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rainbowfic2025-03-01 02:47 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-03-01 02:47 pm
Entry tags:
Ecru #5 [The Fulcrum]
Name: In Search of a Plan
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #5: Search
Styles and Supplies: Panorama
Word Count: 2364
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Liselye, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana begins to look for an escape.
Notes: My keyboard had to be repaired and it took two weeks, but I can now resume posting this.
The next day, Setsiana awoke at a much more normal hour; unshuttering the window, she saw the early rays of the dawn painting the road and shops outside. There was no new food on the table, and the room seemed untouched from the night before, with her clothes from yesterday still folded where she had left them. Just in case, she checked under the mattress, and the nurefye was indeed still there. She felt better today, armed with the knowledge that she would yet escape.
After dressing and braiding her hair, she optimistically tried the door, and found it unlocked once again. She was certain Liselye had locked it behind her the night before, but no one had been in the room since then, so someone else must have unlocked the door without coming in. Qhoroali?
She cautiously left the room; the house seemed very still. Was she alone? Had the door been unlocked by accident? The unknown room off of the small hallway was still locked. She entered the living room and looked around, popping her head into the kitchen, and it really did seem that there was no one there. She flew to the double doors, but they were still locked. Next, she went to the desk, in case Qhoroali had left the key there, opening every drawer. Almost all of them contained yet more papers, or manually bound books, pencils, or more of the strange pens she’d seen yesterday. Incongruously, one contained a large collection of sewing needles, carefully sorted into a wooden tray according to size and type, at odds with the general disorganized state of the desk. With the needles were a number of spools of thread, a small pair of scissors, and a pincushion in the shape of a very fat ghlídrow, but no key. Another large drawer contained only a great deal of carefully folded fabric, but even after taking all of it out and replacing it again, there was no key there. Setsiana briefly considered the viability of picking the lock with a pin, even though she’d forgotten the method; she decided she would return to this idea if she failed to locate a key.
After a brief but thorough search of the papers and books on top of the desk, she checked the large box, which she expected to also be full of papers and books. To her surprise, it didn’t seem to be made of wood, or any paper product, and was instead slick to the touch like glass. From this angle, she could see that there was a horizontal slot on the side of it, under which projected a tray with the same slickness - but this was clearly not made of glass, because it bent and deformed somewhat under her touch, coming back easily to its original shape. The lid was attached on one side, where it formed a hinge, and when she lifted it she found it far lighter than it should have been. Underneath it was not the hollow center of the box filled with papers as she expected, but a glass (definitely glass, this time) surface of surpassing clearness, better even than the windows, through which she could see obscured mechanisms of a kind she had never seen before. Some small oval decorations had been affixed under the lid in contrasting lighter colors, with strange symbols on them that she could not make heads or tails of. Running her fingers over them, they seemed wobbly and poorly set. Beside them was a grey square indentation that had a strange texture when she touched it. On the other side of the ovals, a piece of paper had been stuck or glued in some way under the lid, with handwritten QuCheanya on it: DO NOT TOUCH. Lifting it slightly, she saw that it covered another set of the strange ovals. The box was attached to a small cord that snaked out one side of it and terminated at a smaller black box whose top seemed to shimmer in a strange and iridescent way. Setsiana decided that this mysterious object was unlikely to be the source of a key, and carefully closed the lid.
She tried the closed door on the wall by the desk, and found it was also still locked. There were a number of bookshelves around the room that she could search, but there was something else she wanted to know first.
She went into the kitchen, and began searching the drawers, but found only eating utensils; none of the sharp knives that would be needed for food preparation. Similarly, she noted that in the cabinets were only plates, bowls, and teacups, with no pans in evidence. Clearly, food preparation and cooking took place elsewhere.
She thought of the scissors in the other room. They were very small, but maybe…
She heard a door open and shut, and returned to the main room to find Liselye locking the double doors behind her. “Oh, you’re up,” she said, seeing Setsiana leaving the kitchen. “Do you want breakfast?”
“Where is Qhoroali?” asked Setsiana. She wanted to know if she would be allowed more time alone to search the bookshelves.
“At this hour? Asleep, probably.”
Impulsively, Setsiana said “You could let me go. You don’t have to tell her you did it. Just say I got out on my own somehow.”
“And why would I do that?”
“You don’t feel right about her kidnapping me, right?” Setsiana urged. “You see that it was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t your plan, and you disagree with it. So let me go.”
