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rainbowfic2025-03-20 04:08 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-03-20 04:08 pm
Entry tags:
Ecru #10 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Ox For Potatoes
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #10: Equate
Styles and Supplies: Panorama
Word Count: 922
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Liselye, Cyaru
In-Universe Date: 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana has an idea over dinner.
As foretold by the conversation Setsiana had overheard, Liselye and Cyaru showed up in the evening with food - four bowls of some dark and aromatic soup, and hunks of wheat flour bread. As the four of them sat around the kitchen table to eat, Qhoroali picked through her soup with her spoon, somewhat critically.
“She made yours without the meat and mushrooms, don’t worry,” said Liselye.
“Oh, good,” said Qhoroali. “Sometimes she forgets.”
Setsiana found that her own soup did contain mushrooms, and also cubes of beef and a variety of other vegetables. She ate something with an unfamiliar texture; fishing around in the soup to see what it had been, she realized it had been a piece of potato. Potatoes weren’t often found outside of specialty shops in Nwórza in her time; they were a strange T’arsi vegetable that wasn’t nice raw and had an odd texture when cooked, and you could never be sure of the quality when you did find them. It brought to mind the one time they had really surfaced in public awareness: when she was seven, a T’arsi trade broker had praised the Emperor for following a religion that wasn’t an “ox-for-potatoes” religion. There had been some hasty consultation with T’arsi language experts, and it turned out to be an idiom — just the way they said “tit for tat” in T’arse, conjuring the image of two farmers trading oxen and potatoes with one another. Apparently the idea that one might offer a god material goods in expectation of something in return was just as strange in T’arse as it was in NoraCheanya. It wasn’t strange at all in other places, Setsiana knew; in Dlesta, people burned corn, or sometimes paper with supplications or prayers written on it by a priest, or fiber arts, in small bowls in their household shrines for protection and good fortune from their gods, and in Shayansee there were public ceremonies where livestock were slaughtered — a gift of a soul to the soulwrights, who in Shayansee did not just give souls to babies, but also had influence over the weather, and the recovery of the sick and infirm, and the fortunes of war. The Emperor hadn’t been happy to hear the priesthood praised by this foreign dignitary, or to hear the customs of Shayansee so disparaged, when half the population of his capital had Shayansee blood and his wife was a Shayansee princess. The trade had not been good that year. Ten years later, Mázghwent had used the odd phrase in his play Princess Khr’adi, to describe a quite different kind of transaction, and the summer after that, when ire against T’arse was high in Vrel, someone had gone to the effort to acquire a potato and had thrown it into an artisan’s stall at the T’arsi Fair and broken several valuable ceramic pieces.
Setsiana stared into her soup, lost in thought. It was true, Sapfita was not the kind of god who could be bribed with material goods, or with souls — Her gifts were gifts of knowledge and wisdom, and She gave them where She would. The best you could hope for was to get yourself into a timeline that appealed to Her, and then you might receive one of Her dreams, though if Setsiana had done something to attract Her attention, she didn’t know what it might have been. But regardless of how many dreams Sapfita gave her, Sapfita did not have the ability to change the course of Time, She could not directly affect the world that Setsiana lived in, no matter how much Setsiana might ask Her for help. That meant that if she wanted to escape, she had to do something about it herself; just because Sapfita had promised that it would happen did not mean that she could just lie around reading novels until it did. She needed another plan. Qhoroali had as good as said to Cyaru that she would return Setsiana once she got whatever help she thought she was going to get from her, but Setsiana did not know what she was expecting, and did not really feel like she could help Qhoroali, even if she had wanted to.
Qhoroali, Liselye, Cyaru were chatting at the other end of the table, mostly about light-hearted topics, but occasionally they would stray into the topic of whatever secret they were hiding from Setsiana, and look at her and shush themselves. Liselye did most of the talking, Setsiana noticed; Cyaru seemed content with short responses, but in a genial, rather than curt way; what he’d said to Qhoroali that afternoon had seemed like a grand speech in comparison.
She thought about the scissors again, but threatening someone with such a tiny thing seemed almost comical. And Qhoroali had noticed that they were missing pretty quickly during her test earlier. If only there had been knives in the kitchen! In other places, Setsiana knew, people ate with sharp knives as well as cooking with them, but in NoraCheanya almost everything could be eaten with fingers, or a spoon, and a spoon was hardly a threat to anyone. But this soup was not from NoraCheanya, she realized suddenly, nor was the bread, being wheat-based. Based on the presence of the potatoes, it was probably T’arsi. Foreign food seemed to be much more commonly available in this time period. Maybe one day someone would bring up some form of food that required a sharp knife to eat, and a knife with it. She would have to wait and see.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #10: Equate
Styles and Supplies: Panorama
Word Count: 922
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Liselye, Cyaru
In-Universe Date: 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana has an idea over dinner.
