imeeji; registry
May. 30th, 2036 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forgottenmercy
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forgottenmercyforgottenmercy
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Persephone
persephone sets the record straight
of course i ate those seeds.
who wouldn't exchange
one hell for another?
who wouldn't exchange
one hell for another?
Style Credit
- Style: Nadeshiko for ColorSide by branchandroot
- Resources: Stock.XCHNG
Memory #1. (cw: domestic abuse, abusive romantic relationships)
Date: 2018-06-25 04:24 am (UTC)You try, really you do, over the several months you spend with him, but it’s hard and it’s lonely: he doesn’t let you go out, really, or talk to anyone else unless he’s there, not even the servants. You try to do what he wants, at least at first, but it’s hard and you’re lonely, so behind his back you talk to people. Occasionally one of the servants, or one of his lieutenants, someone young and lively and handsome: you’re not flirting with them, only talking, but he doesn’t see it that way, he gets angry at you and restricts what you can do, where you can go, even more, fires the servants and replaces them and sends his lieutenants...somewhere else.
You were isolated before, and now are even more so, but you are patient. Waiting. It can’t last forever - and it doesn’t. He comes home drunk, and angry, and there’s an argument: usually he yells and you listen, you listen and you promise and maybe you cry, but this time, you speak. Trying to placate him, but there’s something beneath your soft words (something carefully calculated, you know), so the more you speak, even as you’re trying to appease him, something snaps.
He draws his sword: if he can’t have you - because he knows that you are going to leave him, no matter what you say with all your pretty words - then no one can but the Maiden of Endings. You can’t run in your kimono, at least not fast, and though you’re backing up, you can’t possibly get away from him, not when you’ve backed up against a wall -
But when he tries to stab you, you catch his sword in your fan, close it up on it, catching him off-balance - and twist it out of his hand, use his weight and height against him to pull him off his feet. And then you stab him with his own sword before he can recover and take it from you, watch him slump to the ground at your feet.
His lips move, as if to say something, before he dies. Maybe it’s your name. Maybe it’s not. You don’t know.
Minor detail note: in this memory, he's wearing his kimono wrong, right over left. Given everything else happening here it might escape notice, but it's definitely A Thing.
Memory #2
Date: 2018-07-19 06:59 am (UTC)You could have bathed at the village bathhouse, instead of in a forest stream, but you prefer the peace and quiet, here among the trees and deep green solitude. You've spent so much of your life alone among people - held sacred and apart - that you've come to prefer quiet and solitude. It's nice: not isolation, but you just like having a space with your thoughts to yourself, where you can just be ----- for a moment and not the speaker to the gods, not the sacred maiden.
You don't notice that you're not alone, nor do you hear the steady measured footsteps, because you're so busy trying to wash your very long hair and lost in your own thoughts until he's so close that he could reach out and touch you. You look up and he's standing there, watching you, mostly a stranger but vaguely familiar. Very tall - he's easily a foot taller than you, and he looms without even trying - and broad, older, long pale hair tied neatly back, and in the sudden burst of panic you can't place his face for a moment.
(You are very conscious of his eyes on you, even with the heavy length of your ankle-length hair in the way.)
And then he speaks, and you remember who he is: -------, the area administrator over your village and this part of his lord's domain. He speaks very much like his physical presence: casually demanding, someone who is very aware of his power. He turns his back on you, lets you get dressed, even as your shaking hands have trouble with the layers of your ritual clothes. Escorts you back to the shrine: you walk with him in silence, and the only words you say to him are a polite thank him as you bow, very properly, when you arrive.
He's watching you again as you walk away, but you try not to think about it.
Note: Persephone has black hair in this memory, not white.
Memory #3
Date: 2018-08-21 03:51 am (UTC)(Not just because you’re both alive: you’re both beautiful and stand out even more.)
“...no, I don’t want to know who you were before, dear.” she says, patronizing. “That doesn’t matter anymore. Who are you now?”
You tell her your title, that you’ve chosen for yourself, and she smiles, though her smile isn’t any less patronizing. You know you’re being patronized, and resent it, but you should play along for now.
“The Betrayed Bride Veiled In Forgotten Mercy.” she repeats, and looks you up and down. Weighed, assessing, and your stillness doesn’t break. “Bride, for short, then. You can call me Flower, darling: Serpent-Twined Graveflower is just so formal.”
She picks up a drink menu and peruses it, before she gets up, tossing it down, and saunters in the direction of a random man. “Talking is such thirsty work. I’ll have a drink before we go on: you can do as you like.”
You have no money, or at least none besides your own blood - and you’re aware that this, in it’s own way, is a test, to see whether you’re worth her time. You smile, gently, and look up, glancing demurely at one of the ghost men who was staring most intently at you: dead men are much the same as living ones, after all, and there are always those who like the fragile and the vulnerable.
(like your husband, and slow-burning rage kindles in your heart thinking about him.)
You let him come to you, and flirt with him for a few minutes, delicately and demurely. Let him make the first move, and the second, and the third, while you answer him sweet and shy, let him buy you an expensive drink, giggle at his terrible jokes, let him tell you about his life. You don’t know much about bars, but you saw the prices on the menu over Flower’s shoulder: what he bought you was expensive.
It looks sugary and cute and not like much: you take a sip, and it has much more alcohol than you expected. He’s trying to get you drunk, you realize, but you know how to nurse a drink. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Flower, grabbing the collar of some random ghost man, and her eyes glow for a brief moment with Essence. You don’t approve, though there’s no use in saying anything: you got what you want without using mind control Charms, though it took a little more effort.
“Buy my drinks.” she orders, and lets him go, sauntering back towards your table, and her target is already fumbling for his coin purse. She stops by the bar before coming back with a midnight-blue, over-elaborate layered drink that perfectly matches her dress.
The man you’ve been talking to makes his escape as she returns, clearly not wanting to deal with her while talking to you, but not before he asks and you assure him that you might be free later, and let him grasp your wrist as you say that.
“Good work, darling. I knew you had it in you.” she says, sitting down with her first drink, like an over-satisfied cat. “Now, do you have any questions for me, now that we have drinks?”
You ask the question that you’ve had since before you walked into this bar with her, since you met her, and she leans back for a moment.
“What are you?” she asks, sipping her drink. “Darling, who knows. I am a deathknight: I serve a deathlord. Who knows what you are.”
note: Persephone has white hair in this memory. Also he's wearing this very lovely, kind of fanservicey kimono but he's also wearing it right over left, aka "like how you dress the dead". Both he and Flower have some kind of funeral touches to their outfits: they also could probably both be mistaken for ridiculously hot prostitutes. two Appearance 5 Abyssals walk into a bar...
Memory #4 (NSFW, cws:agegap, uneven power dynamics, consent issues in narration)
Date: 2018-09-02 04:01 am (UTC)(Both of you are, properly, wearing blue, though he is wearing midnight blue, proper for his station, and you are wearing the clear sapphire blue of a concubine, with the entire nape of your neck revealed.)
You try not to show that you are nervous, your eyes demurely downcast, but you are nervous. You knew before you married him that Miura Hiroto is not a patient man: you know what is expected of you, what your duty as a concubine is, to be available to him whenever he wants. He wanted you for your beauty and married you for his comfort and his pleasure, not yours. And eventually, he’ll want more than just poetry and alcohol.
(You went from being a sheltered, sworn virgin, to married and a concubine. You don’t know how to please him. What to do.)
And eventually, he turns his cup over, so you can’t refill it, and stands up. Commands you to come with him, and when you don’t move quite fast enough to suit him, not used to how to move in a concubine’s kimono rather than the ritual garments you wore as a shrine maiden, he easily pulls you to your feet, like you’re a doll. Doesn’t care how you dropped the book you were reading to him, doesn’t give you a chance to pick it up, just brings you to his bedroom, slides the screen closed behind you both.
You don’t expect him to be gentle, and he isn’t. Not when he pulls the ribbon out of your very long hair, to let it fall loose around you: not when he undresses you and binds your wrists with your own sash, not when he kisses you breathless. You don’t know what you’re doing when he has you kneel and try to pleasure him with your mouth and he’s forceful, even though you don’t know what you’re doing, even when you choke on him. But you don’t mind: something in you likes this, though you’ve never had opportunity or reason to consider what you would like in sex before.
He is not gentle, either, when he finally has you, rough and relentless and primarily concerned with his own pleasure, which you had expected. But you like this, too, which you didn’t expect, and he knows how to get your body to respond, to have your pleasure, too, after he’s had his, after he’s satisfied, and you are so very, very silent, just a gasp barely more than a breath.
Afterwards, he unties your wrists and lies next to you, arm thrown possessively over your waist. Tomorrow, you’ll have to start learning how to please him, and there’s a lot you’ll have to learn, especially because before tonight you had utterly no experience, but he’s pleased anyway. Especially because there’s one lesson you don’t have to learn, that he’s had to teach past lovers - that you aren’t the one who decides how or when your body finds its pleasure.
notes:
Persephone's hair is black in this memory, not white.
His husband is the same really tall, pale-haired man who was in Persephone's second memory, the local area administrator.
