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rainbowfic2023-09-22 08:07 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2023-09-22 08:07 pm
Nacre #9 [Starfall]
Name: Locked Away
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #9 (Buried [treasure])
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Seedbeads + Graffiti – 11 Years of Rainbowfic Part 9 (September Secrets)
Word Count: 736
Rating: PG
Warnings: Family estrangements.
Notes: 1324-1330, North Eastern Emoyra; Laonna Torwell, Ianna Torrin, Sharrander Colwell, Marran Delver. (It’s just all secrets all the time this month, and I’ve not even written anything I wasn’t planning to write.)
Summary: Laonna and the letters she’s never going to read.
They tell Laonna about the letters when she’s eleven. On her birthday, they give her a new coat, and then, later on, they tell her about the box of letters they’ve been keeping from her. Her wicked father has written and written and written all these years.
She may read them, they say, if she wishes to. She does not have to. Her father might be under an obligation; she is not.
Laonna is a sober child, the only grandchild of Ianna Torrin and Sharrander Colwell, brought up above their draper’s shop, the best in Hillold. Even to her, though, a box full of unopened letters is a temptation, a whole chest of buried treasure. Anything could lie inside. But she raises her head and catches the shadows in her grandparents’ eyes. Her mouth sets.
“I won’t,” she promises. It’s lucky it’s her birthday. There are genna-cakes for tea, and a new book from her friend Hyet. She keeps her mind on the waiting treats; closes the lid and locks the box with a decided click. “Please. Take it away.”
Then they smile at her. She’s done the right thing.
The letters don’t stop. Probably, even if her wicked father knew of her resolution, he would keep on sending them anyway. That’s the sort of person he is – selfish and stubborn. They arrive on the Last Days, the Empty Days before the New Year, and again on her birthday. Walking past them on the table in the hall, nose in the air, feels like a triumph every time. Whatever he has to say, she’s not listening. Her grandparents put each one away in the little chest, and it grows heavier every year with the weight of things unsaid.
“You don’t read them?” Hyet says once, permitted to come home with her on her birthday. She watches this ritual, her eyes almost falling out of her head. “Laonna, you have to!” She actually dares to lay hands on the latest, and thrusts it at her, but Laonna shakes her head. She doesn’t break promises.
Laonna knows the story. Years before, at the Pollean Academy near Old Ralston, a girl, musical and talented, was seduced by one of her fellow students, a lying, handsome boy, who didn’t care about the bright future he was breaking, or the girl, not really. He let her go as soon as he was asked; he ran away to be a soldier; he broke the girl’s heart, caused her to die, and all that was left were a hundred and more letters shut up in a box.
As she grows, there’s a strange shift in this game: her no-good father is suddenly somebody important. He’s the Commander of the Fort in Old Ralston – not a real commander, but he tells everybody there what to do anyway.
He’s like two people: the villain she knows, who fooled her mother and now fools the world, and the hero the news-sheets invent, standing up to the alionrel people. It makes her stomach swirl in uncomfortable ways. The papers have found and printed out her deepest secret. Somewhere, right at the back of her head, hidden in the silence of the night, Laonna dreams her father’s a hero, too. As long as she doesn’t read the letters, that silly, wool-pated part of her can still believe it’s true.
When her father goes even further and becomes Governor, Laonna puts each new letter away with an ever sharper snap of the box’s lid. She tears up the old news-sheets for use with extra vigour, ripping him into pieces, both words and pictures. They have scathing cartoons that paint him in worse colours than her grandparents do, and sometimes proper sketches that stare out of the pages at her, a much-too-real person she refuses to face.
And yet, whether Commander or Governor of the whole District, Marran Delver never comes to Hillold. He can do anything he wants now, but he doesn’t swoop into the draper’s shop and demand to see her. He doesn’t try to fool her the way he does the rest of the world. She’ll never forgive him for that.
The letters are a lie and he’s a liar. Laonna barely looks at them these days. They slow down; only one a year. Even her wicked father must give up in time.
