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rainbowfic2025-12-30 04:14 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-12-30 04:14 pm
Realgar #13 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Matters of the Heart
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Realgar #13: Express
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing
Word Count: 1961
Rating: T
Warnings: Discussion of Sexuality and Sex
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.4.4.5
Summary: Setsiana and Qhoroali discuss past relationships.
Notes: One of the scenes that I always felt was a focal point of the story. The others are the abduction scene way back at the very beginning, and the third-to-last post, when I get there.
A week or so later, Qhoroali was sitting on her couch leafing through a book when Setsiana returned to the apartment. When Qhoroali saw Setsiana come in, she patted the seat next to her. “Come take a look at this with me.”
Setsiana obligingly sat next to her, as Qhoroali closed the book again, to show her the cover; it was the book she’d made of Setsiana’s papers. “I didn’t really write those, you know,” said Setsiana. “That’s from another timeline, where I stayed with the temple.”
“I know,” said Qhoroali. “But the ideas in here ultimately came from the same place as the things you’ve been telling me in this timeline, even if they are only distantly related. I thought maybe you would have more insight into them. I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, about whether there is a source of Time that isn’t Sapfita, and I realized I’ve never really looked into that, or thought about it before. But maybe there is something in here that I missed. If you had that thought in this timeline, maybe you had it in the other one, too.”
Setsiana humored her, and they went through the papers, one by one, discussing them, but by the time they were finished, it seemed clear that Qhoroali hadn’t missed anything in her first review of them, or at least not anything that Setsiana could see. It was interesting to see what she’d been studying as a full priestess, but it did nothing to shed any light on what they’d seen in the strange rip in reality that they’d entered a couple weeks ago.
“I always wondered why these were so unpopular,” Qhoroali mused. “There’s nothing really crazy-sounding in here, the logic and research is solid. But I guess it was probably because you were on their list, so they didn’t really trust you.”
“If they hadn’t trusted me, they wouldn’t have made me a full priestess in the first place,” said Setsiana. “I must have said or done something in that timeline to make them disregard it. I think it’s probably just because I got into the junior priestess prep program late, and didn’t make the right social connections. A big factor of success there really comes down to how well other people know and like you, I think. And how much you’re cited outside your own time period heavily depends on how popular your paper was when it was published.”
“Right,” said Qhoroali. “I remember you said your mother forbade you to join, for some silly reason or other.”
“She thought it would ruin my chances of marrying a man.” Setsiana scoffed. “I would never. It was always hard to make progress as a junior, because of that. Well, I guess— I guess probably that was at least partly to do with being on the list. For a while it was ok, because I had someone vouching for me to the full priestesses, we were sort of dating for a little while…” She faltered briefly, remembering the last time she’d seen Yeimicha. But by now it was an old wound, scabbed over. It no longer hurt so much to touch. “She broke up with me just before you kidnapped me, so it would have been hard going after that, I think. I still don’t know why she did that.”
“She didn’t tell you?” Qhoroali asked.
“She did, but…” Setsiana hesitated, wondering how well this story would translate. “She said she thought I was just a zwáhrévet. That I was just using her for help with the priestesses. I don’t know why.”
“Zwáhrévet?” Indeed, Qhoroali did not seem to recognize the word. Setsiana had given it in her old Vrelian, not knowing a translation in any other language. Maybe it hadn’t survived 250 years to have a translation in the 1912 variety, or maybe it was not known outside of the main branch’s temples.
“No, wait,” said Qhoroali. “I can figure it out from the roots, I know what the sound changes were. Zwá would become zuaa, that’s a wife. Hrévet… that’s hreive now. Oh, you don’t want to use that word to refer to a temple anymore, the best word in Vrelian now is niehla. Liselye’s mom would wash your mouth out with soap for hreive. Anyway, that makes it ‘temple wife’. What does that mean?”
