kay_brooke (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kay_brooke) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2012-05-03 12:07 pm
kay_brooke) wrote in rainbowfic2012-05-03 12:07 pm
Alice Blue #3, Brown #10, Burnt Umber #18
Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Alice Blue #3 (I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then), Brown #10 (brown note), Burnt Umber #18 (Big Salmon Range)
Styles/Supplies: Frame, Seed Beads
Word Count: 1,963
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Summary: Karina asks the question Cheyti has been dreading.
Notes: Still playing around with characterization for these two, so may not be entirely in line with earlier pieces. Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.
"May I ask you something?"
Cheyti turned to see her daughter standing somberly in the door of her chambers. She clutched a book in one hand, and the other was curled into a loose fist. Her head was cocked slightly in the way that she did when she wanted to be taken seriously. Cheyti sighed. Karina, twelve years old and already too mature for her age, too self-serious and humorless. Even as a baby she hadn't laughed much, and as soon as she was old enough she had practically disappeared into the library, only emerging when her mother made her or when she had a question she needed answered.
She was smart, frighteningly smart. Gyeth said she was going to do great things someday. Cheyti just wished her daughter would take the time to be a child first.
Cheyti knew better than to humor her, because Karina always knew and it upset her. So she turned to fully face her daughter and said, "Of course you may. What would you like to know?"
"I know very little about the people you come from," Karina began, and Cheyti felt her lips tighten into a hard line. She had wondered when she would have this conversation with her daughter. Given Karina's precocious nature, she was surprised it hadn't happened already. Or perhaps Karina had tried to answer all her questions through books first, only turning to Cheyti when she couldn't find what she was looking for. Yes, that sounded more like Karina. Cheyti steeled herself for the inevitable questions.
"There are very few books in the library that even mention the Wyrtessians," said Karina. "Most of them confuse the Wyrtessians with the Cottocks and call you all barbarians. There is only one book that doesn't." She waved the book in her hand. "But it only devotes a single paragraph to your existence, only saying something vague about the Wyrtessians being an offshoot of the original Nikolean settlers. Is that true? Do you know more about it?"
Maybe she could dissuade her daughter from the dreaded topic. "Why do you want to know?" Cheyti asked gently.
Karina frowned at her. "You're Wyrtessian. I'm half-Wyrtessian. I want to know where I come from."
"You're Ceenta Voweiian, sweetheart," said Cheyti, her voice low and quiet, designed to placate. It was true. Daughter of the Emperor, even if she wasn't next in line for the throne, Karina was as Ceenta Voweiian as it was possible to be.
"By nationality," Karina corrected. "By birthplace, perhaps. But I have Wyrtessian blood."
"You also have salkiy blood," said Cheyti, a little more firmly. If her daughter wanted to speak like an adult, then she should be spoken to like an adult. She needed to understand that there were things she shouldn't ask about, and that they were indirect ways other people used to try to tell her she was asking something that shouldn't be asked.
"Not as much as Wyrtessian," Karina countered. "Besides, there are several books in the library all about salkiys, though I've determined several of them are inaccurate."
Cheyti blinked, wondering at her child for the thousandth time. How could she and Gyeth produced such a joyless scholar? It was as if Karina had inherited all of their off-putting traits and none of their good ones.
"So I want to know," Karina finished in a rush, and for a moment she almost sounded her age.
"I can't tell you," said Cheyti softly.
"Why not?"
"Because . . ." Cheyti didn't know what to say. What could she say to this child, for whom learning and books and information was her whole life? How could she explain to such a person that among Wyrtessians knowledge was secret and had to be earned? How could she tell her own daughter that she recoiled from the very idea of freely offering knowledge about her own people to an outsider? "Because it's not my place."
Karina furrowed her brow in confusion. "You are the only Wyrtessian I know. Whose place is it?"
"It's no one's place until the Elders determine it to be so," said Cheyti.
"There are no Elders here," Karina pointed out. She knew a little about how Wyrtessian society functioned, from the few things Cheyti had mentioned over the years. "They have no say."