On that day, she tells herself, she will be glad.
Story: Starfall
Colors: Nacre #9 (Buried [treasure])
Supplies and Styles: Canvas + Seedbeads + Graffiti – 11 Years of Rainbowfic Part 9 (September Secrets)
Word Count: 736
Rating: PG
Warnings: Family estrangements.
Notes: 1324-1330, North Eastern Emoyra; Laonna Torwell, Ianna Torrin, Sharrander Colwell, Marran Delver. (It’s just all secrets all the time this month, and I’ve not even written anything I wasn’t planning to write.)
Summary: Laonna and the letters she’s never going to read.
They tell Laonna about the letters when she’s eleven. On her birthday, they give her a new coat, and then, later on, they tell her about the box of letters they’ve been keeping from her. Her wicked father has written and written and written all these years.
She may read them, they say, if she wishes to. She does not have to. Her father might be under an obligation; she is not.
Laonna is a sober child, the only grandchild of Ianna Torrin and Sharrander Colwell, brought up above their draper’s shop, the best in Hillold. Even to her, though, a box full of unopened letters is a temptation, a whole chest of buried treasure. Anything could lie inside. But she raises her head and catches the shadows in her grandparents’ eyes. Her mouth sets.
“I won’t,” she promises. It’s lucky it’s her birthday. There are genna-cakes for tea, and a new book from her friend Hyet. She keeps her mind on the waiting treats; closes the lid and locks the box with a decided click. “Please. Take it away.”
Then they smile at her. She’s done the right thing.
The letters don’t stop. Probably, even if her wicked father knew of her resolution, he would keep on sending them anyway. That’s the sort of person he is – selfish and stubborn. They arrive on the Last Days, the Empty Days before the New Year, and again on her birthday. Walking past them on the table in the hall, nose in the air, feels like a triumph every time. Whatever he has to say, she’s not listening. Her grandparents put each one away in the little chest, and it grows heavier every year with the weight of things unsaid.
“You don’t read them?” Hyet says once, permitted to come home with her on her birthday. She watches this ritual, her eyes almost falling out of her head. “Laonna, you have to!” She actually dares to lay hands on the latest, and thrusts it at her, but Laonna shakes her head. She doesn’t break promises.
Laonna knows the story. Years before, at the Pollean Academy near Old Ralston, a girl, musical and talented, was seduced by one of her fellow students, a lying, handsome boy, who didn’t care about the bright future he was breaking, or the girl, not really. He let her go as soon as he was asked; he ran away to be a soldier; he broke the girl’s heart, caused her to die, and all that was left were a hundred and more letters shut up in a box.
As she grows, there’s a strange shift in this game: her no-good father is suddenly somebody important. He’s the Commander of the Fort in Old Ralston – not a real commander, but he tells everybody there what to do anyway.
He’s like two people: the villain she knows, who fooled her mother and now fools the world, and the hero the news-sheets invent, standing up to the alionrel people. It makes her stomach swirl in uncomfortable ways. The papers have found and printed out her deepest secret. Somewhere, right at the back of her head, hidden in the silence of the night, Laonna dreams her father’s a hero, too. As long as she doesn’t read the letters, that silly, wool-pated part of her can still believe it’s true.
When her father goes even further and becomes Governor, Laonna puts each new letter away with an ever sharper snap of the box’s lid. She tears up the old news-sheets for use with extra vigour, ripping him into pieces, both words and pictures. They have scathing cartoons that paint him in worse colours than her grandparents do, and sometimes proper sketches that stare out of the pages at her, a much-too-real person she refuses to face.
And yet, whether Commander or Governor of the whole District, Marran Delver never comes to Hillold. He can do anything he wants now, but he doesn’t swoop into the draper’s shop and demand to see her. He doesn’t try to fool her the way he does the rest of the world. She’ll never forgive him for that.
The letters are a lie and he’s a liar. Laonna barely looks at them these days. They slow down; only one a year. Even her wicked father must give up in time.
On that day, she tells herself, she will be glad.