“It’s like…” Setsiana suddenly realized that the whole idea might be totally foreign to someone who’d grown up in an Egalitarian temple, who had been raised two parents who were both part of the temple. “You can’t get married to a man when you’re in the priesthood. Not in the main branch. But no one wants to be alone forever, either. So a lot of the priestesses who would have married men if they hadn’t joined the priesthood get married to other priestesses instead, but a lot of the time, it’s a little fake.”
“Fake how?” Qhoroali frowned. “Just because they don’t have sex? Or is the romance not there, either?”
“I guess both,” said Setsiana. “I never really thought about the difference.” She paused for a moment, thoughtful. “Can you have a relationship that isn’t sexual, but still has romance?”
Qhoroali looked away, off into the middle distance somewhere. “I don’t know. I wish I knew.”
Setsiana looked at her for a minute, and then ventured, “What happened with you and Cyaru, anyway? You did say you would tell me when I told you about my last relationship, and, well, now I have.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Qhoroali put her chin in her hand, and then looked cautiously at Setsiana. “Well, alright. You said you wouldn’t ever marry a man. I… I don’t think gender really matters much to me, when it comes to that. Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t have sex with anyone, anyway.” She shook her head. “I can’t make myself do it. It doesn’t bear thinking about. But I did love him. I did. It wasn’t fake. But at the end of the day, no one really wants a relationship that doesn’t include sex. Sometimes people just aren’t compatible, and it isn’t anyone’s fault. And I don’t think I’m compatible with anyone.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Setsiana. “Not everyone needs, or necessarily event wants to have sex.”
“Oh, no,” said Qhoroali. “I’m pretty sure everyone does.”
“That’s obviously not true. For one thing, you don’t want to, so clearly not everyone does.”
Qhoroali smiled a sad smile. “‘Everyone’ has never been a category that included me.”
“I think it’s just like any other social activity you might do with a partner,” said Setsiana. “Like going out drinking, or watching plays. Some people will enjoy it, and other people won’t. I knew someone at my temple who didn’t like sex either, her name was Tyeraila. So you’re definitely not the only one. As for me… I don’t know. I don’t know if I really liked it as much as most of the juniors I knew seemed to, anyway, but maybe they were just playing it up.”
Qhoroali was looking at her curiously now. “But you’ll still sometimes look at someone, some woman, and think that you’d like to have sex with her, right?”
Setsiana thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t think so, not really. A lot of people say stuff like that, but I think it’s all just part of the courtship game. A way of showing that you’re interested in a relationship. It’s all just a lot of posturing, and I guess, playing to expectations. I don’t believe anyone’s really out there getting hot and bothered just because they looked at someone.”
Qhoroali looked amused, now. “Oh, they definitely are,” she said. “Look— I don’t get a lot of things that most people say and do, most people are pretty incomprehensible to me. So if I want to know if someone actually meant the outlandish thing they said, or if they were just saying it because it was somehow expected of them, or if they actually meant something entirely different, I’ll ask Li about it. She’s very good at understanding other people, and she has helped me out a lot. And she was very clear with me that other people absolutely do lust over people just because of seeing them. That she does that, too. That everyone does that.”
Setsiana frowned. “Are you sure she wasn’t just messing with you? From what I’ve seen of her, she loves messing with people.”
“She wouldn’t mess with me,” said Qhoroali. “I don’t know, Maybe you should talk to her about it, too. But just think about this for a minute.” She held her hands in front of her as if holding something out for demonstration. “You’ve had sex, right?”
“Well, once, yeah.”
“Right. Why did you do that?”
“Because… she was my girlfriend. It’s just what you do, when you’re dating someone. It’s how you get to the next stage of the relationship.”
“What if it wasn’t ‘just what you do’?” asked Qhoroali. “What if no one cared whether you did or not, and you could just get to whatever you see the next stage of the relationship being without it? What if she hadn’t cared? Would you still have had sex with her?”