“She is still my best friend, so you’ll forgive me if I have more loyalty to her than to you,” said Liselye. “I did also promise her I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Anyway, I’d need a second person to return you, Cyaru definitely won’t help, and finding someone else who won’t tell on me is work. Don’t worry, she’s a reasonable person when she wants to be, she’ll eventually figure out this was dumb and let you go on her own. She’s just very caught up right now getting hints and leads from her future selves and bringing futures she hears about into existence. She’ll come to her senses eventually.”
“Why won’t Cyaru help?” asked Setsiana. “He clearly doesn’t want me here.”
“He doesn’t want you here, but he’s not going to want to help you, either. If you must know, he thinks the whole thing is darkly ironic, but I’m also not allowed to tell you why. It’s a shame, I also think it’s quite funny, actually.”
Setsiana didn’t need Liselye to return her to 1647 - she was sure she could just ask the Nwórza priesthood for help, but probably Liselye wouldn’t want her telling them that she was actively stealing their research. She said, “Since I’m stuck in the wrong time anyway, with no one who knows me here, can’t I just leave and get some fresh air? Where would I go?”
Liselye’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want breakfast, or not?” When Setsiana sighed and nodded, Liselye went into the kitchen, prepared the tea kettle and put it on the hearth, and then left through the double doors again. Setsiana ran to them and tugged on the handles, but they had already been locked. She resumed her search of the bookshelves.
Liselye returned sometime later with a tray with three bowls and three plates on it, skillfully balancing it with one hand while hastily locking the door behind her. The bowls contained a thick, spicy congee and the plates contained half servings of sándrev. “Mosetai’s busy with the café this morning,” she said, setting the tray down on the table in the kitchen, “so it’s porridge and leftovers today. I figured I might as well get mine, too.”
“Who’s Mosetai?” asked Setsiana, as they ate.
“The landlady,” said Liselye. “She runs the Dlestan café on the first floor, and we pay her for the food as well as the board. Rou’s an awful cook and I don’t enjoy cooking, either.”
Liselye retrieved and poured tea, and they ate in silence for a minute, but then she asked: “Were you really alive when Mázghwent was writing?”
“Yes,” responded Setsiana, warming to a topic that couldn’t possible help anyone kill Sapfita. “His first play was in 1637 and we’ve all been a bit nuts about him since. Our parents hate him, though.”
“Did he write The King of Vrel yet? I’ve always kind of wondered about that one. Our teachers told us there was some kind of separatist movement in Vrel back then, but that doesn’t feel right.”
Setsiana laughed; that was genuinely funny, in spite of everything else. “No, there wasn’t - there’s nobody who wants an actual King of Vrel, or a separate kingdom of Vrel, or anything like that. What happened was there was some famous explorer who came through, some guy from the Northern Kingdoms somewhere. Or at least, I guess he was famous in the Northern Kingdoms anyway, we’d never heard of him. He was writing some sort of world atlas of Celyira or something and wanted to put down something about absolutely everywhere, and I think he’d already been everywhere except here and Shayansee at that point. He was invited personally by the T’arsi ambassador and she showed him around the Capital, and managed to convince the Emperor to give him an audience. But he didn’t know anything at all about us, so after being introduced, he asked what ‘Emperor’ meant, and the Emperor told him it meant a ruler above a King, and then the explorer said ‘Oh. Which kingdoms do you rule over, then?’”
Liselye was clearly seeing where the story was going and smiling, so she continued to the punchline: “So the Emperor said, ‘Well, um, Vrel, of course.’” She laughed again; it had been quite funny at the time, and for her the story was only a couple years old. “Everyone was gossiping and laughing about that for months, the Governor even dressed up as a king and paraded around on horseback making fun of the Emperor. Supposedly they’d had some kind of tiff at the Capital way back when and his assignment out here was to effectively banish him from court, so he was always a very good sport when it came to jokes about the Emperor. In the midst of it all, Mázghwent came out with a new play… they say he has a network of couriers spread across the whole country, or else he has his own pigeons that he keeps in multiple cities, and sources in the Capital that no one knows about, so that whenever something noteworthy, or interesting, or funny happens there he gets the news weeks before everyone else and has time to start writing.”
Liselye was laughing, too; it had a pretty, musical sound to it. “And they make us study him like he is high Vrelian culture - as if that even exists. I’d have preferred to see him as you did. I’m sure Rou would still say something like ‘well, I think it still has something important to say about kings.’ She may be a heretic, but she’s also such a priestess about things sometimes.”
“I think the play does have something important to say about kings,” said Setsiana. “It was funny, too, but there’s more to it than that.”
Liselye shook her head dismissively. “You can talk about it with her, then, I’m sure she’d be thrilled.” She brushed sándrev crumbs off her hands, put the empty dishes back onto the tray, and carried it back out to the main room. Following her, Setsiana saw her set the tray on the desk and look at one of the pieces of paper there. “Mureiyo, again?” she muttered to herself. “I told you you should have made a copy, dummy.” She carefully folded the paper and put it into a small pocket in her skirt, before leaving with the tray.