"Which is why it's even more impossible to tell you the stories," said Cheyti. "The Elders were specifically chosen to be the bearers of the collective knowledge of our people. Only they can determine who to give it to, and when. The rest of us are not to speak of such things outside the boundaries of Rednor."
Karina stared, her head cocked even further sideways, her eyes clouded with incomprehension. Cheyti gave another internal sigh. She didn't know how to explain what she meant.
"The Elders won't know," Karina finally said, slowly, as if she was afraid her words would make her mother angry.
And Cheyti did have to bite back a sharp retort, reminding herself at the last minute that Karina couldn't be blamed for not understanding a people she had never experienced and had no way to learn about. "Perhaps not," she said instead. "But I'll know, and that knowledge will gnaw at my mind until I'm mad with it."
"But why?" Now Karina sounded distressed, and Cheyti wished more than anything there was some magical way to make her daughter understand.
"Because it's wrong," said Cheyti. "I can't betray my people like that, even if none of them ever find out about it."
"I just want to know about the history." Karina was starting to sound shrill, her voice raising to typical twelve-year-old girl levels. "You don't have to tell me about any secrets or rituals."
Cheyti waved a hand in the air helplessly. "But it's all ritual. Every breath, everything we put into our body, every word we exchange with another person, every event we witness and learn about. Everything we do from the moment we wake to the moment we go to sleep. Beyond that, even. Our dreams are sacred. Everything is part of the divine ritual of life, and rituals are not something to be spoken of unless explicit permission is given. They can't be explained, only experienced and understood, and only an elder can know if someone is able and deserving of that understanding."
During Cheyti's little speech Karina had clutched her book tighter and tighter to her chest, and the rims of her eyes turned red as if she was struggling to keep back tears. "But that doesn't make sense."
"You don't have that understanding." Cheyti's heart ached to see how baffled her daughter was, but she should have expected this. She had given up her own identity for political reasons, and though she didn't regret her decision, she regretted that Karina would spend her whole life with only half an identity. Cheyti had adopted a new one, but Karina had yet to understand that she must do the same, that she must give up her curiosity about her mother's people as surely as her mother had given up her right to be called one of them.
"But . . ." For once Karina was struggling to find her words. She had started talking at a late age, nearly two before she said her first words, but she had skipped past normal babyish babble and right to coherent word combinations. She'd only grown more sophisticated and confident since then, but now she seemed too flustered and confused to say what she wanted to say. "According to you, aren't we participating in a divine ritual right now? Just by standing here and talking and breathing?"
Cheyti nodded. "We are."
"Then shouldn't I understand the ritual before I take part in it?"
Cheyti smiled despite herself. Karina, always so somberly logical. "There's a difference between doing and understanding."
"But you shouldn't take part in rituals without understanding them," Karina argued. "That's wrong, isn't it?"
"Here, perhaps," said Cheyti. "Here the rituals are different. They're separate from our normal activities. But no one can fully understand the ritual of life, not even the Elders. They can only see glimpses of the truth, single pieces at a time and never the whole."
"But we are here," said Karina. "So you're allowed to talk about your rituals, right?"
"Wyrtessian customs are above all others," said Cheyti.
Karina glowered at her. "I don't think Father would agree."
"He's not part of this conversation," said Cheyti. "Besides, I am no longer a Wyrtessian. I gave away my heritage when I married into the outside world. Therefore I have lost all knowledge of Wyrtessian rituals." That was a massive simplification, but it seemed straightforward enough for a young girl to understand.
Karina, though, was stubbornly literal. "You have not. You didn't lose your memories just because you married Father."
"No, not really, but I must live as if I have," said Cheyti, reaching for a quill and ink. She hoped the gesture would signal to Karina that it was time to leave her alone to get work done. "To do otherwise would be a betrayal."
"If you're not Wyrtessian, then you can't betray them," said Karina.
"If I'm not Wyrtessian, then I don't have their knowledge," Cheyti countered. "As outsiders are not given it."
