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rainbowfic2015-09-14 02:28 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-09-14 02:28 am
tears and poppies
Name: Mischa
Story: the empty throne
Colors: elvish green (You'll find more cheer in a graveyard), spark (seems we got a cheaper feel now), bistre (there is a difference between loving and being in love).
Supplies and Styles: reimaging, canvas
Word Count: 531
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: drug abuse (and overdose), child abuse
Summary: When An Lieh is still a small, very small, child still with his milk-name, his mother is the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, seeming to step straight out of the stories that she sometimes told him.
Lieh sits like a sparrow at her knee and watches her, caught in poppy’s lying sleep, and realizes that his mother has gone away and left him behind even before he was ever born.
Notes: A reworking of a piece I wrote in 2010 and dug out of my archives of shame. Also reworked the character to add him to this setting.
When An Lieh is still a small, very small, child still with his milk-name, his mother is the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, seeming to step straight out of the stories that she sometimes told him, of spirits and the great gods and sometimes, sometimes, only sometimes, of his father, dead and beloved.
(there is nothing of him in you, she tells him, and weeps. nothing.)
She was still the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen even with her eyes distant like some faraway dream, in her faded silks surrounded by faded things, a castoff concubine of a dead youngest son of a great house with far more ambition than ability, begrudgingly maintained in her small house because she had borne a child (but not a daughter, never a daughter, who would have been the most prized of all. everything would have been given her then.)
Sometimes, only occasionally sometimes, she has visitors: his half-waking mother, locked with the shadows of her lost ghosts and the hallucinogenic sweetness of her poppy, sees no difference in their faces, because none of them are the face she wants to see. Lieh watches from the corner, a little doll-child with big timid eyes, and makes no sound, little more than a ghost himself that the visitors take almost no notice of until the day one does.
“Does your mother love you?” the woman - tall and stately, with long black hair done up in intricate braids and loops, dressed all in fine silks with a slender sword at her side- asks.
Lieh looks up at her and doesn’t say a word, because he wasn’t sure if she did love him or whether the poppy had stolen her heart away. He doesn’t need to say a word, because the woman finds whatever answer she seeks in his eyes, her lips tightening: instead, he runs shyly into a corner until the woman is gone, only creeping out again once he’s certain that she’s left.
(sometimes, his mother weeps when she sees him, tracing a frail finger down his cheek. pale and delicate, so very like hers. fair like a night-blooming flower, pale and fragile and beautiful. she cries because there is nothing of his father in him, only her face reflected back, and her hands shake as she tamps down the powder in the pipe.
“Don’t fall in love, my flower.” she whispers, runs the comb through his hair. “Never fall in love. Love is a curse, and then you wilt and die.”
He nods, silently, lips pressed together tight. His mother smiles and presses a sleepy kiss to his forehead, and then takes up the pipe while he slips back into the corner again.)
She dozes after she smokes, eyes heavy-lidded, her cheeks flushed and her mouth open. Lieh sits like a sparrow at her knee and watches her, caught in poppy’s lying sleep, and realizes that his mother has gone away and left him behind even before he was ever born.
On the morning of his day of birth, his eighth year of being alive, Lieh’s mother dies without ever having woken up from her dreams. It is then, and only then, that his relatives take him from the small house and the silence to live among them, the rest of the great clan.
(they tell him that his mother died of the poppy, but Lieh knows that she died of a broken heart.)
Story: the empty throne
Colors: elvish green (You'll find more cheer in a graveyard), spark (seems we got a cheaper feel now), bistre (there is a difference between loving and being in love).
Supplies and Styles: reimaging, canvas
Word Count: 531
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: drug abuse (and overdose), child abuse
Summary: When An Lieh is still a small, very small, child still with his milk-name, his mother is the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, seeming to step straight out of the stories that she sometimes told him.
Lieh sits like a sparrow at her knee and watches her, caught in poppy’s lying sleep, and realizes that his mother has gone away and left him behind even before he was ever born.
Notes: A reworking of a piece I wrote in 2010 and dug out of my archives of shame. Also reworked the character to add him to this setting.
When An Lieh is still a small, very small, child still with his milk-name, his mother is the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, seeming to step straight out of the stories that she sometimes told him, of spirits and the great gods and sometimes, sometimes, only sometimes, of his father, dead and beloved.
(there is nothing of him in you, she tells him, and weeps. nothing.)
She was still the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen even with her eyes distant like some faraway dream, in her faded silks surrounded by faded things, a castoff concubine of a dead youngest son of a great house with far more ambition than ability, begrudgingly maintained in her small house because she had borne a child (but not a daughter, never a daughter, who would have been the most prized of all. everything would have been given her then.)
Sometimes, only occasionally sometimes, she has visitors: his half-waking mother, locked with the shadows of her lost ghosts and the hallucinogenic sweetness of her poppy, sees no difference in their faces, because none of them are the face she wants to see. Lieh watches from the corner, a little doll-child with big timid eyes, and makes no sound, little more than a ghost himself that the visitors take almost no notice of until the day one does.
“Does your mother love you?” the woman - tall and stately, with long black hair done up in intricate braids and loops, dressed all in fine silks with a slender sword at her side- asks.
Lieh looks up at her and doesn’t say a word, because he wasn’t sure if she did love him or whether the poppy had stolen her heart away. He doesn’t need to say a word, because the woman finds whatever answer she seeks in his eyes, her lips tightening: instead, he runs shyly into a corner until the woman is gone, only creeping out again once he’s certain that she’s left.
(sometimes, his mother weeps when she sees him, tracing a frail finger down his cheek. pale and delicate, so very like hers. fair like a night-blooming flower, pale and fragile and beautiful. she cries because there is nothing of his father in him, only her face reflected back, and her hands shake as she tamps down the powder in the pipe.
“Don’t fall in love, my flower.” she whispers, runs the comb through his hair. “Never fall in love. Love is a curse, and then you wilt and die.”
He nods, silently, lips pressed together tight. His mother smiles and presses a sleepy kiss to his forehead, and then takes up the pipe while he slips back into the corner again.)
She dozes after she smokes, eyes heavy-lidded, her cheeks flushed and her mouth open. Lieh sits like a sparrow at her knee and watches her, caught in poppy’s lying sleep, and realizes that his mother has gone away and left him behind even before he was ever born.
On the morning of his day of birth, his eighth year of being alive, Lieh’s mother dies without ever having woken up from her dreams. It is then, and only then, that his relatives take him from the small house and the silence to live among them, the rest of the great clan.
(they tell him that his mother died of the poppy, but Lieh knows that she died of a broken heart.)
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That lost love colors a good chunk of the rest of his life.
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This is amazing
This makes my heart to weird things
I like it when my heart does weird things
THANK YOU
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Thank you for reading.
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