Setsiana poured herself another cup of tea and finished searching the bookshelves, but did not find any keys. She took a pin from the desk and approached the door, willing herself to remember how lock-picking worked, but most of her memories of that time were of the girl who had showed her and not the actual lock-picking. She stuck the pin in the keyhole anyway, moving it around experimentally.
“You’re doing that all wrong,” said Qhoroali from behind her shoulder. Setsiana jumped, and almost dropped the pin.
Whirling to face her, Setsiana looked into her eyes and said “Oh, yeah? If you can do it better, why don’t you show me?”
Qhoroali’s grey eyes slid away from hers, but she smiled slowly. She seemed sleepy still, and had dressed without a surfeit of care. “Nice try.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Can I have my pin back?”
Setsiana reluctantly surrendered the pin, and wearily slumped into one of the chairs. She would have to find a way to slip out with one of them when they entered or left, there seemed to be no other way.
Qhoroali strolled over to the desk and regarded it critically. “I see you’ve been through all of my things. Did you find anything interesting?”
“Like you could actually tell,” said Setsiana grumpily. “It looks just like it did yesterday.”
Qhoroali’s mouth twisted. “No it doesn’t. Everything was in it’s place yesterday, and now it’s all cattywampus.” She moved papers around in a way that seemed more or less random to Setsiana, and after a few minutes seemed satisfied. “There, now it’s sensible again.” She went in to the kitchen and returned with the third bowl and plate, which she set on the desk. Sitting down, she picked up a paper. “I’m curious what you think about—”
“No,” said Setsiana firmly. “I’m not helping you. I’m not helping you kill Sapfita.”
Qhoroali rolled her eyes a little bit. “Alright,” she said, “I get it. You just need time. I know you come around eventually.” She began eating her breakfast, but opened a book on the other arm of the desk to read at the same time.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #5: Search
Styles and Supplies: Panorama
Word Count: 2364
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Liselye, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana begins to look for an escape.
Notes: My keyboard had to be repaired and it took two weeks, but I can now resume posting this.
The next day, Setsiana awoke at a much more normal hour; unshuttering the window, she saw the early rays of the dawn painting the road and shops outside. There was no new food on the table, and the room seemed untouched from the night before, with her clothes from yesterday still folded where she had left them. Just in case, she checked under the mattress, and the nurefye was indeed still there. She felt better today, armed with the knowledge that she would yet escape.
After dressing and braiding her hair, she optimistically tried the door, and found it unlocked once again. She was certain Liselye had locked it behind her the night before, but no one had been in the room since then, so someone else must have unlocked the door without coming in. Qhoroali?
She cautiously left the room; the house seemed very still. Was she alone? Had the door been unlocked by accident? The unknown room off of the small hallway was still locked. She entered the living room and looked around, popping her head into the kitchen, and it really did seem that there was no one there. She flew to the double doors, but they were still locked. Next, she went to the desk, in case Qhoroali had left the key there, opening every drawer. Almost all of them contained yet more papers, or manually bound books, pencils, or more of the strange pens she’d seen yesterday. Incongruously, one contained a large collection of sewing needles, carefully sorted into a wooden tray according to size and type, at odds with the general disorganized state of the desk. With the needles were a number of spools of thread, a small pair of scissors, and a pincushion in the shape of a very fat ghlídrow, but no key. Another large drawer contained only a great deal of carefully folded fabric, but even after taking all of it out and replacing it again, there was no key there. Setsiana briefly considered the viability of picking the lock with a pin, even though she’d forgotten the method; she decided she would return to this idea if she failed to locate a key.
After a brief but thorough search of the papers and books on top of the desk, she checked the large box, which she expected to also be full of papers and books. To her surprise, it didn’t seem to be made of wood, or any paper product, and was instead slick to the touch like glass. From this angle, she could see that there was a horizontal slot on the side of it, under which projected a tray with the same slickness - but this was clearly not made of glass, because it bent and deformed somewhat under her touch, coming back easily to its original shape. The lid was attached on one side, where it formed a hinge, and when she lifted it she found it far lighter than it should have been. Underneath it was not the hollow center of the box filled with papers as she expected, but a glass (definitely glass, this time) surface of surpassing clearness, better even than the windows, through which she could see obscured mechanisms of a kind she had never seen before. Some small oval decorations had been affixed under the lid in contrasting lighter colors, with strange symbols on them that she could not make heads or tails of. Running her fingers over them, they seemed wobbly and poorly set. Beside them was a grey square indentation that had a strange texture when she touched it. On the other side of the ovals, a piece of paper had been stuck or glued in some way under the lid, with handwritten QuCheanya on it: DO NOT TOUCH. Lifting it slightly, she saw that it covered another set of the strange ovals. The box was attached to a small cord that snaked out one side of it and terminated at a smaller black box whose top seemed to shimmer in a strange and iridescent way. Setsiana decided that this mysterious object was unlikely to be the source of a key, and carefully closed the lid.