"But you were given it!" Tears of frustration slipped down Karina's cheeks, and she actually stomped her foot a little, like a normal girl on the verge of a tantrum. "If you're not Wyrtessian you can't claim that you're beholden to their beliefs, and if you are Wyrtessian you can't claim to have no knowledge of their beliefs!"
Cheyti turned away and closed her eyes. "Please, Karina, I have tried to explain to you why I cannot speak about this with you. This is one thing you cannot learn about."
"But--"
"There are so many other things to learn about, more than you could read in a lifetime," said Cheyti. "Please don't ask me about this again."
Silence fell over the room, and just when Cheyti had thought Karina had left, her daughter spoke up, softly and carefully, "What if I talked to an Elder? Would an Elder be able to explain more to me? If they determined I was worthy of knowing?"
"I can't say what the Elders would determine," said Cheyti, turning back around. Karina was holding herself unnaturally still, even for her, listening as hard as possible to Cheyti's words. "But it's unlikely. They don't speak of such things to outsiders."
"What if I became one of them?" asked Karina.
Cheyti drew in a sharp breath. "Why would you want to do that?"
Karina shrugged. "I don't know. To find out more about them."
Cheyti shook her head. "You can't become Wyrtessian just to satisfy your curiosity. You must believe, and if you don't you will always be an outsider."
"But I can try," said Karina. "When I'm older, I can try. I don't need to stay in Ceenta Vowei. I'm not an heir."
She was, technically, but only third in line after Kyla's two children. She was right that she would most likely never come close to ruling Ceenta Vowei, and even if somehow the first two heirs didn't live to see the throne, it was unlikely the High Council would allow a lone woman to rule the entire empire.
Cheyti was tired of arguing, so she merely said, "Perhaps one day. When you're older."
Karina set her mouth in a hard line, gave a brief nod, and left without another word.
Cheyti sighed, put down the quill she had been holding uselessly since she picked it up, and stared out the window, at the big tree right outside, its spring blossoms open and wide and facing the suns.
kay_brookeStory: The Myrrosta
Colors: Alice Blue #3 (I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then), Brown #10 (brown note), Burnt Umber #18 (Big Salmon Range)
Styles/Supplies: Frame, Seed Beads
Word Count: 1,963
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Summary: Karina asks the question Cheyti has been dreading.
Notes: Still playing around with characterization for these two, so may not be entirely in line with earlier pieces. Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.
"May I ask you something?"
Cheyti turned to see her daughter standing somberly in the door of her chambers. She clutched a book in one hand, and the other was curled into a loose fist. Her head was cocked slightly in the way that she did when she wanted to be taken seriously. Cheyti sighed. Karina, twelve years old and already too mature for her age, too self-serious and humorless. Even as a baby she hadn't laughed much, and as soon as she was old enough she had practically disappeared into the library, only emerging when her mother made her or when she had a question she needed answered.
She was smart, frighteningly smart. Gyeth said she was going to do great things someday. Cheyti just wished her daughter would take the time to be a child first.
Cheyti knew better than to humor her, because Karina always knew and it upset her. So she turned to fully face her daughter and said, "Of course you may. What would you like to know?"
"I know very little about the people you come from," Karina began, and Cheyti felt her lips tighten into a hard line. She had wondered when she would have this conversation with her daughter. Given Karina's precocious nature, she was surprised it hadn't happened already. Or perhaps Karina had tried to answer all her questions through books first, only turning to Cheyti when she couldn't find what she was looking for. Yes, that sounded more like Karina. Cheyti steeled herself for the inevitable questions.
"There are very few books in the library that even mention the Wyrtessians," said Karina. "Most of them confuse the Wyrtessians with the Cottocks and call you all barbarians. There is only one book that doesn't." She waved the book in her hand. "But it only devotes a single paragraph to your existence, only saying something vague about the Wyrtessians being an offshoot of the original Nikolean settlers. Is that true? Do you know more about it?"
Maybe she could dissuade her daughter from the dreaded topic. "Why do you want to know?" Cheyti asked gently.
