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rainbowfic2025-09-14 02:49 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-09-14 02:49 pm
Light Black #26 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Chonea
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Light Black #26: Swap
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing, Panorama, Pastels (September 14: Romance, from this list), Stain ("The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows." - Aristotle Onassis), Novelty Bead ("Mine and yours", given here)
Word Count: 1589
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Mosetai
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.2.6
Summary: Setsiana's New Years' flower blooms.
Notes: My only hope for this one is that it's the exact right amount of cheesy.
Setsiana had been watering the New Years’ flower that Qhoroali had given her daily, as had been her custom back in Syarhrít. One day, she suddenly realized that it was already well into the third month of the year, and the spring was basically over, but her flower didn’t seem to have bloomed. It had produced a lot of wide, flat leaves, but no shoot had come up, and no blossom had appeared. She moved some of the leaves aside to inspect the stem, and then she did see a flower — a very small, pale blue star of a flower nestled in between the leaves. This was not anything that had come out of a florist’s stall, for New Years or any other occasion. In fact, it looked a lot like…
Suddenly fuming, Setsiana picked up the pot with the “flower” in it and stormed out to the living room, where Qhoroali was doing something with the copier. She held the pot aloft. “This,” she said, voice trembling with anger, “is a qoire plant.”
Qhoroali looked at her, dumbfounded, for a moment, but then seemed to realize something, and collapsed into laughter. Setsiana just stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” said Qhoroali, finally catching her breath. “I’m so sorry. When I went shopping for the New Years’ flowers, my plan was to return you to 1647. I was going to take you back, and I wanted a way to hold myself to that promise. So I gave you a qoire plant from the garden instead of a flower, because that way, if I went back on my word and didn’t take you back, I would know that you wouldn’t have a proper New Years’ flower and would probably be mad. So that meant I had to take you back, and couldn’t change my mind. But then you decided to return with us anyway, and I completely forgot about the qoire plant after all of that.”
Setsiana lowered the pot and relaxed a bit, her anger assuaged. Well, maybe getting a qoire plant was symbolic of the sheer amount of qoire she’d consumed this year, even though the year was only one third gone. She wondered idly what flower Qhoroali had gotten, and scanned the desk to see if it was there.
Somehow her eyes must have passed over it in the previous weeks, but sure enough, there on one of the wings of the desk was a flower pot with a blue, pitcher-shaped flower, it’s opening drooping somewhat, seeming to look disconsolately at the ground past the edge of the desk. A chonea; the True Love flower.
She went to the chonea and put her qoire plant beside it, lifting its chin with her forefinger. “This is the one you got?”
Qhoroali looked up from the copier, which she had gone back to after she’d finished laughing. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Another year, another completely inappropriate flower, go figure. I don’t know why I keep it watered.”
“How do you know it’s inappropriate?” Setsiana asked. “It’s only the third month. You never know what will happen in the remaining five and a half.”
“Maybe not,” said Qhoroali, “But I do know that true love won’t happen, not to me. It’s a cruel joke that I got that one. But if you like it, you can have it. You seem like the kind of person who actually gives weight to this silly custom, and you wanted a real flower, and didn’t get one. Maybe that chonea would even have been yours, if I’d done things properly and gotten both of us a flower.”
“I can’t just take your New Years’ flower,” said Setsiana, affronted. “If you can just choose which one you get, it defeats the purpose. You got it, it’s yours, it says something about your future. It doesn’t say anything about me.”
“Trust me, it doesn’t say anything about my future,” said Qhoroali. “It doesn’t actually work like that, you know that, right? It’s just a custom.”
Setsiana deflated a bit. “I know,” she said, “but it’s still nice to pretend. And when you get a chonea, that should be a cause for celebration! It should make you feel good about the future. That’s the real purpose of the flowers, to give you hope, and something to look forward to.”
“Maybe for you, it would,” said Qhoroali. “Go on — take it. It should belong to someone who gets joy from looking at it, not to me.”