Setsiana was silent for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe not. It was fun, but it was also work, you know? I’m not sure if it’s worth it, just in and of itself.”
“And you think everyone else feels that way, too?”
“How else would they feel?” Setsiana couldn’t see what the point of this was.
“A very long time ago, humans were a lot more like animals,” said Qhoroali. “I don’t mean during the time period where we visited Cusäfä. Before that. Hundreds of thousands of years before that. Don’t even want to think about time traveling back that far. They didn’t have marriage. They didn’t have girlfriends. They didn’t have any ‘just what you do’ — no human cultural traditions. If they hadn’t been naturally inclined to have sex without all of that stuff, do you think they would have even survived to eventually become us?”
“I don’t know,” said Setsiana. “I guess… I don’t know.”
Qhoroali shook her head, and laughed a bit. “All this time, I thought it was just me,” she said. “I thought it was part of my curse. Well, I guess maybe it is, at least partly. You don’t seem to mind having sex, at any rate. What about that other person you mentioned who did? Was she cursed this way, also?”
“Tyeraila?” said Setsiana. “No. Well, neither of you are cursed. But she didn’t have your disorder, if that’s what you mean. She loved loud noises and parties and understood other people quite well. She just didn’t like sex. There were some kids in the classes I taught that were like you, and I think I would have recognized it in her, too.”
“Huh,” said Qhoroali. “That’s interesting.” She seemed to think for a minute. “You said your girlfriend thought you weren’t really into her, right?”
“Yes,” said Setsiana, starting to get a sinking feeling.
“Maybe it was because you actually weren’t,” said Qhoroali. “I mean, not like— I believe you really loved her; I really loved Cyaru, too. But maybe that wasn’t enough for her, either. Maybe that wasn’t all she’d been hoping for.”
Setsiana sat there, rigidly, thinking back to the day Yeimicha had broken up with her. Was that really what it had been? Maybe…
She shook her head to clear it, and stood. “I… I don’t know,” she said, one final time, and then turned back towards her room. She wasn’t in the mood for any more conversation today.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Realgar #13: Express
Styles and Supplies: Silhouette, Life Drawing
Word Count: 1961
Rating: T
Warnings: Discussion of Sexuality and Sex
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.4.4.5
Summary: Setsiana and Qhoroali discuss past relationships.
Notes: One of the scenes that I always felt was a focal point of the story. The others are the abduction scene way back at the very beginning, and the third-to-last post, when I get there.
A week or so later, Qhoroali was sitting on her couch leafing through a book when Setsiana returned to the apartment. When Qhoroali saw Setsiana come in, she patted the seat next to her. “Come take a look at this with me.”
Setsiana obligingly sat next to her, as Qhoroali closed the book again, to show her the cover; it was the book she’d made of Setsiana’s papers. “I didn’t really write those, you know,” said Setsiana. “That’s from another timeline, where I stayed with the temple.”
“I know,” said Qhoroali. “But the ideas in here ultimately came from the same place as the things you’ve been telling me in this timeline, even if they are only distantly related. I thought maybe you would have more insight into them. I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, about whether there is a source of Time that isn’t Sapfita, and I realized I’ve never really looked into that, or thought about it before. But maybe there is something in here that I missed. If you had that thought in this timeline, maybe you had it in the other one, too.”
Setsiana humored her, and they went through the papers, one by one, discussing them, but by the time they were finished, it seemed clear that Qhoroali hadn’t missed anything in her first review of them, or at least not anything that Setsiana could see. It was interesting to see what she’d been studying as a full priestess, but it did nothing to shed any light on what they’d seen in the strange rip in reality that they’d entered a couple weeks ago.
“I always wondered why these were so unpopular,” Qhoroali mused. “There’s nothing really crazy-sounding in here, the logic and research is solid. But I guess it was probably because you were on their list, so they didn’t really trust you.”
