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rainbowfic2015-09-23 04:08 pm
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-09-23 04:08 pm
various storms and saints
Name: Mischa
Story: the empty throne
Colors: bistre (I have discovered that a beautiful face and a facile wit can conceal great strength of character), spark (castles are burning in my heart), elvish green ( Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.)
Supplies and Styles:
Word Count: 691
Warnings: implied sororicide
Summary: "To walk the path is hard. Justice demands sacrifice. Secrets demand suffering."
A princess and the long-exiled god of justice meet and an agreement is struck.
Rating: PG-13
The little, third princess doesn’t impress him, at first: very little that is mortal does, fleeting and transient, and he’s seen many mortal princesses come and go. It blurs together, blurred together, over the long years and the longer ones still to come. He barely notices her and her prayers, walking the land as he had been bound to do, the Jade Empress’s law binding his limbs until the day he either repents of his rebellion (hah: he never would, and both his sister and he know it) or until the worlds come to an end. Of course she is dutiful: of course she is pious, of course she prays to the gods.
The Ever-Burning Flame (or so men name him) doesn’t notice her until the girl lights a stick of incense on a makeshift altar in his name: he is briefly surprised, then laughs bitterly into his drink. So the little princess thinks she can walk the path, then?
(It is a hard path to walk, hard paths to walk. Justice demands sacrifice: secrets demand suffering, wisdom demanded compassion before the Most-Beloved cast his heart away and walked the broken path.)
He hears her prayers, but he will not, cannot, answer them. If she is to walk the path, it will have to be without his help, and turns away.
(her prayers tug at the edge of his consciousness, still. he expects her to stop. he is wrong.)
He meets the little princess after her mother has died, once her brother is the Son of Heaven: only barely a woman, as mortals account age, but still little in comparison to all the long ages he has lived. A sheltered, quiet girl with determination in her eyes, with her loyal woman a pace behind and a hand only a breath from the edge of her sword.
(he doesn’t tell her what, or who, he had been once, was, could someday be again. he tells her that his name is Jun, and he has no family.)
“Peace, Daiyu,” the little princess says, her voice calm, and turns her dark eyes on him. He can sense her power, even in his barely-more-than-mortal body, through the law and restrictions placed on him: she walks the path of the Prince of Scorpions, the path that demands suffering.
“To walk the path is hard,” he warns her, and watches her eyes settle on his greatsword. “Justice demands sacrifice. Secrets demand suffering. Will you continue to walk the path?”
The little princess nods, without hesitation. “Yes.”
He remembers another sheltered girl, in centuries long past, who clasped his hand and who brought her sisters and brothers with her into rebellion. He almost sees Yin in her eyes, though this girl is no celestial maiden, no daughter of the Most-Beloved, that same determination. He remembers other women who have walked the path, remembers an empress’s daughter from the dynasty before this one (or the one before, or another entirely), tall and serious, who had listened to her mother’s lectures on a queen’s duty when her hands were still strong and young, before she grew old and walked blind through her court. A daughter who killed her older sister, for a grievous wrong, and fled into the forests with what few soldiers she could muster. The civil war that followed was the end of her dynasty: and so mortals pass.
(he remembers her hair, long and loose and dark. her whispered words like a prayer, like hope. I have no daughter to remember me by. he remembers her hair, tangled like history, like her bloodline, the day it was cut. the day she died)
After a moment, he takes her coin, the jade pin she pulls from her hair to offer him, and clasps her hand in agreement.
“Then what will you ask of me?”
The little princess’s expression is still serene as she stands up. “Come with me. There’s someone I would like you to meet. And protect.”
“Very well.” he agrees, after a moment, and wonders, and not for the last time, how this path will unfold.
Story: the empty throne
Colors: bistre (I have discovered that a beautiful face and a facile wit can conceal great strength of character), spark (castles are burning in my heart), elvish green ( Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.)
Supplies and Styles:
Word Count: 691
Warnings: implied sororicide
Summary: "To walk the path is hard. Justice demands sacrifice. Secrets demand suffering."
A princess and the long-exiled god of justice meet and an agreement is struck.
Rating: PG-13
The little, third princess doesn’t impress him, at first: very little that is mortal does, fleeting and transient, and he’s seen many mortal princesses come and go. It blurs together, blurred together, over the long years and the longer ones still to come. He barely notices her and her prayers, walking the land as he had been bound to do, the Jade Empress’s law binding his limbs until the day he either repents of his rebellion (hah: he never would, and both his sister and he know it) or until the worlds come to an end. Of course she is dutiful: of course she is pious, of course she prays to the gods.
The Ever-Burning Flame (or so men name him) doesn’t notice her until the girl lights a stick of incense on a makeshift altar in his name: he is briefly surprised, then laughs bitterly into his drink. So the little princess thinks she can walk the path, then?
(It is a hard path to walk, hard paths to walk. Justice demands sacrifice: secrets demand suffering, wisdom demanded compassion before the Most-Beloved cast his heart away and walked the broken path.)
He hears her prayers, but he will not, cannot, answer them. If she is to walk the path, it will have to be without his help, and turns away.
(her prayers tug at the edge of his consciousness, still. he expects her to stop. he is wrong.)
He meets the little princess after her mother has died, once her brother is the Son of Heaven: only barely a woman, as mortals account age, but still little in comparison to all the long ages he has lived. A sheltered, quiet girl with determination in her eyes, with her loyal woman a pace behind and a hand only a breath from the edge of her sword.
(he doesn’t tell her what, or who, he had been once, was, could someday be again. he tells her that his name is Jun, and he has no family.)
“Peace, Daiyu,” the little princess says, her voice calm, and turns her dark eyes on him. He can sense her power, even in his barely-more-than-mortal body, through the law and restrictions placed on him: she walks the path of the Prince of Scorpions, the path that demands suffering.
“To walk the path is hard,” he warns her, and watches her eyes settle on his greatsword. “Justice demands sacrifice. Secrets demand suffering. Will you continue to walk the path?”
The little princess nods, without hesitation. “Yes.”
He remembers another sheltered girl, in centuries long past, who clasped his hand and who brought her sisters and brothers with her into rebellion. He almost sees Yin in her eyes, though this girl is no celestial maiden, no daughter of the Most-Beloved, that same determination. He remembers other women who have walked the path, remembers an empress’s daughter from the dynasty before this one (or the one before, or another entirely), tall and serious, who had listened to her mother’s lectures on a queen’s duty when her hands were still strong and young, before she grew old and walked blind through her court. A daughter who killed her older sister, for a grievous wrong, and fled into the forests with what few soldiers she could muster. The civil war that followed was the end of her dynasty: and so mortals pass.
(he remembers her hair, long and loose and dark. her whispered words like a prayer, like hope. I have no daughter to remember me by. he remembers her hair, tangled like history, like her bloodline, the day it was cut. the day she died)
After a moment, he takes her coin, the jade pin she pulls from her hair to offer him, and clasps her hand in agreement.
“Then what will you ask of me?”
The little princess’s expression is still serene as she stands up. “Come with me. There’s someone I would like you to meet. And protect.”
“Very well.” he agrees, after a moment, and wonders, and not for the last time, how this path will unfold.
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And it will keep happening more.