn’t been an easy one to like, prickly and sharp-tongued and aloof, but even her heart can ache a little, for the ones he’d left behind and even for him. No one deserved to die like he had: it would have been kinder to have drowned then to die choking on your own blood, forbidden magic carved letter by letter into your skin while your cousin held you.
(a secret, another secret, but she’d heard the Stormbringer weep, choked angry sobs and tears from a new-blind eye).
But what he’d been in life didn’t matter anymore: from water they came and to water they would return. Bodies burned to ash, and the ashes given back to the great river, as the soul entered the Lord of the River’s halls beneath the great river: this was familiar, at least, familiar no matter where she went, even without silence to ground her. Ashes given back by the closest person to the deceased still left in this world- and even prickly Myca hadn’t been completely alone, for all his best efforts.
Melantha Valeth, fragile and still-eyed, dances at the edge of the river, her grace even more otherworldly as water laps at the hem of her white robes: Sanya doesn’t even have to remind herself that the girl is more than half out of this world already, twins live and die together, even when one against all odds lives. It’s not a secret that the House elders delayed Myca’s funeral to the last, still uncertain that they wouldn’t, in the end, have to burn both twins and scatter their ashes together, still uncertain that Melantha would keep breathing. Would want to keep breathing.
Sanya doesn’t know the meaning of this dance, either, can only watch as Melantha spins across the water, the river bearing her weight as she dances, scattering ashes, a moment, a heartbeat, a breath, of flowing elegance and otherworldly grace, just before she collapses on the riverbank like a doll with its strings cut. Still breathing, still alive, but would always be more than halfway gone, as her silently weeping mother (just as much an outsider as Sanya herself is) gathers her up in her arms and holds her close, rocking her, trying to remind her and failing that she isn’t alone.
Melantha’s lips move, but Sanya can’t hear her and can only barely see her as she holds tightly to her son and knows not what else to do: the pattern of her lips says we died and we lived, but the sound is nothing, the sound is secrets and loss, distilled into movement and grace and the song as the entirety of House Valeth sings, united in their grief.
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Still breathing, still alive, but would always be more than halfway gone, as her silently weeping mother (just as much an outsider as Sanya herself is) gathers her up in her arms and holds her close, rocking her, trying to remind her and failing that she isn’t alone. was my favorite line.
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I'm so happy when you post. Thank you.
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I'm glad to make you happy with my work.
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