“If they hadn’t trusted me, they wouldn’t have made me a full priestess in the first place,” said Setsiana. “I must have said or done something in that timeline to make them disregard it. I think it’s probably just because I got into the junior priestess prep program late, and didn’t make the right social connections. A big factor of success there really comes down to how well other people know and like you, I think. And how much you’re cited outside your own time period heavily depends on how popular your paper was when it was published.”
“Right,” said Qhoroali. “I remember you said your mother forbade you to join, for some silly reason or other.”
“She thought it would ruin my chances of marrying a man.” Setsiana scoffed. “I would never. It was always hard to make progress as a junior, because of that. Well, I guess— I guess probably that was at least partly to do with being on the list. For a while it was ok, because I had someone vouching for me to the full priestesses, we were sort of dating for a little while…” She faltered briefly, remembering the last time she’d seen Yeimicha. But by now it was an old wound, scabbed over. It no longer hurt so much to touch. “She broke up with me just before you kidnapped me, so it would have been hard going after that, I think. I still don’t know why she did that.”
“She didn’t tell you?” Qhoroali asked.
“She did, but…” Setsiana hesitated, wondering how well this story would translate. “She said she thought I was just a zwáhrévet. That I was just using her for help with the priestesses. I don’t know why.”
“Zwáhrévet?” Indeed, Qhoroali did not seem to recognize the word. Setsiana had given it in her old Vrelian, not knowing a translation in any other language. Maybe it hadn’t survived 250 years to have a translation in the 1912 variety, or maybe it was not known outside of the main branch’s temples.
“No, wait,” said Qhoroali. “I can figure it out from the roots, I know what the sound changes were. Zwá would become zuaa, that’s a wife. Hrévet… that’s hreive now. Oh, you don’t want to use that word to refer to a temple anymore, the best word in Vrelian now is niehla. Liselye’s mom would wash your mouth out with soap for hreive. Anyway, that makes it ‘temple wife’. What does that mean?”
“It’s like…” Setsiana suddenly realized that the whole idea might be totally foreign to someone who’d grown up in an Egalitarian temple, who had been raised two parents who were both part of the temple. “You can’t get married to a man when you’re in the priesthood. Not in the main branch. But no one wants to be alone forever, either. So a lot of the priestesses who would have married men if they hadn’t joined the priesthood get married to other priestesses instead, but a lot of the time, it’s a little fake.”
“Fake how?” Qhoroali frowned. “Just because they don’t have sex? Or is the romance not there, either?”
“I guess both,” said Setsiana. “I never really thought about the difference.” She paused for a moment, thoughtful. “Can you have a relationship that isn’t sexual, but still has romance?”
Qhoroali looked away, off into the middle distance somewhere. “I don’t know. I wish I knew.”
Setsiana looked at her for a minute, and then ventured, “What happened with you and Cyaru, anyway? You did say you would tell me when I told you about my last relationship, and, well, now I have.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Qhoroali put her chin in her hand, and then looked cautiously at Setsiana. “Well, alright. You said you wouldn’t ever marry a man. I… I don’t think gender really matters much to me, when it comes to that. Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t have sex with anyone, anyway.” She shook her head. “I can’t make myself do it. It doesn’t bear thinking about. But I did love him. I did. It wasn’t fake. But at the end of the day, no one really wants a relationship that doesn’t include sex. Sometimes people just aren’t compatible, and it isn’t anyone’s fault. And I don’t think I’m compatible with anyone.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Setsiana. “Not everyone needs, or necessarily event wants to have sex.”
“Oh, no,” said Qhoroali. “I’m pretty sure everyone does.”
“That’s obviously not true. For one thing, you don’t want to, so clearly not everyone does.”
Qhoroali smiled a sad smile. “‘Everyone’ has never been a category that included me.”
“I think it’s just like any other social activity you might do with a partner,” said Setsiana. “Like going out drinking, or watching plays. Some people will enjoy it, and other people won’t. I knew someone at my temple who didn’t like sex either, her name was Tyeraila. So you’re definitely not the only one. As for me… I don’t know. I don’t know if I really liked it as much as most of the juniors I knew seemed to, anyway, but maybe they were just playing it up.”