Setsiana studied her for a minute, as she copied some pages, and then finally said. “Alright, I’ll take it. But it’s still not for me. I’m just keeping it in stewardship for you, until you realize that you do deserve it.” She picked up the chonea and returned to her room with it, and then came back out to the living room. “What do we do with the qoire plant?”
“We should take it upstairs to the garden,” Qhoroali said. “It’s not going to be very happy in the pot.”
They took the qoire plant up a long staircase that Setsiana had never been on before, and eventually emerged out on the flat roof of the building. The view of the city was cut off by a high wall that had been constructed all around the rooftop, but on top, the space was still open to the sky. And they were not walking on stone, or wood; the whole of the rooftop space was lined with a thick layer of soil, and in the soil grew rows upon rows of qoire plants.
Servants walked among the plants, some looking them over for bugs or signs of blight, others carefully harvesting some of the larger leaves and putting them into baskets. Qhoroali led them to a place where there was a slight gap between the existing plants. “We’ll put it here,” she said. “The roots spread out and grow wide, rather than deep — that’s how we can have the garden up here. But this one is not going to be able to spread out in that pot.”
Qhoroali dug a hole in the soil, and Setsiana removed the plant from the pot using a spade and put it in the ground. Indeed, she saw that some of the roots had run up against the edges of the pot and looked very cramped. “Where do they get watered from?” she asked, watching the servants. “Do they just survive on rain?”
Qhoroali pointed to a corner of the garden, where Mosetai was doing something to the wall. “Over there,” she said, simply.
Setsiana left Qhoroali to situate the new plant, and went over to Mosetai. As she got closer, she saw that Mosetai was struggling to turn on a spigot that emerged from the wall, but she looked up as Setsiana approached.
Seeming to anticipate her question, Mosetai said “This comes from the aqueduct! It carries the water from the river source in the mountains over here to the city, and the pipes lead from there to the roofs of the buildings, where we heat it and pipe it down to the lower floors for baths. Or,” she added, with a grin, “where we use it to supply our illegal drug operations, depending.” She finally succeeded in opening the spigot, and water flowed out of it, down an angled trough, and out into smaller troughs that ran down the rows of qoire plants, with streams escaping to the plants on either side. She continued talking as she watched it. “The money for it just comes out of the property taxes — no one is out there actually measuring how much we use, or anything like that. Even if they were… maybe we just really like our baths, here.” She laughed.
“This does seem like a lot more qoire than Qhoroali would need just for time travel,” said Setsiana.
“It is, but she does use more than you’re probably thinking. I don’t know all the details of how they make the drug, that’s handled by her people, but I do know that it takes an absolutely ridiculous number of leaves to make a single bottle.”
Setsiana looked at the servants moving among the plants. “None of your gardeners turn you in?”
“I’m good to my employees. Qhoroali and Liselye can vouch for me — they were in my employ, once. I find that there’s no point in trying to squeeze people for an extra bit of begrudging labor when you can get so much more out of them just by being decent. Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t really tend to see my relationships with other people in terms of what I can get out of them,” Setsiana said, nervously.
Mosetai laughed again, and bent back down to turn off the spigot. “That’s just because you’ve never run a business,” she said. “I remember back when I still saw the world the way you do. It’s adorable.”
Back in her room, later, Setsiana looked up at the potted chonea that had taken the place of the qoire plant. She’d never thought she’d get one of those… and from Qhoroali, no less. Her mind stopped on that, suddenly, thoughts thudding to a halt. Qhoroali had given her a chonea. No. She shook her head, laughing at herself a bit. Qhoroali wouldn’t see a gift between two women that way, and she had only given it to Setsiana to get rid of it. It didn’t mean anything. Regardless of how much she might like the idea, to Qhoroali, it was just a flower.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Light Black #26: Swap
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing, Panorama, Pastels (September 14: Romance, from this list), Stain ("The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows." - Aristotle Onassis), Novelty Bead ("Mine and yours", given here)
Word Count: 1589
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Mosetai
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.2.6
Summary: Setsiana's New Years' flower blooms.