Memory #5
Date: 2018-09-17 06:46 am (UTC)(Mother is only a little taller than you would be when you’re older, a delicate doll-like woman with her long black hair in widow’s braids. But as a child, she is tall and all-knowing and all you know, when your other mother died of a fever one winter when you were too young to remember her beyond vague impressions.)
“Don’t be afraid, sweetling.” she murmurs, her hands gentle and sure as she runs her treasured enameled hairbrush through your hair. The light of her oil lamp bounces off the walls of her small bedroom, paper screen closed so that your older sisters won’t come in without leave. “The gods won’t reject you.”
You are still nervous, anyway, because even as young as you are, you know how much depends on this. How much depends on you. How well you can channel devotion, how well you can channel prayers.
“The gods can be fickle, especially those in heaven, though those on earth as well.” she murmurs, briefly setting down her hairbrush to wrap her arms around you. Private affection, when decorum demands that she is reserved in public. “But local gods, our gods, often love their people, who they live among. Whose devotion sustains them. Some gods even die for their people, when there is need. So it was, when I was Chosen.”
Your mother, an Exigent, a Prince of the Earth. Your mother, the White Lily, a warrior worth a thousand, before she gave up that life for peace and green growing things. You’d heard fragments of her story and seen the awe as she walks past in the village. But to you, she has only ever been your mother.
“We owe them our devotion, our prayers, for their gifts to us, but they cannot live without us to pray. “ she says. “But may there never be need for any of our gods to give up their existences to make another Chosen. May it be enough that you and whoever comes after you to dance and sing and no more than that.”
On the wall in her bedroom hangs her disused armor, etched with white lilies, and naginata. A reminder, she often said, but what kind of reminder?
“You are the child of my peace,” she whispers. “And I will do all I can to preserve that peace for you.”
~~~
The next morning, you dance by the river, with sacred bells in your hands and draped in the ritual garments of your new office, soft voice raised in song as you channel your prayers and the prayers of your village to the god of the river. You’ve practiced hard, and you don’t make any major mistakes, though the timing to your steps was a little off.
(Not the perfect, unearthly grace you bring later. Graceful, yes, delicate, yes, but you are still an untested child, without years behind him.)
Every year, the emissary of the river god materializes once the ritual is complete, to convey his pleasure to your village. This year is different: instead, the god himself materializes from the river and rises from the water, a sinuous, sleek, river dragon, wise and strong. Most of the village kneels, save your mother, who simply bows her head, and you. As a clear mark of his favor, he allows you to touch his head, respectfully, before he roars and disappears.
You are the youngest sacred maiden this village has ever had, but you have succeeded more than any of your predecessors have.
notes:
- black-haired Persephone, not white-haired. He's also about 7-8 in this memory.
- it's really obvious where Persephone gets his looks from, because he looks A WHOLE LOT like his mom.
Memory #6
Date: 2018-10-05 06:51 am (UTC)(This is the Elemental Pole of Wood, the far Eastern border of the world.)
You know their name: Bright-falling Rose, and their companion, Kalyani. Rose ascends, carefully, their eyes far-seeing, and even these almost-infinite, tangled, ancient trees have their limit.
(And the flat world, as it stretches out below them, is so much greater-)
In the sky above, a green sun flickers and fades, leaving only the yellow sun, as the surrender oaths take effect, as the inverted body-prison of Malfeas closes around the defeated *****.
(This is not your memory. This is ancient. From before the Age of the Anathema. Unspeakably ancient.)
Rose breathes, a half-hopeful sigh. Almost. Almost over-
But not quite: they are far away, but they can see this, clear in the distant horizon. White flames encased in crystal spheres: a single central flame trapped inside a sphere surrounded by a hundred more, each of those surrounded by 99,997 more, (blasphemy upon blasphemy upon blasphemy and -)
“Cowards!” the voice of She Who Lives In Her Name is rage and crystalline chorus, infinite and boundless and eternal and even filtered through someone else’s memory it hurts to hear, like scratching behind your eyes. “You surrender to insects! To ants! To those so below us! And we have been diminished and we have lost!”
The prison is slowly closing upon Her, but She is not done. “But I am not so cowardly as you,” She hisses. “It was I who named our creation and everything in it. It was I who gave it form and hierarchy. Definition. And I will not allow this to stand.”
She cracks three spheres, and allows them to fall, just as the prison closes about Her. For a moment, there is stillness-
And then white flame and heat, as the spheres shatter and release primordial fire. The world - the world is burning. White flame and heat and a shockwave before silence descends. Kalyani manages to throw her protective cloak over Rose before the shockwave hits and sends them both crashing into a primeval tree with force that could, would, kill a hundred men.
(They’re both mostly unhurt.)
But there is nothing that they, or anyone, can do: they can’t even get closer, because the flames are too intense. Rose weeps and will not stop, until at last the flames gutter and die to embers, when they can finally, at last, leave the immense branch of the tree and fly back up, to see with far-seeing eyes the damage. To see what is left.
There is so much gone. Burned to ashes, but so completely that it is like those places never existed, gone so completely that no one can even comprehend them anymore. This is what is left.
notes:
This is very obviously not Persephone in this memory. In fact, there is...nothing familiar at all in this memory, nothing that looks really similar to what any of his memories have shown so far. Even the shape of the land is different. Like this is ancient. Very mythic, even.
this is a map but here is a general idea of what Rose can see at the end of the memory, after the fires have gone out, laid out beneath them. It's still fucking huge even after all that.
...Persephone comes from a flat world?
Memory #7 (cw: mentions of stalking, murder-as-mercy-kill, intentions of suicide)
Date: 2018-10-29 03:52 am (UTC)(Where can you go? Where should you go?)
One morning, before dawn, as you are settling down to rest in a grove growing wild, having finished brushing your (long, long) hair and plaited it into a sleep-braid, you sense the sharpness of violence and death, bright and harsh against your senses. You open your eyes to light, as the the pale gold and white of sunrise paints itself too bright, too fast across the horizon until against the sky spread massive, golden bladed wings of light, each pinion a sword, and a spectral crown of swords.
You don’t go to sleep: instead, you get back up, dress yourself again, pick up your bag with what few possessions you have, and start walking again, following your senses.
Half a day’s walk away: long before you get there, the smell of blood and death hangs heavy, as do the sounds of the cawing of the raitons. A battle? But you hadn’t noticed any movement of troops. Once you finally arrive, and see the bodies the raitons and the ravens are fighting to scavenge, however, as well as the broken shards of obsidian all over the ground, it all becomes clear: a Wyld Hunt. What mortal troops had accompanied the Dragon-Blooded hadn’t stood a chance against whatever Anathema they had been fighting: four of the five Dragon-Blooded are dead, as well. One Dynast, from the Realm; one Dragon-Blooded from Lookshy, a member of the Seventh Legion; two outcastes, but you don’t recognize from their armor what domain they’re from. And the fifth is still, somehow, barely alive-
“*****,” Lady Sakiko, your husband’s wife, his principal spouse, says, weakly, as you kneel at her side: her bow lies broken and twisted nearby. “You’re alive. I’m glad to see that rumors were wrong. That you escaped the demon that used to be our husband.”
It hurts, when you hear your name, vibrates somewhere down inside yourself, a broken echo of nothing-
"...your hair." she murmurs, tiredly, after a moment. An off-handed observation. "It's all gone white. Poor thing."
You don't have an explanation for her, and she doesn't press it.
(Of course. Of course she would have ridden with a Wyld Hunt against Hiroto, if it came down to it. Her honor would have demanded it.)
Had Hiroto always been Anathema, always been a demon walking in a man’s skin? No, you’re certain, if he had been, he would have done more than he had. If he had been, all along, he would have made you love him.
The white camellia blossoms growing in her green hair are wilting and red with blood: you aren’t a doctor, don’t know anything about medicine, but even you can see that her wounds are fatal. That she’s dying.
You ask, quietly, if there’s anything you can do for her.
“Little dove,” she says, fondly, her voice tired, as she reaches into her kimono for something, her hand trembling, before pressing folded mulberry paper into your hand. (A dove for you, flowers for her wife and concubines, delicate things for people she saw as delicate). Her death poem, you know, without having to read it. “If you must, deliver this to my daughter. But if it would be too dangerous for you, don’t try.”
You think of a girl, in the domain capital, who will be motherless and is now fatherless: one of many, in these war-torn kingdoms. And you promise to try, and the weight on Sakiko’s face lifts.
“Be careful, little dove,” she says, quietly. “If he learns that you escaped him...he’ll not let you go.”
(You know. You know this to be true, down to your very bones.)
She is silent, for some time after that, her eyes closed, as she breathes, in and out: you sing to her, quietly, to soothe her and fulfill your necromancy shaping ritual, gathering the motes to fuel a spell, delicately tracing a rune on her forehead that will ensure that her higher soul will go to Lethe when she dies, to rest and not leave a ghost. An elegy in shattered crystal notes.
“My dagger,” she asks, finally, opening her eyes and her breath catching in pain. “Give me my dagger.”
Her jade dagger is sheathed at her hip, not that far from her hand, but if she’s too weak to reach it...
