the androgynous keeper of plushfrogs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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rainbowfic2015-11-03 01:03 am
crossfortune) wrote in rainbowfic2015-11-03 01:03 am
don't say a word
Name: Mischa
Story: the empty throne
Colors: bistre(Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt those we love best?), vienna orange (There are no pretty words to say, 'you are fucking up real bad'), spark (Don't judge me so harsh little girl)
Supplies and Styles: canvas
Word Count: 614
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: implied suicide and depression
Summary: After Li Xiaoli's death, her lover and her mother have something of a discussion.
Notes: needs a color tag for vienna orange
Hou Zhilan never weeps, or so the court rumors say: her heart is made of ice and the glass from the realms of the gods, that never shatters or breaks. Pure and perfect. She does not weep at her daughter’s funeral, when they lay her in the ground, nor when she lays the tablet for Xiaoli in her family shrine: her lady wife Yinghua stands by her side, and weeps quiet tears enough for both of them.
Chenhua has never particularly liked or trusted her: the clever-tongued, often scornful, court official, always with a smile, a plan, and a fan to hide her face, but she has always respected her, both for her own considerable abilities, and for the fact that someday, someday, (a day that will never come, now), Lady Hou would have been her mother-in-law, if she had ever managed to earn her favor. A minor, at best, military official would never have been good enough for the daughter of the head of the Hou clan: Chenhua had dreamed of someday becoming one of the four directional generals, for her own ambitions and the fact that nothing less than the General of the North would never have been good enough for the Lady Hou’s daughter.
(now Xiaoli is dead, dead and gone to the Eldest’s realm, and all Chenhua has is her ambition and nothing else to fill her time and her heart. ambition, love, and duty, and now love is gone-)
The two of them, together, are clearing out the few possessions that Xiaoli had left behind in her small office in the palace. There hadn’t been much: paperwork, mostly, that in the early days after her death had been taken away and given to some other officials to work their way through. Piles and piles of paperwork: Xiaoli had always been working, always, no matter how Chenhua tried to drag her away occasionally. Trying to prove herself good enough to her adoptive mother, and the memory of her last argument with Xiaoli on that very topic leaves Chenhua cold.
(if she’d been here, if she’d been here, could she have pulled her from the water? maybe nothing could have stopped her from stumbling in, but maybe she would have walked out again, if, if and only if-)
Paperwork. A few books. A half-written poem, a few scant lines that end in half-formed brushstrokes. A life forever undone.
“I would have given you my blessing,” Zhilan says, her smooth, ink-stained fingers tracing the perfectly formed characters of her daughter’s writing. It’s the first words either of them have spoken in what feels like hours, an eternity, breaking the silence.
It doesn’t matter, now. It doesn’t matter.
(there are so many things she wanted to say and never can, now, the shape of her words had been wrong, all wrong. I’m sorry. Don’t go. Stay. Stay with me. Don’t go where I can’t follow-)
“You loved her,” Chenhua says, bluntly: she’s lost her taste for playful, sarcastic barbs, it died with Xiaoli. She remembers the discussions, the arguments, at how fragile Xiaoli had been and she hadn’t seen it. Xiaoli had thought she’d been valueless to her mother, no matter how hard she’d tried: then don’t try, Chenhua had told her, finally losing her temper. It had been the next day that she had left for her home province, and never seen Xiaoli again. “And she never knew.”
Chenhua had wept, bitter ugly broken-hearted tears: she has never cried pretty. Zhilan does not weep, but her smile shatters, and the sound of her fan snapping in her hand is harsh in the silence and says more than the courtier’s words ever could.
Story: the empty throne
Colors: bistre(Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt those we love best?), vienna orange (There are no pretty words to say, 'you are fucking up real bad'), spark (Don't judge me so harsh little girl)
Supplies and Styles: canvas
Word Count: 614
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: implied suicide and depression
Summary: After Li Xiaoli's death, her lover and her mother have something of a discussion.
Notes: needs a color tag for vienna orange
Hou Zhilan never weeps, or so the court rumors say: her heart is made of ice and the glass from the realms of the gods, that never shatters or breaks. Pure and perfect. She does not weep at her daughter’s funeral, when they lay her in the ground, nor when she lays the tablet for Xiaoli in her family shrine: her lady wife Yinghua stands by her side, and weeps quiet tears enough for both of them.
Chenhua has never particularly liked or trusted her: the clever-tongued, often scornful, court official, always with a smile, a plan, and a fan to hide her face, but she has always respected her, both for her own considerable abilities, and for the fact that someday, someday, (a day that will never come, now), Lady Hou would have been her mother-in-law, if she had ever managed to earn her favor. A minor, at best, military official would never have been good enough for the daughter of the head of the Hou clan: Chenhua had dreamed of someday becoming one of the four directional generals, for her own ambitions and the fact that nothing less than the General of the North would never have been good enough for the Lady Hou’s daughter.
(now Xiaoli is dead, dead and gone to the Eldest’s realm, and all Chenhua has is her ambition and nothing else to fill her time and her heart. ambition, love, and duty, and now love is gone-)
The two of them, together, are clearing out the few possessions that Xiaoli had left behind in her small office in the palace. There hadn’t been much: paperwork, mostly, that in the early days after her death had been taken away and given to some other officials to work their way through. Piles and piles of paperwork: Xiaoli had always been working, always, no matter how Chenhua tried to drag her away occasionally. Trying to prove herself good enough to her adoptive mother, and the memory of her last argument with Xiaoli on that very topic leaves Chenhua cold.
(if she’d been here, if she’d been here, could she have pulled her from the water? maybe nothing could have stopped her from stumbling in, but maybe she would have walked out again, if, if and only if-)
Paperwork. A few books. A half-written poem, a few scant lines that end in half-formed brushstrokes. A life forever undone.
“I would have given you my blessing,” Zhilan says, her smooth, ink-stained fingers tracing the perfectly formed characters of her daughter’s writing. It’s the first words either of them have spoken in what feels like hours, an eternity, breaking the silence.
It doesn’t matter, now. It doesn’t matter.
(there are so many things she wanted to say and never can, now, the shape of her words had been wrong, all wrong. I’m sorry. Don’t go. Stay. Stay with me. Don’t go where I can’t follow-)
“You loved her,” Chenhua says, bluntly: she’s lost her taste for playful, sarcastic barbs, it died with Xiaoli. She remembers the discussions, the arguments, at how fragile Xiaoli had been and she hadn’t seen it. Xiaoli had thought she’d been valueless to her mother, no matter how hard she’d tried: then don’t try, Chenhua had told her, finally losing her temper. It had been the next day that she had left for her home province, and never seen Xiaoli again. “And she never knew.”
Chenhua had wept, bitter ugly broken-hearted tears: she has never cried pretty. Zhilan does not weep, but her smile shatters, and the sound of her fan snapping in her hand is harsh in the silence and says more than the courtier’s words ever could.
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I love that line
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Your tag has been added.
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