Notes: My only hope for this one is that it's the exact right amount of cheesy.
Setsiana had been watering the New Years’ flower that Qhoroali had given her daily, as had been her custom back in Syarhrít. One day, she suddenly realized that it was already well into the third month of the year, and the spring was basically over, but her flower didn’t seem to have bloomed. It had produced a lot of wide, flat leaves, but no shoot had come up, and no blossom had appeared. She moved some of the leaves aside to inspect the stem, and then she did see a flower — a very small, pale blue star of a flower nestled in between the leaves. This was not anything that had come out of a florist’s stall, for New Years or any other occasion. In fact, it looked a lot like…
Suddenly fuming, Setsiana picked up the pot with the “flower” in it and stormed out to the living room, where Qhoroali was doing something with the copier. She held the pot aloft. “This,” she said, voice trembling with anger, “is a qoire plant.”
Qhoroali looked at her, dumbfounded, for a moment, but then seemed to realize something, and collapsed into laughter. Setsiana just stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” said Qhoroali, finally catching her breath. “I’m so sorry. When I went shopping for the New Years’ flowers, my plan was to return you to 1647. I was going to take you back, and I wanted a way to hold myself to that promise. So I gave you a qoire plant from the garden instead of a flower, because that way, if I went back on my word and didn’t take you back, I would know that you wouldn’t have a proper New Years’ flower and would probably be mad. So that meant I had to take you back, and couldn’t change my mind. But then you decided to return with us anyway, and I completely forgot about the qoire plant after all of that.”
Setsiana lowered the pot and relaxed a bit, her anger assuaged. Well, maybe getting a qoire plant was symbolic of the sheer amount of qoire she’d consumed this year, even though the year was only one third gone. She wondered idly what flower Qhoroali had gotten, and scanned the desk to see if it was there.
Somehow her eyes must have passed over it in the previous weeks, but sure enough, there on one of the wings of the desk was a flower pot with a blue, pitcher-shaped flower, it’s opening drooping somewhat, seeming to look disconsolately at the ground past the edge of the desk. A chonea; the True Love flower.
She went to the chonea and put her qoire plant beside it, lifting its chin with her forefinger. “This is the one you got?”
Qhoroali looked up from the copier, which she had gone back to after she’d finished laughing. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Another year, another completely inappropriate flower, go figure. I don’t know why I keep it watered.”
“How do you know it’s inappropriate?” Setsiana asked. “It’s only the third month. You never know what will happen in the remaining five and a half.”
“Maybe not,” said Qhoroali, “But I do know that true love won’t happen, not to me. It’s a cruel joke that I got that one. But if you like it, you can have it. You seem like the kind of person who actually gives weight to this silly custom, and you wanted a real flower, and didn’t get one. Maybe that chonea would even have been yours, if I’d done things properly and gotten both of us a flower.”
“I can’t just take your New Years’ flower,” said Setsiana, affronted. “If you can just choose which one you get, it defeats the purpose. You got it, it’s yours, it says something about your future. It doesn’t say anything about me.”
“Trust me, it doesn’t say anything about my future,” said Qhoroali. “It doesn’t actually work like that, you know that, right? It’s just a custom.”
Setsiana deflated a bit. “I know,” she said, “but it’s still nice to pretend. And when you get a chonea, that should be a cause for celebration! It should make you feel good about the future. That’s the real purpose of the flowers, to give you hope, and something to look forward to.”
“Maybe for you, it would,” said Qhoroali. “Go on — take it. It should belong to someone who gets joy from looking at it, not to me.”
Setsiana studied her for a minute, as she copied some pages, and then finally said. “Alright, I’ll take it. But it’s still not for me. I’m just keeping it in stewardship for you, until you realize that you do deserve it.” She picked up the chonea and returned to her room with it, and then came back out to the living room. “What do we do with the qoire plant?”