You draw her dagger, feeling the weight of it in your hand: it’s very heavy, heavy enough that you’re having trouble with it.
(She’s dying, slowly. Suffering. Whatever wounds Hiroto had given her had been fatal but also slow. And her honor dictates that, even if her wounds hadn’t been fatal, that she commit suicide for the shame of having failed to kill her Anathema spouse.
And if she cannot even draw her own dagger, then whatever death she’d give herself will be slow. And there has been enough suffering already. You can at least give her some amount of mercy.)
You don’t give her the dagger: instead, you stab her with it yourself. Quick. Careful. And she looks surprised for a moment, then thankful.
“...thank you...” she murmurs, before her eyes close for the last time and she goes still.
(Sometimes, there is nothing that can be done. Sometimes, death is the only mercy that can be given.)
After a moment, you fold her fingers around the dagger, and leave her hand, there.
***
You can’t move any of their bodies: you can’t even build any of them a funeral pyre. All you can do is dance for them, sing them to their rest.
Notes:
Persephone is white-haired in this memory. And wearing his kimono in the fashion of the dead for funeral rites.
raitons are basically ravens but lizards. No, really, they're small, black-feathered lizards with clawed wings and small sharp teeth that travel and feed in flocks.
Memory #8
Date: 2018-11-25 06:56 am (UTC)You are very tired, lulled almost to sleep by the sound of your mother’s voice, when your oldest sister presses a gift into your hands: a hand-me-down doll, but with new hair and an almost-new dress, and laughingly teases how you should keep the doll close, because there’s good-luck charms in it to counter the bad luck from being born during Calibration.
Your mother frowns at that. “It just means that he was born an exception,” she says, gently to your sister, smoothing out your hair, as she hums you a lullaby. “Born with no one to tell him what to be. Luckier, in that, than the rest of us.”
You fall asleep with the sound of your mother’s voice in your ears, surrounded by your family, who you love: warm, comfortable, and beloved.
Notes:
-Black-haired Persephone again.
-Calibration is a Creation-specific holiday, the 5 days that end/begin the new year. No work, it’s also a time that Spooky Things can happen, including demons managing to slip through the bounds of Malfeas to come without bindings into Creation, easier to summon ghosts, etc. This is basically The Gist of the story his mother is telling her children.
-Persephone has three older sisters: no names in this memory, but one is about a decade older than him (so 13 in this memory), one is about five years older, (so eight), and one is about three years older (so 6).
-His mother is wearing the same hairstyle she was wearing in the earlier memory that Persephone took involving her, the widow’s braids.
-This wouldn’t have been something that three-year old Persephone would have noticed but an adult might: so they have their holiday meal, and it’s very lean. they definitely don’t have abundance going on.
Memory #9 (cw: agegap, controlling relationship/implied abuse, sexual harassment)
Date: 2018-12-28 04:57 am (UTC)(This is meant to be a brief visit, over the winter, no more.)
Your husband does not like court, either: nor is he entirely fond of the other retainers that serve High Lady Kaoru. But he is, here, nonetheless, doing his duty - even sitting down to eat with certain of them, invites them into his home. You, of course, are there to smooth everything over with beauty and grace and gentleness - though this dinner, with another retainer visiting your husband, is...exhausting, even more so than usual.
You are quiet and demure during dinner - only speaking when spoken to- barely touch your food, and serve them both tea and sake. By now, you have learned how to do this perfectly, both in seemingly effortless grace and for exact timing, even when you have unfamiliar eyes on you. By now, you are used to how your husband desires you, the weight of his lust. You are not used to being so openly desired by so many people here: there are many beautiful people here, but you stand out even among them, and it is not entirely comfortable. Even less comfortable is how your husband's mouth tightens, his eyes narrow: you know he doesn't like other men looking at you, desiring you, paying attention to you.
And this man? Pays attention to you. First is poetry about your beauty: none of it is good, but you smile and thank him anyway, your responses properly modest. Lingering glances, especially at the nape of your neck, and he takes any excuse to touch you, however fleeting. You do not want to be here, but you do not consider pleading exhaustion or illness to lie down: you know your duty to your husband. His comfort and pleasure, not yours. You stay as close to your husband as decorum allows: you are only a concubine, a lesser spouse, and whatever protection you have comes from him.
The tension in the air is heavy stillness, the calm before a summer storm: you try to defuse it through gentle words at the right time, through anticipating and attending their needs. Your husband stops drinking midway through the meal, only taking tea: he usually moderates his drinking, but this is unusual even for him. The other man, however, drinks heavily, even with your efforts to try to moderate him without him realizing what you are doing. His compliments grow more ribald as time goes on, the more drunk he gets, and you are very uncomfortable: your husband is angry, his eyes narrow, temper on the verge of breaking. Until, at last, deep in his cups, the other man suggests that Hiroto share you with him.
Before your husband can lose his temper - before he can draw the sword at his hip, because you see his right hand move - you delicately touch his sleeve, whisper in his ear, trying to calm him down. Please stop, please don't do this, please don't do something regrettable, plead as prettily and quietly as you can for this, for the life of this man. Will he listen to you? You are uncertain, as silence stretches on.
(You married him to try to sway him on the matter of your village. You cannot let him do this and risk him being removed as administrator over your village, no matter what else you might think, even though it would have been easy to do nothing-)
For a moment, he doesn't do anything or seemingly react to what you are saying, his hand still not lowered: you fear, for that moment, that despite your pleading, that he'll kill him anyway, seeing the anger in his eyes. Finally, his hand drops back to his side as he turns to you, his other hand settling heavy onto your shoulder.
"Go rest, my flower." your husband says: he is never gentle, and quiet command is in his deep voice. But he is calm, even with layered threat under every syllable, and you don't think that he will draw steel on this man today. (Today.) "You've done enough for tonight."
"Yes, my lord." you lower your eyes, and he strokes your hair, briefly.
You do as he says, gracefully and demurely, leave the room. But even in his bedroom, lying down dressed for bed and with the lantern unlit, you can hear what happens next.
"Get out of my house. And do not return."
The sound of a paper screen being opened. And the sound of someone being literally thrown out, before the screen closes again.
notes:
Black-haired Persephone, not white-haired. He's wearing sapphire blue in this memory, again.
Persephone's husband again. this is his PB.
A name for the domain ruler - Kaoru - and there seems to be some Discontent with her rule, because she's harsh. Especially compared to her mom, the prior High Lady of the domain.
cw: mentions of sex slavery, agegap, fucked-up relationships, possessiveness, violence, suicide
Date: 2019-01-23 07:32 am (UTC)Unfortunately, you hadn't expected them to take everything from you that could be used as a weapon, including your fan: not out of fear for what you might do to them, but out of fear for what you might do to yourself, to ensure that you will be alive to give as a gift to their Prince. Even the guards are careful to avoid talking to you: the current guard is young and trips over his tongue, whenever you can manage to talk to him, but it's never quite long enough for you to do much with, even as you slowly start to wear him down. A demure look from under your lashes and a couple of words at a time, you work with what you have, but he's extremely devoted to his duty to his Prince.
But fairly soon, you stop trying to escape. The root of this problem, the cause at the heart of it all, is the Prince of Vanehan, who has his eyes on the Hundred Kingdoms and sends his raiding parties: the inability of the domain lords to properly respond to protect their people contributes, but he is the problem. You can do something about it, if you don't escape, if you allow yourself to be given to him. So, patiently, you wait, and watch, and listen. Kept separate from the other prisoners, a precious jewel to be guarded close and kept carefully. And so it is now, held in a cell, a single room within a larger structure, the whole thing secured with a difficult lock and an iron-shod door: alone, here, too. You don't quite know where you are, at this point, but you're likely just across the disputed border, somewhere where they sort prisoners and determine where they will go, given how permanent this camp, these structures, are.
And then, as you wait, you hear, dimly, what sounds like fighting, somewhere outside: did one of the domain lords actually send their army? You hadn't expected this to happen. They stopped binding you some time ago, assured of your docility and inability to escape, but there's still no weapons within easy reach, and you don't have any tools to try picking the lock. Not even a hairpin for your hair, because they were that thorough. And then the sound of banging at the door: what? The sound of metal against metal, a harsh, discordant clanging, as if someone was trying to kick in the first door, before the sound of it cracking echoes through the building, gives way beneath the kicking.
...you can guess who just kicked open the door, rage burning cold in your heart, but it isn't confirmed until he makes his way through the building, kicking open cell doors. Last of all, he kicks open your door: it's unmistakably your husband, wearing full orichalcum plate, holding a naginata made of pure sunlight in his hands: his Anathema mark, a golden sunburst, glitters on his forehead.
You are angry, hatred welling up inside you the moment you see him, but at least you're a little gratified to see that he's surprised to find you here. Angry that you're here - that they meant to give you as a gift to some other man - but his anger is brief, in the face of the larger issue at hand.
You hate him, but at least you are a little thankful that he brought his troops to deal with what the domain lords could not, to rescue these people: in this moment, you have the same priority, and as much as you hate the idea, you agree to temporarily work with him on this matter and will hate every moment of it.
