shadowsong26 (
shadowsong26) wrote in
rainbowfic2013-08-12 04:40 pm
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Summertime Blues #1
Name: shadowsong26
Story: Guilt
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Summertime Blues #1. L'esprit de l'escalier
Supplies and Materials: graffiti (Midsummer Night's Dream; lint roller: Kat's question: Fera: if you could change one decision that you've made, what would it be, and how would you change it?), photography, frame, oils, feathers, chalk, seed beads, novelty beads, beading wire, glitter ("Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them." – Robert Henri), glue (“...it's about the power of change that manifests when you are connected with your emotions and have the courage to honestly reveal them to those you love.”)
Word Count: 533
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Fera
Warnings: References to war, genocide, and character death
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always.
My family looks at me strangely, since I’ve come home a widow.
They tiptoe around me, as if afraid I’ll shatter into pieces if they try to discuss any issue of importance. I wish…I wish they’d just get it over with, the questioning, so I can go on with my life, such as it is.
They rarely came to court. My mother, in particular, I think feels my failure to produce a child reflects poorly on her. And my father always hated the city, and my brother and sister had their own lives—still do. My sister’s husband is envoy to Ketarre, and my brother-in-law has not recalled him.
My brother is home, from time to time, with his wife and their small children, that make me ache a little inside for what might have been, but I’m used to that little ache, and to hiding it from any who look.
Sometimes…
I don’t regret my marriage. My husband was…he was flawed, in ways I couldn’t see when I was living in the palace, deeply in love with a man who cared…I won’t say he cared nothing for me, because he did care, in his way. But I couldn’t see the rifts in him when we were together. And I still don’t regret my years with him. I still love him, despite all of it.
Were he alive now, and I had somehow managed to come to this understanding without his death, I don’t know that I would go back to him, but I don’t regret marrying him.
And I don’t regret leaving court. And I don’t…
What I regret, if I regret anything, is the way I blamed myself for all the faults in my marriage. If I didn’t have a child, it was because I wasn’t pretty enough, or didn’t want one enough, or didn’t please my husband enough. As much as my barrenness has hurt me, the guilt over it hurt me twice as much.
I regret the guilt.
I regret, sometimes, my silence on the terrible things I knew happened. But by the time they were happening, I had withdrawn so far that there was nothing I could do.
If I could feel it differently, if I could go back to my marriage and recognize that my husband’s natural cold indifference was something outside my control, and at least as much to blame for our lack of a child as any fault on my part…
Maybe, if I wasn’t so burdened by regret, I could have found a more prominent place as Queen. And maybe then I would not have survived the end of the War, or speaking out against the thorns in the heart of my beloved. Or maybe the confidence born by the lack of guilt would have made him love me more, and I would have come around to his mind. I don’t know.
Either way, I think…
I don’t regret much in my life, when all is said and done. But I do regret the guilt.
Story: Guilt
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Summertime Blues #1. L'esprit de l'escalier
Supplies and Materials: graffiti (Midsummer Night's Dream; lint roller: Kat's question: Fera: if you could change one decision that you've made, what would it be, and how would you change it?), photography, frame, oils, feathers, chalk, seed beads, novelty beads, beading wire, glitter ("Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them." – Robert Henri), glue (“...it's about the power of change that manifests when you are connected with your emotions and have the courage to honestly reveal them to those you love.”)
Word Count: 533
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Fera
Warnings: References to war, genocide, and character death
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always.
My family looks at me strangely, since I’ve come home a widow.
They tiptoe around me, as if afraid I’ll shatter into pieces if they try to discuss any issue of importance. I wish…I wish they’d just get it over with, the questioning, so I can go on with my life, such as it is.
They rarely came to court. My mother, in particular, I think feels my failure to produce a child reflects poorly on her. And my father always hated the city, and my brother and sister had their own lives—still do. My sister’s husband is envoy to Ketarre, and my brother-in-law has not recalled him.
My brother is home, from time to time, with his wife and their small children, that make me ache a little inside for what might have been, but I’m used to that little ache, and to hiding it from any who look.
Sometimes…
I don’t regret my marriage. My husband was…he was flawed, in ways I couldn’t see when I was living in the palace, deeply in love with a man who cared…I won’t say he cared nothing for me, because he did care, in his way. But I couldn’t see the rifts in him when we were together. And I still don’t regret my years with him. I still love him, despite all of it.
Were he alive now, and I had somehow managed to come to this understanding without his death, I don’t know that I would go back to him, but I don’t regret marrying him.
And I don’t regret leaving court. And I don’t…
What I regret, if I regret anything, is the way I blamed myself for all the faults in my marriage. If I didn’t have a child, it was because I wasn’t pretty enough, or didn’t want one enough, or didn’t please my husband enough. As much as my barrenness has hurt me, the guilt over it hurt me twice as much.
I regret the guilt.
I regret, sometimes, my silence on the terrible things I knew happened. But by the time they were happening, I had withdrawn so far that there was nothing I could do.
If I could feel it differently, if I could go back to my marriage and recognize that my husband’s natural cold indifference was something outside my control, and at least as much to blame for our lack of a child as any fault on my part…
Maybe, if I wasn’t so burdened by regret, I could have found a more prominent place as Queen. And maybe then I would not have survived the end of the War, or speaking out against the thorns in the heart of my beloved. Or maybe the confidence born by the lack of guilt would have made him love me more, and I would have come around to his mind. I don’t know.
Either way, I think…
I don’t regret much in my life, when all is said and done. But I do regret the guilt.
no subject
Good job.
no subject
Yeah, pretty much.