Qhoroali was looking at her curiously now. “But you’ll still sometimes look at someone, some woman, and think that you’d like to have sex with her, right?”
Setsiana thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t think so, not really. A lot of people say stuff like that, but I think it’s all just part of the courtship game. A way of showing that you’re interested in a relationship. It’s all just a lot of posturing, and I guess, playing to expectations. I don’t believe anyone’s really out there getting hot and bothered just because they looked at someone.”
Qhoroali looked amused, now. “Oh, they definitely are,” she said. “Look— I don’t get a lot of things that most people say and do, most people are pretty incomprehensible to me. So if I want to know if someone actually meant the outlandish thing they said, or if they were just saying it because it was somehow expected of them, or if they actually meant something entirely different, I’ll ask Li about it. She’s very good at understanding other people, and she has helped me out a lot. And she was very clear with me that other people absolutely do lust over people just because of seeing them. That she does that, too. That everyone does that.”
Setsiana frowned. “Are you sure she wasn’t just messing with you? From what I’ve seen of her, she loves messing with people.”
“She wouldn’t mess with me,” said Qhoroali. “I don’t know, Maybe you should talk to her about it, too. But just think about this for a minute.” She held her hands in front of her as if holding something out for demonstration. “You’ve had sex, right?”
“Well, once, yeah.”
“Right. Why did you do that?”
“Because… she was my girlfriend. It’s just what you do, when you’re dating someone. It’s how you get to the next stage of the relationship.”
“What if it wasn’t ‘just what you do’?” asked Qhoroali. “What if no one cared whether you did or not, and you could just get to whatever you see the next stage of the relationship being without it? What if she hadn’t cared? Would you still have had sex with her?”
Setsiana was silent for a minute. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe not. It was fun, but it was also work, you know? I’m not sure if it’s worth it, just in and of itself.”
“And you think everyone else feels that way, too?”
“How else would they feel?” Setsiana couldn’t see what the point of this was.
“A very long time ago, humans were a lot more like animals,” said Qhoroali. “I don’t mean during the time period where we visited Cusäfä. Before that. Hundreds of thousands of years before that. Don’t even want to think about time traveling back that far. They didn’t have marriage. They didn’t have girlfriends. They didn’t have any ‘just what you do’ — no human cultural traditions. If they hadn’t been naturally inclined to have sex without all of that stuff, do you think they would have even survived to eventually become us?”
“I don’t know,” said Setsiana. “I guess… I don’t know.”
Qhoroali shook her head, and laughed a bit. “All this time, I thought it was just me,” she said. “I thought it was part of my curse. Well, I guess maybe it is, at least partly. You don’t seem to mind having sex, at any rate. What about that other person you mentioned who did? Was she cursed this way, also?”
“Tyeraila?” said Setsiana. “No. Well, neither of you are cursed. But she didn’t have your disorder, if that’s what you mean. She loved loud noises and parties and understood other people quite well. She just didn’t like sex. There were some kids in the classes I taught that were like you, and I think I would have recognized it in her, too.”
“Huh,” said Qhoroali. “That’s interesting.” She seemed to think for a minute. “You said your girlfriend thought you weren’t really into her, right?”
“Yes,” said Setsiana, starting to get a sinking feeling.
“Maybe it was because you actually weren’t,” said Qhoroali. “I mean, not like— I believe you really loved her; I really loved Cyaru, too. But maybe that wasn’t enough for her, either. Maybe that wasn’t all she’d been hoping for.”
Setsiana sat there, rigidly, thinking back to the day Yeimicha had broken up with her. Was that really what it had been? Maybe…
She shook her head to clear it, and stood. “I… I don’t know,” she said, one final time, and then turned back towards her room. She wasn’t in the mood for any more conversation today.