He sends you with the middle-aged auntie who is his second-in-command, to calm down the prisoners already freed, while he and his soldiers finish destroying the Vanehan: of course he doesn't give you a weapon, either. But you sing, soft and clear, to soothe their hearts, as best as you can, as best as you are capable of, keep their attention on that instead of the battle that you and Enduring Lotus are shepherding them away from, even as your head hurts.
Later, you find Hiroto again, at the very end of the battle; you still have no weapon, unfortunately. There's something familiar about his naginata techniques: you realize what it is after a silent moment, and your calm snaps.
"You killed her!" you are still quiet, in volume, but your voice is pitched to carry, soft and sobbing, and angry. "You have no right!"
It's his only warning before you lunge at him, trying to claw out his eyes. It's futile, because you don't know how to fight unarmed, and you're very weak, not to mention the fact that he's so much taller than you, but you try, anyway, scratching at his face. He banishes his naginata and grabs you by the nape of your neck, one-handed, as easily as you were an errant kitten, and holds you at arm's length, even as you keep trying to scratch at his face uselessly.
"I have much to answer for, my flower." he says, calmly: too calmly, knowing his temper."And perhaps someday, I might even answer for it."
Notes:
White-haired Persephone again.
Persephone's husband is 6'5".
this is the symbol glittering/glowing on Hiroto's forehead
Memory #11
Date: 2019-02-10 12:15 pm (UTC)You're in your room, now, rereading one of the few books the shrine owns, when you hear voices, outside: the familiar voice of the high priestess, and a deep voice that is unfamiliar, though he (?) speaks with the accent of the domain capital. You turn a page: you can't hear what they are actually discussing, and it likely does not concern you anyway, until one of the junior priestesses, who is at least five years older than you, bows and enters your room, nervously apologizes for disturbing you. You aren't needed, at least not yet, but you should know that the replacement for the old administrator has arrived, and that he will probably ask to meet you at some point, preferably before the next major ritual.
(Which is soon: less than a week away.)
You expect her to leave, now that she's brought you the news, but she stops, for a moment, and asks if you wish to see the new administrator. Not talk to him, if you do not wish to, but just see him. You aren't very curious, but she's standing by the window: your room has a small real glass window, priceless beyond measure, and usually covered. After a moment, you allow her to uncover the window, and you look out into the garden, where the high priestess and a very tall, broad-shouldered man with long, tied-back pale hair are standing. He's young for his position, not yet thirty, which you hadn't expected - but then again, the last administrator, whose funeral you had danced at, had been an old woman who had not served in her position very long.
He glances away from the high priestess for a moment, gaze settling curiously on something - and you realize that he's seen you, through the window. You don't need to ask the priestess to cover the window: she does it before you can even ask, and retreats once you thank her, politely. Once she is gone, closing the screen behind her, familiar, comforting silence settles back over your room: years ago, you'd learned not to mind being alone.
(It's better this way.)
Notes:
- Persephone is ~12 in this memory. Also black-haired.
- He's dressed like this, which is what he would have been wearing in the last shrine maiden memory.
- "The new administrator" is, of course, Miura Hiroto, who is ~28 in this memory.
Memory #12
Date: 2019-03-09 06:09 am (UTC)"I didn't know what to get you at first," she confesses, a little awkwardly, sitting by the koi pond with you with a basket in her lap. A basket that, occasionally, wiggles. "So I thought to get you something actually lovable."
After a moment, she hands you the basket, a little gingerly. You thank her, politely, and open the basket: a little white kitten is sleeping inside.
(She's...wonderful. You smile, soft, and say so, your voice quiet.)
"...she'll probably need a friend," your sister says, still awkward. "I mean, another cat. You should get your husband to buy you a hearthcat, too."
She manages to say the phrase 'your husband' without sounding even a little sour, if barely. Unfortunately, she has to leave, soon after this, as it is her turn at watch for the village: she does leave you a string and a little handmade, lopsided felt mouse as well before she does, as well as a promise to visit, when she can.
~~~
You have to ask for help from the junior priestesses in how to care for a kitten. Not that you have to ask for much help: they come willingly enough in their free time, though still respectfully wary of you, once they realize you have a cat. You pay close attention to what they tell you, while they coo over how cute she is and pet her.
But for right now, you are alone with her, and she wants to play, batting cutely at your sash, and then at a nearby sunbeam filtering through your window, with a paw. You kneel on the floor and pull the string for her to pounce on, and giggle, quietly, as she meows. Actual, genuine laughter, for once in your life.
(You love her, so much.)
notes:
black-haired Persephone in this memory.
his sister is ~ten years older than him: she looks a lot like Amaranth, but six years older. He doesn't remember her name, but he calls her "Eldest Sister" when speaking to her.
Memory #13 (NSFW-adjacent situation, cw: agegap, murder, domestic abuse, slavery)
Date: 2019-04-15 05:45 am (UTC)But you know. And you smile demurely and dance, sing for him every night, do your best to please him but make him stumble., disrupt his ventures as best as you can. Disrupt, distract, keep his eyes on you and not suspect what you know. He wants you to perform for him again, tonight: for him alone, this time, and not for any of his colleagues, as venal, money-hungry and life-destroying as he is, though you do not comment on their greed. And behind him, behind him, is the ghost girl, always silent, always watching, her eyes wide and lightless, with the shock of her death, even now, even though she was dead before you were ever born. You smile, always demure, always gentle, and agree, your eyes delicately lowered.
(Tonight will be the most beautiful performance he has ever seen. And the last.)
Your performance is transcendent, perfect in every possible way, and his eyes are on you, hungry and possessive. You dance close enough to be alluring but not quite close enough to be touched, fuse the sacred dance you learned as a shrine maiden and the dances you learned in the pleasure quarters into a delicate, graceful whole, sing in a language he never learned despite all his dealings with the Fair Folk, the raksha, pour every ounce of his guilt and betrayal and the heartbreak and final horror of his victims into your performance, distilled into purity of voice and motion and body, into a performance he can neither ignore nor look away from. And he dies gasping, as you and his ghost bride watch, falls to the floor, dead, at last, finally knowing guilt.
You take a moment to close his eyes before you sing, an elegy in shattered crystal notes. Less for him, though you will give him the necessary rites, and more for all his victims - so they, maybe, will be able to rest. You hold your hand out to the ghost girl: she shakes her head and smiles, and mouths 'thank you' to you, before she begins to fade away, moonlight filtering through the window to illuminate where she was. Finally able to rest.
Notes:
White-haired Persephone in this memory
So apparently witnessing a beautiful enough performance can kill someone? (Persephone knows, though it's not obvious to a viewer unless they're really familiar with Abyssal Performance Charms, that he used magic here)
Raksha/the Fair Folk are awful. They are from outside Creation, essentially pure chaos that chose to take shape, and they eat emotions. And can totally eat all of someone's emotions and leave them a husk of a person that can never feel or dream again.
The Guild is awful too.
Memory #14
Date: 2019-06-13 05:53 am (UTC)And so you dance, years away from the gifted if nervous child you once were, all perfect elegance and unearthly grace, do not allow something as unimportant as exhaustion weigh you down. The god of the river materializes from his sanctum, as he has done twice a year for the past eight years, still unchanged, still the wise and sleek river dragon who allows you to respectfully touch his head, bestows his grace upon your village and the promise of more than enough water, before he disappears.
You manage to walk halfway back to the shrine, still only allowing yourself to be elegance and grace, before the exhaustion, before the lightheadedness and dizziness, hit all at once. The last you see before unconsciousness takes you is your mother, worry clear across her doll-like face as she sprints towards you, widow's braids loose and streaming out behind her.
You wake up, sometime later, back in your room in the shrine, tended by Mayu, the most steady of the junior priestesses, with her gentle broad hands and deep voice.
"You need to eat, maiden," she says, gently. You expect dried and salted vegetables, the last of last year's rice, last year's tithes from the village: the first of the two harvests, the two growing seasons, is several months away. You should not be ungrateful, but it is too heavy for you to even think about right now. You need to eat, but you are too tired. Much too tired.
Instead, she hands you a plate, with a sliced mango and lychee. Not only fresh fruit, impossibly out of season, but imported fresh fruit. Months earlier than you could have dreamed, tropical fruit that was becoming even more difficult to come by due to reasons you barely hear, in your sacred seclusion. Where had they gotten it? You stare at her with wide eyes.
"Lord Miura paid for it," she says, and somehow, the knowledge that the area administrator paid for this expensive fruit out of his own pocket, for you, is even more daunting. Especially with how fast he'd managed to acquire it. You don't want to think about it, especially with how he looks at you, sometimes. How casually he can just...buy this, when your village struggles. "After he'd heard that you had fallen ill."
She pushes the plate towards you again. "All warm fruit. Eat, *****. You need to regain your strength."
On your tongue, the first bite of mango is impossibly sweet sunshine, but you wonder how long you can keep this up, keep dancing, maintain the razor's edge of just enough, before your body gives out entirely. Before you die dancing.
Notes:
Persephone is black-haired and about 15 in this memory, so he looks about a year or so younger than he does right now.