As foretold by the conversation Setsiana had overheard, Liselye and Cyaru showed up in the evening with food - four bowls of some dark and aromatic soup, and hunks of wheat flour bread. As the four of them sat around the kitchen table to eat, Qhoroali picked through her soup with her spoon, somewhat critically.
“She made yours without the meat and mushrooms, don’t worry,” said Liselye.
“Oh, good,” said Qhoroali. “Sometimes she forgets.”
Setsiana found that her own soup did contain mushrooms, and also cubes of beef and a variety of other vegetables. She ate something with an unfamiliar texture; fishing around in the soup to see what it had been, she realized it had been a piece of potato. Potatoes weren’t often found outside of specialty shops in Nwórza in her time; they were a strange T’arsi vegetable that wasn’t nice raw and had an odd texture when cooked, and you could never be sure of the quality when you did find them. It brought to mind the one time they had really surfaced in public awareness: when she was seven, a T’arsi trade broker had praised the Emperor for following a religion that wasn’t an “ox-for-potatoes” religion. There had been some hasty consultation with T’arsi language experts, and it turned out to be an idiom — just the way they said “tit for tat” in T’arse, conjuring the image of two farmers trading oxen and potatoes with one another. Apparently the idea that one might offer a god material goods in expectation of something in return was just as strange in T’arse as it was in NoraCheanya. It wasn’t strange at all in other places, Setsiana knew; in Dlesta, people burned corn, or sometimes paper with supplications or prayers written on it by a priest, or fiber arts, in small bowls in their household shrines for protection and good fortune from their gods, and in Shayansee there were public ceremonies where livestock were slaughtered — a gift of a soul to the soulwrights, who in Shayansee did not just give souls to babies, but also had influence over the weather, and the recovery of the sick and infirm, and the fortunes of war. The Emperor hadn’t been happy to hear the priesthood praised by this foreign dignitary, or to hear the customs of Shayansee so disparaged, when half the population of his capital had Shayansee blood and his wife was a Shayansee princess. The trade had not been good that year. Ten years later, Mázghwent had used the odd phrase in his play Princess Khr’adi, to describe a quite different kind of transaction, and the summer after that, when ire against T’arse was high in Vrel, someone had gone to the effort to acquire a potato and had thrown it into an artisan’s stall at the T’arsi Fair and broken several valuable ceramic pieces.
Setsiana stared into her soup, lost in thought. It was true, Sapfita was not the kind of god who could be bribed with material goods, or with souls — Her gifts were gifts of knowledge and wisdom, and She gave them where She would. The best you could hope for was to get yourself into a timeline that appealed to Her, and then you might receive one of Her dreams, though if Setsiana had done something to attract Her attention, she didn’t know what it might have been. But regardless of how many dreams Sapfita gave her, Sapfita did not have the ability to change the course of Time, She could not directly affect the world that Setsiana lived in, no matter how much Setsiana might ask Her for help. That meant that if she wanted to escape, she had to do something about it herself; just because Sapfita had promised that it would happen did not mean that she could just lie around reading novels until it did. She needed another plan. Qhoroali had as good as said to Cyaru that she would return Setsiana once she got whatever help she thought she was going to get from her, but Setsiana did not know what she was expecting, and did not really feel like she could help Qhoroali, even if she had wanted to.
Qhoroali, Liselye, Cyaru were chatting at the other end of the table, mostly about light-hearted topics, but occasionally they would stray into the topic of whatever secret they were hiding from Setsiana, and look at her and shush themselves. Liselye did most of the talking, Setsiana noticed; Cyaru seemed content with short responses, but in a genial, rather than curt way; what he’d said to Qhoroali that afternoon had seemed like a grand speech in comparison.
She thought about the scissors again, but threatening someone with such a tiny thing seemed almost comical. And Qhoroali had noticed that they were missing pretty quickly during her test earlier. If only there had been knives in the kitchen! In other places, Setsiana knew, people ate with sharp knives as well as cooking with them, but in NoraCheanya almost everything could be eaten with fingers, or a spoon, and a spoon was hardly a threat to anyone. But this soup was not from NoraCheanya, she realized suddenly, nor was the bread, being wheat-based. Based on the presence of the potatoes, it was probably T’arsi. Foreign food seemed to be much more commonly available in this time period. Maybe one day someone would bring up some form of food that required a sharp knife to eat, and a knife with it. She would have to wait and see.