She tried the closed door on the wall by the desk, and found it was also still locked. There were a number of bookshelves around the room that she could search, but there was something else she wanted to know first.
She went into the kitchen, and began searching the drawers, but found only eating utensils; none of the sharp knives that would be needed for food preparation. Similarly, she noted that in the cabinets were only plates, bowls, and teacups, with no pans in evidence. Clearly, food preparation and cooking took place elsewhere.
She thought of the scissors in the other room. They were very small, but maybe…
She heard a door open and shut, and returned to the main room to find Liselye locking the double doors behind her. “Oh, you’re up,” she said, seeing Setsiana leaving the kitchen. “Do you want breakfast?”
“Where is Qhoroali?” asked Setsiana. She wanted to know if she would be allowed more time alone to search the bookshelves.
“At this hour? Asleep, probably.”
Impulsively, Setsiana said “You could let me go. You don’t have to tell her you did it. Just say I got out on my own somehow.”
“And why would I do that?”
“You don’t feel right about her kidnapping me, right?” Setsiana urged. “You see that it was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t your plan, and you disagree with it. So let me go.”
“She is still my best friend, so you’ll forgive me if I have more loyalty to her than to you,” said Liselye. “I did also promise her I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Anyway, I’d need a second person to return you, Cyaru definitely won’t help, and finding someone else who won’t tell on me is work. Don’t worry, she’s a reasonable person when she wants to be, she’ll eventually figure out this was dumb and let you go on her own. She’s just very caught up right now getting hints and leads from her future selves and bringing futures she hears about into existence. She’ll come to her senses eventually.”
“Why won’t Cyaru help?” asked Setsiana. “He clearly doesn’t want me here.”
“He doesn’t want you here, but he’s not going to want to help you, either. If you must know, he thinks the whole thing is darkly ironic, but I’m also not allowed to tell you why. It’s a shame, I also think it’s quite funny, actually.”
Setsiana didn’t need Liselye to return her to 1647 - she was sure she could just ask the Nwórza priesthood for help, but probably Liselye wouldn’t want her telling them that she was actively stealing their research. She said, “Since I’m stuck in the wrong time anyway, with no one who knows me here, can’t I just leave and get some fresh air? Where would I go?”
Liselye’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want breakfast, or not?” When Setsiana sighed and nodded, Liselye went into the kitchen, prepared the tea kettle and put it on the hearth, and then left through the double doors again. Setsiana ran to them and tugged on the handles, but they had already been locked. She resumed her search of the bookshelves.
Liselye returned sometime later with a tray with three bowls and three plates on it, skillfully balancing it with one hand while hastily locking the door behind her. The bowls contained a thick, spicy congee and the plates contained half servings of sándrev. “Mosetai’s busy with the café this morning,” she said, setting the tray down on the table in the kitchen, “so it’s porridge and leftovers today. I figured I might as well get mine, too.”
“Who’s Mosetai?” asked Setsiana, as they ate.
“The landlady,” said Liselye. “She runs the Dlestan café on the first floor, and we pay her for the food as well as the board. Rou’s an awful cook and I don’t enjoy cooking, either.”
Liselye retrieved and poured tea, and they ate in silence for a minute, but then she asked: “Were you really alive when Mázghwent was writing?”
“Yes,” responded Setsiana, warming to a topic that couldn’t possible help anyone kill Sapfita. “His first play was in 1637 and we’ve all been a bit nuts about him since. Our parents hate him, though.”
“Did he write The King of Vrel yet? I’ve always kind of wondered about that one. Our teachers told us there was some kind of separatist movement in Vrel back then, but that doesn’t feel right.”
Setsiana laughed; that was genuinely funny, in spite of everything else. “No, there wasn’t - there’s nobody who wants an actual King of Vrel, or a separate kingdom of Vrel, or anything like that. What happened was there was some famous explorer who came through, some guy from the Northern Kingdoms somewhere. Or at least, I guess he was famous in the Northern Kingdoms anyway, we’d never heard of him. He was writing some sort of world atlas of Celyira or something and wanted to put down something about absolutely everywhere, and I think he’d already been everywhere except here and Shayansee at that point. He was invited personally by the T’arsi ambassador and she showed him around the Capital, and managed to convince the Emperor to give him an audience. But he didn’t know anything at all about us, so after being introduced, he asked what ‘Emperor’ meant, and the Emperor told him it meant a ruler above a King, and then the explorer said ‘Oh. Which kingdoms do you rule over, then?’”