He's, again, dressed like this.
"Lord Miura" is, of course, Miura Hiroto.
his mother is unmistakably Amaranth.
Memory #15
Date: 2019-07-06 09:06 pm (UTC)However, while others might simply see an assignation, the reality of what is going on is far different. She is the third deathknight who has approached you on behalf of their master in two months: two for the Mask of Winters, who apparently does not want to take disinterest as an answer, and now Rain on behalf of the Walker in Darkness.
(You might as well hear what she has to say. Even though you already know your answer.)
"I appreciate your willingness to meet with me," she says. "We may not have come to it the same way, but—that they chose you directly, without the hand of any of the Deathlords, speaks to a great potential. That, and your work speaks for itself."
You demurely lower your eyes. “I was not aware that my...activities had come to the notice of one such as your master.”
"Ah, well…" She seems momentarily unsure. "My ears are his ears, and I appreciate… the will to alleviate suffering and seek justice, in a colleague. It's in short supply, in this and every age. I just wish to see that gift put to even greater use."
So she was the one who had heard of what you were doing - and brought the tale to her master. A woman interested in small-scale acts of what could be justice, inquisitive enough to listen to rumors and tales, and clever enough to put all the pieces together, to trace them back to you.
“Are those qualities that would benefit your master?” you inquire, delicately. You very much doubt it: the Walker in Darkness is not known for either mercy or justice. You expect that this effort to sway you to join her master would suit Rain’s own agenda, first and foremost, rather than that of the Walker in Darkness.
She looks mildly uncomfortable. "What best serves the will of the Neverborn and their ends benefits my master," she says, in what's a clear confirmation of your guess, but then goes on: "I'm no diplomat, so I'll be frank: we're lacking someone of both your finesse and restraint. If I've judged you correctly, you don't do your work for material reward, but I'd make sure you have what you need and more, and support, besides. No worrying about safety on the road, or places to stay. Backup, should you need it."
For anyone else, this offer would have been tempting: material support, never having to be in want again, never having to work alone. Assured safety while traveling, especially important on the often-dangerous roads of the Hundred Kingdoms. You know too well the dangers, especially because you lure them right to you, weaponize vulnerability and victimhood and put yourself at risk to be the most attractive bait. For anyone else, this offer would have been tempting, but you are not ‘anyone’. Your sense of justice and mercy, as well as your priorities, do not align well with most deathknights, and you will not truly submit yourself to another master. Even Their constant voices in your head, a haunting, demanding chorus whether you are awake or asleep, go ignored, and if you please them, it is by coincidence.
(Rain serves the wrong master: but how long will it be before she realizes it?)
You have no intention of taking her offer, and had no intention of taking it even before you came to this meeting. You also do not intend on directly refusing, if you can avoid it: there is power, of a sort, in being the one courted, in your value as being unattached, serving no one, and sought for that reason, but there is also no sense in rousing the attention (or ire) of a Deathlord by directly refusing their emissary. Especially as they will not take ‘no’ as an answer.
Instead, you gracefully refill Rain’s tea, and consider how to respond. However, before you can say anything, the sounds of a commotion outside interrupts you: an argument, between...two men? A man and a youth?
Rain's halfway through protesting that you don't need to refill her tea when she turns abruptly toward the commotion, her expression suddenly dark and apprehensive. "I should have just left him at the encampment," she mutters, under her breath, and moves to get up from the table. "I'll return shortly, it's just—"
Barely a heartbeat later is the unmistakable sound of someone being stabbed. She swears, and launches herself toward the door, throwing it open with one shoulder. You follow after her, gracefully, moving as quickly as can be expected in the clothing you are wearing, your parasol resting against your shoulder and close at hand.
Outside, a lanky, lean man with thin, birdlike features and red streaks running through his black hair lets a further streak of red drip from the blade of his unsheathed knife; beneath him on the ground is, presumably, his former opponent in that argument. Rain looks up at him, looks down at the body, gives a long-suffering sigh, and in one smooth movement grabs him by the collar.
"What did I tell you," she says, flatly.
"You should have heard what he said to me!"
"You should have heard of subtlety. Head back to camp, no detours, or I'll commend you for your service as a bodyguard and say you should be assigned three more months of that work. I suppose—I'll settle the bill, and the funeral expenses, besides." This does not sound like the first time they have had such a conversation. He makes a movement as if to argue, but she already has her hands in a fighting stance—and it's not a fight he's expecting to win. Grumbling, he turns, and leaves.
You kneel down by the boy who Rain’s colleague had stabbed and gently close his eyes, singing him to his rest. A youth, who looks barely older than you. Though your eyes are demurely lowered, you mark the man’s face, what he looks like: someday, there will be a reckoning. Someday. Not here and now.
"I'm—very sorry about all this," says Rain, with both a note of exasperation and one of genuine distress; she looks down at the body again, her lower lip quivering as if she's about to cry, actually. "As you can see, it's hard to get good help, but I imagine I haven't made the best impression."
She glances sideways at you. "That said, if you'd find it agreeable, perhaps tea some other time. No expectations."
You incline your head gracefully in acknowledgment, and hope that she will have her realization soon. For her sake. “Perhaps some other time.” you say, gently, soothingly, and no more than that.
Notes:
- white-haired Persephone this time.
- "the Sorrowful Blade of the Softly-Falling Rain" is very unmistakably Shrike.
- He's dressed in blue but a different shade of blue than the sapphire blue he wore as a concubine. a very elaborate kimono, the elaborate clothing of a courtesan, a super high-ranking and expensive one. It's worn right over left, in the fashion of the dead.
- by modern standards, the "city" that they're in is small. Nowhere near the size of a modern city.
memory #16, cw: captivity, implied NSFW
Date: 2019-09-05 07:09 am (UTC)This isn't the first time that you have used yourself as bait in one of these traps: far from it. You've perfected this by now: the hesitant fluttering steps, gentle pleading, helplessness written in every line of your body. Every inch the frail, lost, beauty, though you know where your fan is. You don't know yet what they want, what they intend, though you're certain that you'll find out soon enough.
Before you will kill them all.
However, you don't get the chance.
"Bandits? In my wood?" a deep voice says, from somewhere behind them. "That was your first and last mistake."
You catch a glimpse of a tall, white-haired figure - where had they come from?- just before the speaker casually walks out into view, drawing their sword. In the moment before they move, all grace and whipcord strength, you catch a glimpse of silver tattoos flowing down wiry arms.
(You hadn't expected this. You hadn't expected this.)
They dispatch the men threatening you with barely any effort on their part, as easily as they might swat a fly, and sheathe their sword as they turn to you.
"Either you are hopelessly naive and nearly as mistaken as they were," they say to you, folding their arms across their broad chest. "Or you were neither of those things, once-maiden of the camellia's river god, though that does not matter now."
You raise one slim eyebrow. They recognize you, even with the change in your hair color and this far away from Tsubaki Province, from Sange Village?
"The rumors do reach my wood," they snort. "About the most beautiful maiden in the East, who once was in service to a powerful river god and a handful of others besides, who married a man who is now an Anathema trying to unite all of the Hundred Kingdoms."
They close the distance between the two of you smoothly. "If nothing else," they say - and this close, you can see the white feathers in their hair - "they do have one thing right."
"And what would that be?" you ask, eyes lowered demurely, though you are still on your guard.
"Your beauty," he says, and almost smiles, before a strange look of startled recognition flickers across his face, and settles into something else. "...come, walk with me."
You know, immediately, that he will not let you leave: it's not quite the same look that you've seen on the faces of so many other men who desire you, who covet you, but it's similar enough. "...my lord?" you ask, still demure, still hesitant.
This is not a fight that you want, especially without knowing anything of his capabilities.
"Don't be afraid," he says. "I only want to keep you safe."
No man, in your experience, wants to keep you safe, only wants to possess you. He is no different, no matter what he tells himself, no matter what he tells you.
"Of course," you murmur. Demure. Delicate. Pleasing. "Please, lead the way."
~~~
You are, of course, correct in that he will not let you leave, and he took your fan. He makes his home in these woods, has a small house in the branches of an old, old tree, and the sorcerous workings he's laid into every inch of it tingle against your skin. You are not a sorcerer, but you think that you could, if you bent it very carefully and took enough time with a painstaking and difficult task, use your necromancy to disrupt his workings - assuming he's not initiated into the Sapphire circle of sorcery.
(You hope that he is not.)
But for now, you will be patient, patient and watchful. You could, if need be, step into the underworld, but you are saving that as a last measure in case everything goes completely wrong.
But for now, you wait, even with the constant chorus of voices in the back of your head. Like you are a bird in a cage. Even the bed you sleep in, that you do not share with him, is woven wicker, almost a cage within a cage. But you wait and you watch and you coax what you can from him, with gentle words and sweet smiles and soft songs, as the days pass.
His name is Auspicious Willow, and he is a Silver Anathema: a Lunar Exalt, he calls himself, No Moon, Nightwitch, rather than the names the Immaculates call his kind. A shapechanger and a sorcerer, though the only shapes he shows to you are the face he claims as his own and his swan-shape, sometimes resting in your arms as a swan.