“We should take it upstairs to the garden,” Qhoroali said. “It’s not going to be very happy in the pot.”
They took the qoire plant up a long staircase that Setsiana had never been on before, and eventually emerged out on the flat roof of the building. The view of the city was cut off by a high wall that had been constructed all around the rooftop, but on top, the space was still open to the sky. And they were not walking on stone, or wood; the whole of the rooftop space was lined with a thick layer of soil, and in the soil grew rows upon rows of qoire plants.
Servants walked among the plants, some looking them over for bugs or signs of blight, others carefully harvesting some of the larger leaves and putting them into baskets. Qhoroali led them to a place where there was a slight gap between the existing plants. “We’ll put it here,” she said. “The roots spread out and grow wide, rather than deep — that’s how we can have the garden up here. But this one is not going to be able to spread out in that pot.”
Qhoroali dug a hole in the soil, and Setsiana removed the plant from the pot using a spade and put it in the ground. Indeed, she saw that some of the roots had run up against the edges of the pot and looked very cramped. “Where do they get watered from?” she asked, watching the servants. “Do they just survive on rain?”
Qhoroali pointed to a corner of the garden, where Mosetai was doing something to the wall. “Over there,” she said, simply.
Setsiana left Qhoroali to situate the new plant, and went over to Mosetai. As she got closer, she saw that Mosetai was struggling to turn on a spigot that emerged from the wall, but she looked up as Setsiana approached.
Seeming to anticipate her question, Mosetai said “This comes from the aqueduct! It carries the water from the river source in the mountains over here to the city, and the pipes lead from there to the roofs of the buildings, where we heat it and pipe it down to the lower floors for baths. Or,” she added, with a grin, “where we use it to supply our illegal drug operations, depending.” She finally succeeded in opening the spigot, and water flowed out of it, down an angled trough, and out into smaller troughs that ran down the rows of qoire plants, with streams escaping to the plants on either side. She continued talking as she watched it. “The money for it just comes out of the property taxes — no one is out there actually measuring how much we use, or anything like that. Even if they were… maybe we just really like our baths, here.” She laughed.
“This does seem like a lot more qoire than Qhoroali would need just for time travel,” said Setsiana.
“It is, but she does use more than you’re probably thinking. I don’t know all the details of how they make the drug, that’s handled by her people, but I do know that it takes an absolutely ridiculous number of leaves to make a single bottle.”
Setsiana looked at the servants moving among the plants. “None of your gardeners turn you in?”
“I’m good to my employees. Qhoroali and Liselye can vouch for me — they were in my employ, once. I find that there’s no point in trying to squeeze people for an extra bit of begrudging labor when you can get so much more out of them just by being decent. Don’t you agree?”
“I don’t really tend to see my relationships with other people in terms of what I can get out of them,” Setsiana said, nervously.
Mosetai laughed again, and bent back down to turn off the spigot. “That’s just because you’ve never run a business,” she said. “I remember back when I still saw the world the way you do. It’s adorable.”
Back in her room, later, Setsiana looked up at the potted chonea that had taken the place of the qoire plant. She’d never thought she’d get one of those… and from Qhoroali, no less. Her mind stopped on that, suddenly, thoughts thudding to a halt. Qhoroali had given her a chonea. No. She shook her head, laughing at herself a bit. Qhoroali wouldn’t see a gift between two women that way, and she had only given it to Setsiana to get rid of it. It didn’t mean anything. Regardless of how much she might like the idea, to Qhoroali, it was just a flower.
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Haha, thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
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Thank you! Yes, just a flower...
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Anyway I kind of love the qoire garden on top of the building. Lots of "they're medicinal carrots" vibes.
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Thank you, I hope the relationship is ramping up at the right rate during this part of the story.
The garden actually was mentioned much earlier - Qhoroali talked about leaving the solar hub up there to charge during the copy machine scene. But I'm sure no one probably remembers that anymore, haha.