Liselye was clearly seeing where the story was going and smiling, so she continued to the punchline: “So the Emperor said, ‘Well, um, Vrel, of course.’” She laughed again; it had been quite funny at the time, and for her the story was only a couple years old. “Everyone was gossiping and laughing about that for months, the Governor even dressed up as a king and paraded around on horseback making fun of the Emperor. Supposedly they’d had some kind of tiff at the Capital way back when and his assignment out here was to effectively banish him from court, so he was always a very good sport when it came to jokes about the Emperor. In the midst of it all, Mázghwent came out with a new play… they say he has a network of couriers spread across the whole country, or else he has his own pigeons that he keeps in multiple cities, and sources in the Capital that no one knows about, so that whenever something noteworthy, or interesting, or funny happens there he gets the news weeks before everyone else and has time to start writing.”
Liselye was laughing, too; it had a pretty, musical sound to it. “And they make us study him like he is high Vrelian culture - as if that even exists. I’d have preferred to see him as you did. I’m sure Rou would still say something like ‘well, I think it still has something important to say about kings.’ She may be a heretic, but she’s also such a priestess about things sometimes.”
“I think the play does have something important to say about kings,” said Setsiana. “It was funny, too, but there’s more to it than that.”
Liselye shook her head dismissively. “You can talk about it with her, then, I’m sure she’d be thrilled.” She brushed sándrev crumbs off her hands, put the empty dishes back onto the tray, and carried it back out to the main room. Following her, Setsiana saw her set the tray on the desk and look at one of the pieces of paper there. “Mureiyo, again?” she muttered to herself. “I told you you should have made a copy, dummy.” She carefully folded the paper and put it into a small pocket in her skirt, before leaving with the tray.
Setsiana poured herself another cup of tea and finished searching the bookshelves, but did not find any keys. She took a pin from the desk and approached the door, willing herself to remember how lock-picking worked, but most of her memories of that time were of the girl who had showed her and not the actual lock-picking. She stuck the pin in the keyhole anyway, moving it around experimentally.
“You’re doing that all wrong,” said Qhoroali from behind her shoulder. Setsiana jumped, and almost dropped the pin.
Whirling to face her, Setsiana looked into her eyes and said “Oh, yeah? If you can do it better, why don’t you show me?”
Qhoroali’s grey eyes slid away from hers, but she smiled slowly. She seemed sleepy still, and had dressed without a surfeit of care. “Nice try.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Can I have my pin back?”
Setsiana reluctantly surrendered the pin, and wearily slumped into one of the chairs. She would have to find a way to slip out with one of them when they entered or left, there seemed to be no other way.
Qhoroali strolled over to the desk and regarded it critically. “I see you’ve been through all of my things. Did you find anything interesting?”
“Like you could actually tell,” said Setsiana grumpily. “It looks just like it did yesterday.”
Qhoroali’s mouth twisted. “No it doesn’t. Everything was in it’s place yesterday, and now it’s all cattywampus.” She moved papers around in a way that seemed more or less random to Setsiana, and after a few minutes seemed satisfied. “There, now it’s sensible again.” She went in to the kitchen and returned with the third bowl and plate, which she set on the desk. Sitting down, she picked up a paper. “I’m curious what you think about—”
“No,” said Setsiana firmly. “I’m not helping you. I’m not helping you kill Sapfita.”
Qhoroali rolled her eyes a little bit. “Alright,” she said, “I get it. You just need time. I know you come around eventually.” She began eating her breakfast, but opened a book on the other arm of the desk to read at the same time.
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This box is extremely cool and I want to know more about it!
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Thank you for reading! Everything will be answered in the next update.
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“No,” said Setsiana firmly. “I’m not helping you. I’m not helping you kill Sapfita.”
Qhoroali rolled her eyes a little bit. “Alright,” she said, “I get it. You just need time. I know you come around eventually.” She began eating her breakfast, but opened a book on the other arm of the desk to read at the same time.
Heh, ohhhh dear.
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Thank you!
It's not exactly a laptop... maybe I didn't describe it well enough, you'll have to tell me after the next post.
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Well, it is a piece of (more or less) modern technology, haha. It's not exactly the same style as what we're used to, with this type of thing, though, since it's still a fantasy world with slightly different stuff going on.