He'd never met you before that first moment in the wood: the Hundred Kingdoms are true to their name, after all, and Willow is not from Tsubaki Province, nor any of the domains that closely border it. But he'd heard stories of your beauty, seen a copy of a woodblock etching done by an artist the one time you'd ever gone to court, known your face from that. But while he's interested in your beauty, it isn't why he's keeping you here.
Memories from another life, an Age ago, or so he claims. He's not terribly forthcoming with any of the details, not wanting to talk about it, and you do not quite believe him- especially because you don't remember any of it yourself.
One night, you read him poetry (much as you had done with your husband), and he rests his head in your lap. For a moment, his expression goes strange, as if he isn’t quite seeing you, or seeing someone in addition to you.
“...Rose?” he asks, and you delicately shake your head.
“I’m sorry,” you say, and lower your eyes. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“Of course not,” he says, and reaches up to cup your cheek in his hand. “You won’t meet the end that they did. I promise.”
~~~
It’s sad, really: otherwise, you could almost agree on some things. Willow keeps the territory that he claims safe, protects the people he considers under his care, wants to make a world where the weak are not taken advantage of by the strong. He also despises your husband, wants him dead as much as you do, though for an entirely different reason: according to him, and the lore passed down by others of his kind, Solars (as he calls the Golden Anathema) had their chance to rule, and the world that he and his kind would make is not a world that should be. Hiroto’s ambition must needs be checked, and the only way to check it is to kill him (not that you want Willow to rule, either: his ambitions are not so different, in the end).
And Willow, like Hiroto, will never let you go, as long as he lives. They are different, but not so different, and his idea of keeping you safe is locking you in a cage and never letting you go. What kind of world would he make for the weak, the abused, the defenseless, then?
(You know what you have to do.)
You've offered him counsel before, delicate and careful, advice he sometimes takes, and sometimes doesn't. You keep doing so, gentle, soft, listening to his problems, or at least the ones he shares with you occasionally. Your husband is a particular problem of his, and you share with him what you know, in demure bits and pieces.
You let him take you to bed, once, gracefully yielding and pleasing, as you always are (you cannot be anything else), lie next to him after with his arm resting possessively over your waist. Afterwards, Willow asks for your advice, again: your husband is still his problem, but knows he can’t fight him on his own ground, or any battlefield that he chooses. He can contend with a Solar alone, but not with his troops as well.
“If he hears that you have his concubine, especially if it is backed by sufficient proof,” you tell Willow, gently, even though you know he will be angry about this suggestion, feelings clouded by whatever secondhand memories he has of whoever Rose was, “He will come. Without his troops, as he will not spend their lives on such a purely personal matter.”
Willow smiles, though his smile is angry around the edges, and you say nothing more.
Notes:
white-haired Persephone again
this is Willow's PB.
Memory #17
Date: 2019-09-05 07:12 am (UTC)You’ve seen Willow as a man, and as a swan, but this shape he assumes with fluid, fickle grace is new: half-man, half-swan, immense white wings clasped about him like a feather cloak. A shape he assumes specifically for battle, you guess, given how he stands: he fought with a sword, when you met, but he also was fully in the shape of a man, instead of this hybrid blend.
He refuses your request: pride? More of his misguided attempt to keep you safe, regardless of your own wishes, your own needs? He refuses and does not even give you the option to disobey him, slamming his palm against the floor and activating the wards laid into the wood, months and months of painstaking sorcerous workings begun well before you'd ever encountered him.
And then he's gone in a rustle of cloth and feathers, leaving you there, quiet rage filling you. If you were a sorcerer, it would be a lot more straightforward to disrupt his wards, but you are not (yet) one. Instead, you bend your necromancy to the task of trying to pick apart the weave of his workings, a far more demanding and delicate endeavor, as the sound of clashing steel below drifts to your ears, as well as the sudden howling of a summer storm's winds.
You know that they aren't just fighting over you, though you were the beautiful bait to spring the trap: the shape of their competing, clashing ambitions, would have brought them to this anyway, is a major reason why they fight, but you still smile bitterly. Still so beautiful and desired, that men would draw swords and kill just to possess you.
A woman's hand settles onto the very outside of the boards, just outside the limits of Willow's wards.
"Ah, men. Foolish as ever." Enduring Lotus says, trying to catch her breath. The idea of Hiroto's dignified, middle-aged sorceress companion, who is much like any middle-aged village auntie, climbing a tree is not one that you had expected, but here she is, in the flesh. "That silvery bird would have had far less trouble had he let you fight alongside him, but men so often let their feelings run away with them."
You regard her suspiciously: Enduring Lotus has never been nothing but civil to you, and the two of you get along well enough, but you never forget the fact that she follows your husband, willingly.
"Why are you here?" you ask, gently, but a hint of an edge in your voice. She spreads her fingers out.
"I came because Auspicious Willow is a sorcerer," she says, shrugging. "Though Hiroto seems to be fine so far without my aid in countering that sorcery. You, on the other hand, seem to be in some difficulties - though your use of necromancy is very clever."
"...and why would you be willing to help me?" your eyes narrow: she follows your husband, and knows his possessive desire for you.
"I am giving you a choice," she says, calmly. "Haven't men taken enough of those from you already?"
Carefully, she presses her palm against the wood and calmly shatters Willow's wards in a showy display of sapphire force, ancient arcane sigils overlaying his workings as she casually flexes her superior sorcerous might. She is a sorceress initiated into the Sapphire Circle - even more dangerous than you had thought.
"There," she says, and straightens up, brushing flakes of tree bark off the skirts of her robes. "Just because I choose to follow your husband does not mean that I support everything he does." she adds, tartly, a moment later. "Temperamental fool."
"Then why do you follow him?" you ask, voice soft, as the sky brightens, though it is hours from dawn. The silver of a crescent-moon night still clings to the sky as well, a strange, liminal space between and outside the passage of time.
"I am tired of war," she says, weary. "I have buried too many daughters, too many nieces, too many bright-eyed girls who went away to be soldiers and came back dead, if they came back at all. And for what? Nothing."
"You cannot make a devastation and call it peace." your husband will never bring peace to the Hundred Kingdoms: if he has his way, he will unite them, but it will not be peace. It will never be peace.
"No," she agrees, looking past you, to where somewhere below, your husband and Auspicious Willow are still fighting. For miles, their totemic anima banners can be seen, golden crown and wings of swords and quicksilver, never-constant lunar mandala. "But a lasting peace in the Hundred Kingdoms will never come through kindness or gentleness. Not with the petty princes and feuding domain lords who cannot even look past themselves as the world falls apart."
You cannot deny that part of her logic, after all. You know how the rulers over the common people have failed, have exploited, have hurt the people in their care, how the powerful have taken advantage of the weak. But your husband is no different from any of them.
"What will you do after you make him answer for what he's done?" Lotus asks, after a moment. You have no answer for her: you don't have any larger plans in mind, besides your small-scale acts of compassion and your vengeance on your husband. You don't know what shape the world should take, only not this one.
She doesn't wait for your answer, or lack thereof: instead, she leaves you with the question as she breathes in, breathes out, and summons the storm winds to bear her aloft as she steps forward.
"For now, stay or go. Make your choice." she yells, over the wind, and is gone.
Below you, the battle continues, but Auspicious Willow seems nearly at his limit. With a burst of his powerful wings, he manages to get distance from Hiroto, long enough to start shaping a spell, a desperate last effort. He's clearly an accomplished battle-sorcerer: much more than you, who doesn't know a single battle-necromancy spell. Most that you have come across in your research so far have been too brutal to the dead for your interest, though one you've briefly examined has potential.
You recognize the shape of the spell, what he's sculpted Essence into, just before he releases it in a torrent of sharp, deadly obsidian butterflies, too numerous for Hiroto to dodge, especially in the confines of the wood. Death of Obsidian Butterflies, a spell capable of cutting down mortal armies and feared by commanders, a formidable battle sorcery.
Your husband holds his ground and parries the spell, a feat a lesser-skilled man could not have done. His massive grand daiklave, forged from sunlight, glows intensely as he casually knocks aside the butterflies in fractions of seconds, shatters just enough with the edge of his blade between heartbeats, as to leave him untouched, even as the razor-sharp edges of the untouched butterflies slice into branches, into tree trunks.
"Enough," he says, his deep voice dark, even as the flux of his anima turns midnight to dawn. He has just enough left to finish the fight: just enough left to run Willow through. You make your choice, then, and shape your own spell, step across into the underworld, and the wood goes gray around you, ghosts and memories.
(If he had allowed you to fight alongside him, it might have been different. If he hadn’t held you captive, hadn’t put you in a cage, it might have been different. But you made his choices, and you made yours, and this ending could not have been altered)
Notes:
white-haired Persephone again.
I should find a PB for Enduring Lotus, but PBs for middle-aged aunties are Hard.
I'm too lazy to find a reference for the size of a grand daiklave, but it's a fucking gigantic oversized sword. Like Cloud's buster sword from FF7, or most dark knight swords from FF14, are about right for a grand daiklave's size.