Karina frowned at her. "You're Wyrtessian. I'm half-Wyrtessian. I want to know where I come from."
"You're Ceenta Voweiian, sweetheart," said Cheyti, her voice low and quiet, designed to placate. It was true. Daughter of the Emperor, even if she wasn't next in line for the throne, Karina was as Ceenta Voweiian as it was possible to be.
"By nationality," Karina corrected. "By birthplace, perhaps. But I have Wyrtessian blood."
"You also have salkiy blood," said Cheyti, a little more firmly. If her daughter wanted to speak like an adult, then she should be spoken to like an adult. She needed to understand that there were things she shouldn't ask about, and that they were indirect ways other people used to try to tell her she was asking something that shouldn't be asked.
"Not as much as Wyrtessian," Karina countered. "Besides, there are several books in the library all about salkiys, though I've determined several of them are inaccurate."
Cheyti blinked, wondering at her child for the thousandth time. How could she and Gyeth produced such a joyless scholar? It was as if Karina had inherited all of their off-putting traits and none of their good ones.
"So I want to know," Karina finished in a rush, and for a moment she almost sounded her age.
"I can't tell you," said Cheyti softly.
"Why not?"
"Because . . ." Cheyti didn't know what to say. What could she say to this child, for whom learning and books and information was her whole life? How could she explain to such a person that among Wyrtessians knowledge was secret and had to be earned? How could she tell her own daughter that she recoiled from the very idea of freely offering knowledge about her own people to an outsider? "Because it's not my place."
Karina furrowed her brow in confusion. "You are the only Wyrtessian I know. Whose place is it?"
"It's no one's place until the Elders determine it to be so," said Cheyti.
"There are no Elders here," Karina pointed out. She knew a little about how Wyrtessian society functioned, from the few things Cheyti had mentioned over the years. "They have no say."
"Which is why it's even more impossible to tell you the stories," said Cheyti. "The Elders were specifically chosen to be the bearers of the collective knowledge of our people. Only they can determine who to give it to, and when. The rest of us are not to speak of such things outside the boundaries of Rednor."
Karina stared, her head cocked even further sideways, her eyes clouded with incomprehension. Cheyti gave another internal sigh. She didn't know how to explain what she meant.
"The Elders won't know," Karina finally said, slowly, as if she was afraid her words would make her mother angry.
And Cheyti did have to bite back a sharp retort, reminding herself at the last minute that Karina couldn't be blamed for not understanding a people she had never experienced and had no way to learn about. "Perhaps not," she said instead. "But I'll know, and that knowledge will gnaw at my mind until I'm mad with it."
"But why?" Now Karina sounded distressed, and Cheyti wished more than anything there was some magical way to make her daughter understand.
"Because it's wrong," said Cheyti. "I can't betray my people like that, even if none of them ever find out about it."
"I just want to know about the history." Karina was starting to sound shrill, her voice raising to typical twelve-year-old girl levels. "You don't have to tell me about any secrets or rituals."
Cheyti waved a hand in the air helplessly. "But it's all ritual. Every breath, everything we put into our body, every word we exchange with another person, every event we witness and learn about. Everything we do from the moment we wake to the moment we go to sleep. Beyond that, even. Our dreams are sacred. Everything is part of the divine ritual of life, and rituals are not something to be spoken of unless explicit permission is given. They can't be explained, only experienced and understood, and only an elder can know if someone is able and deserving of that understanding."
During Cheyti's little speech Karina had clutched her book tighter and tighter to her chest, and the rims of her eyes turned red as if she was struggling to keep back tears. "But that doesn't make sense."
"You don't have that understanding." Cheyti's heart ached to see how baffled her daughter was, but she should have expected this. She had given up her own identity for political reasons, and though she didn't regret her decision, she regretted that Karina would spend her whole life with only half an identity. Cheyti had adopted a new one, but Karina had yet to understand that she must do the same, that she must give up her curiosity about her mother's people as surely as her mother had given up her right to be called one of them.