Memory #18
Date: 2020-01-15 04:47 am (UTC)One of the ghost librarians addresses you, when you come in, one day. "There may be a section of interest to you," she says. "The restricted section is off-limits to most that come here, but given who and what you are...permission may be granted, if only for a limited time. It will, of course, take time to secure the necessary permissions, even for one such as you, but would you be interested?"
You agree, curiosity piqued: what could possibly be in that restricted section? Quite a lot of things, of course, because the Great Library contains all the books that have passed out of memory and time - including those deliberately destroyed, containing information thought too dangerous to know or simply disruptive to the social order, but you've read more than one tome of forbidden philosophy and history, simply shelved with other books. What could possibly be hidden?
Eventually, you come back to the library, after some time away in the living world dealing with more than one powerful man who abuses his position and those around him, and that same ghost librarian is waiting for you.
"Permission has been granted for you to access the restricted section, for two weeks." she says, and takes you there, past safeguards and spells layered for thousands of years, blinding beneath your sight as you (briefly) examine it. Until at last she brings you into the restricted section: book after book after book, shelves and shelves and shelves of knowledge deemed too dangerous for the eyes of even the few ghosts that come to the Great Library.
And so, you read, book after lost book, about the First Age of the world. The true First Age, not the legends of the Age of the Anathema that you had grown up learning, even though your home had not held to the Immaculate faith. Sometimes you rest, occasionally you eat, but your attention is caught mostly by what's on the pages. Everything you never knew. Everything you never even hoped to know. The more you read, the more questions you have to ask, and by the time your time is up, you have read only a fraction of the books in the room and have more questions than answers, even after all that time.
Notes:
white-haired Persephone again
Despite Persephone's translucently-pale skin, white hair, and beautiful, fanservice-y white kimono (that he's wearing right over left, aka "in the fashion of the dead"), he's still the most vibrant thing in there. Like there is a noticeable difference between him and the ghosts.
there are SO MANY BOOKS. Spilling off ghost bookcases, stacked haphazardly. like, this is basically the Ghost Library of Alexandria.
Memory #19 (cw: fucked-up relationships, possessiveness)
Date: 2020-01-28 05:01 am (UTC)"I did not expect to find you here, my flower," your husband's familiar, and entirely unwelcome, deep voice cuts across your thoughts. You open your eyes to see him standing under a nearby tree, arms folded: you are absolutely not prepared for Hiroto to be here, right now, and it is only scant comfort that he is absolutely just as surprised to see you. "But that saves me the trouble of having to locate you."
You don't move for a moment, even as rage spikes, cold, beneath your skin, (though it never leaves), carefully calculating, thinking. Your fan and sword are with your clothes, on the bank: you know exactly where they are, though the question is being able to get to them before your husband can get to you. When you do move, it is with carefully-calculated, sinuous grace, your hair over your body draped in just the right way to cover but not conceal, because you remember very well what your husband likes, what he finds desirable and distracting and you need to keep him distracted until you are ready.
And Hiroto is distracted, you see out of the corner of the eye, his eyes drawn to your body, to your movements, as you hastily put your white yukata back on, tie it in front, and tuck your fan in your sash, to have close at hand, grab up your parasol with your once-stolen sword sheathed inside but don't draw it yet. Wait for him to make the first move, because he inevitably will.
"Come with me," he says, his voice a command with threat layered underneath, but you are not his obedient concubine anymore, afraid and yielding, no matter how he wants you to be that.
"No," you say, demurely, your eyes lowered. Once, you would never have refused him in anything, but now you do, in everything.
"Then I will just have to make you," your husband says, a familiar edge of menace in his voice.
He gestures, sunlight spark briefly igniting around his fingers, as he calls his armor from Elsewhere, each piece of orichalcum plate locking into place on his body as it materializes, all of it donned within moments. You do your best to keep distance from him just as sunlight solidifies in his hand into the slender shape of a reaper daiklave, that resembles the katana he used to carry, if far larger. Not his preferred weapon: he prefers either a naginata or a grand daiklave, but he never, ever fights you with either of those. Only ever barehanded or with the comparatively lightweight reaper daiklave. Perhaps he imagines this qualifies as "kindness."
"You keep saying so," you say demurely, and flick your fan out to delicately knock his first strike aside, turn his far greater strength against him with the barest of pressure. "But you have not yet."
You fight like you dance, with unearthly grace: if it wasn't for the weapon in your hand, someone could easily mistake this for just another performance, dancing in and out of your husband's guard, dodging or parrying every attack he makes, if only barely. You are far more graceful than he is, but he is more skilled and far stronger, and has reach on you: he's toying with you, you know within a matter of seconds. He always toys with you, never fighting at his full strength, even as he forces you to fight at your full skill and hold nothing back. It's not long before you switch to parrying with your fan in your right hand and attacking with your concealed sword: draw, attack, resheath, all in one fluid motion, black trails of Essence tracing the arc of your strikes and parries in an echo that hangs in the air, midnight to his dawn glow. The golden sunburst of his caste mark glitters against his forehead: you cannot see your own face, but the black disc of your caste mark is almost certainly dark against your forehead as well.
You try to keep distance from him, running across the deepest part of the pool, the water bearing your weight as if it was solid: he closes the distance moving impossibly fast for a man of his size and armor, golden lightning crackling around him as he launches himself at you. Sakura petals drift past you, and you get out of his way by leaping onto them and running, dropping down out of his range. By now, his full anima banner, the crown of swords and bladed wings of light, spreads out across the sky.
Illusory black sakura petals swirl around you as if caught in a storm: you lift one slender hand to your chest and pull out a shadowy duplicate of your heart, trying not to wince in agony as you silently swallow blood, before you crush it in your hand, use your pain and grief and rage to call forth your shadow and make it solid. The sky darkens even more as your anima banner flares totemic, spectral sakura tree spreading black-blossoming branches wound with prayer strips visible for miles, and your shadow coalesces into a duplicate of you, ghostly raven feathers and black sakura petals whirling about as he floats daintily to the ground beside you, parasol resting elegantly against his shoulder, held in his right hand.
Hiroto glances between the two of you, but doesn't seem overly concerned about the prospect of fighting two of you, simply shifts his stance. "And your shadow seems no more inclined to embrace me than you do,"
Your shadow mirrors your movements, your deadly dance, though Hiroto parries its strikes as easily as he parries yours. You take the opportunity, while he's busy with your shadow, to sing, a haunting requiem in a few notes, a song that has him coughing up blood. It doesn't stop him for long. You barely dodge another of his attacks, Hiroto's sword slicing a slit into your yukata by your legs - which you then promptly dance into his guard, movement carefully calculated to show off your legs as much as possible, enough to distract him for a few seconds. Long enough for you to try to attack him again, though your blow is deflected by his armor, just before you dance out of reach again.
Hiroto gestures, sharply, and hundreds of sunlight blades shimmer into being in the space above you, multiplying almost infinitely: you know instantly that you cannot parry this and dodging would be difficult, but this will kill you if it hits. You do the only thing that you can, just as he gestures, launching the blades: you dissolve into black sakura petals, in the space between heartbeats, and reform into yourself moments later. Your shadow, unable to dodge, is pierced by half a hundred blades and sinks gracefully to his knees, dissolving back into nothing.
You know that you are almost out of Essence; Hiroto must be close to out as well, given how much power he's spent. You start singing again, an elegy in crystalline shattered notes, shaping a necromancy spell, take advantage of the brief lull in the fight, before Hiroto gestures again.
"Enough," he says, low, and his sunlight sword begins to drip molten sunlight: without thinking, you draw your sword to parry his next attack, hanging the almost-completed spell...and it melts. You drop the useless remains of your sword and only barely manage to dodge out of the way, putting more distance between you and him, run across the pool again Not enough, as he lunges at you one last time-
The necromancy is already mostly shaped when the strike comes, and it's only that which saves you. Your voice sings out a single mournful note, clear and perfect, and you direct your essence into the shape of a cluster of blooming wisteria, their petals black as the void: a spell that should have twisted Hiroto's Essence against him, but instead catches and enfolds the blow of his sword. The blossoms shatter as they meet the golden daiklave- and the daiklave shatters too, turning to fragments of sunlight absorbed by the Void. Hiroto is flung backwards, and there is a sickening sound as the bones in his arm break into nearly as many pieces as what had been his sword.
It's an opportunity, and one you take, as you begin singing another spell: however, it's not long before Hiroto forces himself to his feet again, gesturing with his left arm and the last of his Essence, to resummon his sword.
"I have two arms," Hiroto says, his voice low and threatening, and you think better of what you are about to do.
Instead, you draw a small silver mirror out of your sash and shape your spell into a different one. You toss the mirror onto the ground and blow Hiroto a mocking kiss just as you finish the spell, use the mirror as a doorway into the underworld. The gentle pink of the blossoming sakura trees, the serene blue of the stream and pool, goes gray and white as you step between worlds: the mirror tarnishes and cracks once you are fully in the underworld, where Hiroto cannot follow. You are certain that his witch-auntie ally will be able to repair Hiroto's arm, sooner or later, but you do not wish him a gentle healing process.