"But . . ." For once Karina was struggling to find her words. She had started talking at a late age, nearly two before she said her first words, but she had skipped past normal babyish babble and right to coherent word combinations. She'd only grown more sophisticated and confident since then, but now she seemed too flustered and confused to say what she wanted to say. "According to you, aren't we participating in a divine ritual right now? Just by standing here and talking and breathing?"
Cheyti nodded. "We are."
"Then shouldn't I understand the ritual before I take part in it?"
Cheyti smiled despite herself. Karina, always so somberly logical. "There's a difference between doing and understanding."
"But you shouldn't take part in rituals without understanding them," Karina argued. "That's wrong, isn't it?"
"Here, perhaps," said Cheyti. "Here the rituals are different. They're separate from our normal activities. But no one can fully understand the ritual of life, not even the Elders. They can only see glimpses of the truth, single pieces at a time and never the whole."
"But we are here," said Karina. "So you're allowed to talk about your rituals, right?"
"Wyrtessian customs are above all others," said Cheyti.
Karina glowered at her. "I don't think Father would agree."
"He's not part of this conversation," said Cheyti. "Besides, I am no longer a Wyrtessian. I gave away my heritage when I married into the outside world. Therefore I have lost all knowledge of Wyrtessian rituals." That was a massive simplification, but it seemed straightforward enough for a young girl to understand.
Karina, though, was stubbornly literal. "You have not. You didn't lose your memories just because you married Father."
"No, not really, but I must live as if I have," said Cheyti, reaching for a quill and ink. She hoped the gesture would signal to Karina that it was time to leave her alone to get work done. "To do otherwise would be a betrayal."
"If you're not Wyrtessian, then you can't betray them," said Karina.
"If I'm not Wyrtessian, then I don't have their knowledge," Cheyti countered. "As outsiders are not given it."
"But you were given it!" Tears of frustration slipped down Karina's cheeks, and she actually stomped her foot a little, like a normal girl on the verge of a tantrum. "If you're not Wyrtessian you can't claim that you're beholden to their beliefs, and if you are Wyrtessian you can't claim to have no knowledge of their beliefs!"
Cheyti turned away and closed her eyes. "Please, Karina, I have tried to explain to you why I cannot speak about this with you. This is one thing you cannot learn about."
"But--"
"There are so many other things to learn about, more than you could read in a lifetime," said Cheyti. "Please don't ask me about this again."
Silence fell over the room, and just when Cheyti had thought Karina had left, her daughter spoke up, softly and carefully, "What if I talked to an Elder? Would an Elder be able to explain more to me? If they determined I was worthy of knowing?"
"I can't say what the Elders would determine," said Cheyti, turning back around. Karina was holding herself unnaturally still, even for her, listening as hard as possible to Cheyti's words. "But it's unlikely. They don't speak of such things to outsiders."
"What if I became one of them?" asked Karina.
Cheyti drew in a sharp breath. "Why would you want to do that?"
Karina shrugged. "I don't know. To find out more about them."
Cheyti shook her head. "You can't become Wyrtessian just to satisfy your curiosity. You must believe, and if you don't you will always be an outsider."
"But I can try," said Karina. "When I'm older, I can try. I don't need to stay in Ceenta Vowei. I'm not an heir."
She was, technically, but only third in line after Kyla's two children. She was right that she would most likely never come close to ruling Ceenta Vowei, and even if somehow the first two heirs didn't live to see the throne, it was unlikely the High Council would allow a lone woman to rule the entire empire.
Cheyti was tired of arguing, so she merely said, "Perhaps one day. When you're older."
Karina set her mouth in a hard line, gave a brief nod, and left without another word.
Cheyti sighed, put down the quill she had been holding uselessly since she picked it up, and stared out the window, at the big tree right outside, its spring blossoms open and wide and facing the suns.
no subject
I also like what you've done with Cheyti here: I can see her struggling in her answers to Karina as to why she can't really answer her questions, especially since she was a scholar herself.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Thank you for reading!
no subject
Great job.
no subject
Thank you for reading!
no subject
no subject
Thank you for reading!
no subject
no subject