Notes:
white-haired Persephone again.
As usual, his husband.
this is the symbol glittering on Hiroto's forehead
this is the symbol on Persephone's forehead except actually black and not gray. I can't find a better Midnight Caste caste mark reference atm, sorry.
Daiklaves - whether forged or created by a Charm - are usually, by default, oversized weapons. Persephone, in contrast to Hiroto, is wielding a normal-sized, mortal sword
here is a good reference for the size/shape of the weapon that Hiroto is wielding, except picture it literally made out of sunlight.
Memory #20
Date: 2020-05-15 05:44 am (UTC)Unfortunately, you had forgotten what day it was: the first tax day of the year, when the domain lord's collectors came for the taxes from the first harvest, and don't remember it until you are walking down the path towards your mother's home and cross paths with them, a woman and a man. Hear the end of their discussion about tax yields and quotas and a lot of economic things that you can't really follow very well because economics wasn't part of your education - but you know that they aren't pleased. That despite getting the exact quotas from the village, exact and no more, that the High Lady would want more. But how were they going to manage to convince them to part with more?
(They don't have more. You know this. You don't understand economics but you understand how much the village has and how much favor your prayers garner from the local gods and that each and every year, as the taxes go up, you still manage to garner enough prayer so that they have enough and only just enough to feed themselves and pay the taxes, but certainly no more than that-)
"What have we here?" the man asks, his eyes fixed on you, just before he reaches out and snags your collar just before you can step out of his reach. "Hello, maiden." the greeting is technically polite, but the underlying menace sends chills up your spine. "Now don't go anywhere just yet." he turns to his partner. "I think we've just found our...encouragement for the village."
"Are you mad?" the woman says, incredulously, to her compatriot. "Do you want to be eaten by the river god for laying a hand on his maiden?"
"Nothing says that we actually have to do the maiden any harm," the man says, shrugging with one shoulder, as his other hand grasps your collar. "It's just to put some pressure on the village-"
"Wait," the woman says, after another moment, horrified recognition filtering into her voice. "Look at their face. Those features. The river god won't get a chance to eat you though it would be better if he did- that's the White Lily's child!"
Her companion's jaw drops, equally horrified, just before he lets you go, but it's too late. Footsteps are coming closer, up the path, and you would know the sound of those steady, graceful footfalls anywhere.
Your mother comes walking up the path, much the same as she always has been, her hair wound in widow's braids. In her hand is a sickle - she had likely been at work just before this- but otherwise empty-handed and unarmored.
"Is there a problem?" your mother says, soft and casually, to the two tax collectors, who shrink back from her, shaking their heads. "Good."
She turns to you, and smiles, gentle and warm. "Welcome home."
Notes:
Persephone has black hair, not white, in this memory and is about 10 here. He's also dressed like this.
His mother is very obviously Amaranth.
Memory #21
Date: 2020-05-17 09:30 pm (UTC)Your ghostly companions don't bother you and it is a silent, serene day in the underworld - at least, until one of your ghosts comes fluttering up to you, all nervous energy.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," she says, "But you have a visitor."
A visitor? Really? You aren't expecting any calls from various deathknights on behalf of their masters, for once, and you've never brought...company...back to your home, so it's not likely to be that, either. Who could it possibly be?
"It's Serpent-Twined Graveflower," she says, wringing her hands. You hadn't expected her: your home is too quiet and boring for her tastes, a woman perpetually bored and trying to fill her time and life and mind with luxuries and over-indulgences to keep herself busy, both working and not working. "And she won't take no for an answer."
You sigh. Of course she wouldn't: she's the closest thing to an ally that you have and that isn't saying much, between her fair-weather selfishness and the fact that you're half the time at odds, your goals not aligning. All you wanted was a quiet day and yet, you can't even have that. You're not in the mood to deal with her overdramatic, lazy shallowness or her trying to recruit you for the Mask of Winters' service, but she also won't go away until she either gets what she wants or is tricked into leaving - ah, there's an idea.
"Send her here," you say, finally. "I'll deal with her."
The ghost- Auspicious Rose, though her life hadn't lived up to the hopes her parents had had for her -nods and drifts off.
"You," Flower says, from behind you, several minutes later. "Is Bride here? Tell me where he is."
You're dressed similarly to your ghostly companions, in flowing white with a white lily in your hair, and your back is to her.
"I'm sorry," you say, absolutely gently and demurely, sealing your words with a whisper of Essence: you are a gifted performer, even when you aren't even trying, casually flexing your skill. You know her overconfidence and the fact that she overlooks things that aren't a threat to her, doesn't read the people she deems unimportant. "You just missed him. Do you want me to pass on a message?"
Flower huffs, completely taken in. "No, I'll just find him later. Somewhere other than here. "
She turns on her heel and flounces off, pausing to pluck a lily and replace the faded blossom in her hair. You frown and behind her back, meet Rose's gaze, mouthing 'those are not for her' to her.
"Oh, Mistress, let me fix your hair for you." Rose says. "You've a leaf stuck just...there." With a deft hand, Rose swaps the lily Flower had taken for the one she'd had in her hair, and as you expected, Flower doesn't even notice.
"Finally, some respect around here," she mutters, as Rose leads her away.
Silence and stillness once more descend over the garden, and you return to your book.
Notes:
White-haired Persephone in this memory. He and Flower are also most notably the only things alive in this memory and the most obviously vibrant as his home is in the underworld.
Memory #22, cw: abusive relationships, age difference
Date: 2020-05-17 09:46 pm (UTC)(What can change the nature of a man? He has to want to change, and this man, like so many others, doesn't want to).
You don't want jewels and while you enjoy nice clothing and nice things, you have more than enough of already. Instead, your gaze falls on the single copy of a book, hidden under a few other books, and every bit as expensive as you expect: like your home, this domain doesn't invest in what would make books cheaper and more available. Most of the (few) books in this shop of luxuries, in this market of luxuries, are woodblock printed, likely from one of the temples or large shrines dedicated to this domain's major gods, but the single copy catching your eye is straight from the author's pen. Crimson Horizon's newest, the shopkeep tells you, in a hushed whisper, which explains why the book is hidden: rumor has it that she's an Anathema.
You like her books from what you've seen, though this is the first time you've actually seen a first-edition copy, straight from her pen, rather than a printing done by woodblock in a domain that actually invested in making books more widespread and only recently gotten around to banning her books and marking them for burning for subversive content. Crimson Horizon writes erotic romances for a wide variety of tastes and you have an occasional liking for reading ravishment fantasies featuring beautiful, sweet youths and handsome, terrible men, which is how you'd found some of her work in the first place. More importantly, her novels have a revolutionary character to it that you also enjoy, advocating for the overthrow of hierarchy and especially nobility.
Something is different about this book, however, subtly tugging at you, as you carefully glance through it - the whisper of Essence, you realize, after a moment. With a whisper of your own Essence, the magic in the book is laid bare to your gaze: Essence infuses the writing, presumably bent and shaped to Crimson Horizon's will, and while you aren't a writer anywhere near as skilled as her, what skill you possess and another whisper of Essence allows you to lay the patterns bare, to resist the pull (though you already share the same sentiments, so there is little the magic can do to affect you). The book is an inspiration to revolution - all her books are, but this one is like your songs, reaching for the heart, though hers is a brighter path than your Essence is capable of. And you know what to do.
"My jewel," your lover says, frowning, with a possessive, heavy hand on your shoulder. "What are you looking at?"
Nothing but a silly novel, you reassure him, gently lead him in circles around your desire for the book. Demure, graceful, never asking directly, but in the end, he buys it for you anyway - wouldn't you rather have more jewelry, he asks, but thinks better of it. Flowers suit you best, he says, stroking your hair - delicate, beautiful. And expensive, now that it's winter, he doesn't have to say, but you know, anyway. A waste of money, that could be better spent elsewhere, but the wealthy are like that.
You enjoy reading the book, take it slowly, even as winter wears on and your lover grows all the worse: already arrogant, already paranoid, already possessive, he slides more and more towards violence with each passing day. All his attention is on you, rather than the rest of his small harem, which is fine - you can bear it, better you than them, and you know the inevitable. But who will come after him to take his place, after the inevitable ending? Another petty princeling, someone else entitled and no better for the people?
"What are you reading?" Azure Star, one of the other members of the harem who is a few years older than you, asks you, one day, bored.
"It's a romance novel," you tell her. "Would you like to borrow it? You can lend it around after you're done, if you would like."
Azure's smile could almost light the room, for a moment, as she takes the book. "I'll give it back when we're all done," she says. "Promise."
Notes:
White-haired Persephone and he's wearing a really pretty, really fanservice-y kimono, worn in the fashion of the dead and it's in a pretty shade of blue. His lover is pretty obviously middle-aged.
I couldn't actually think of a setting-appropriate term for the equivalent of a bodice-ripper romance novel but that's what Crimson Horizon writes. You know, just also advocating revolution.
Memory #23, cw: abusive relationships, dubcon, consent issues, age difference, NSFW
Date: 2020-05-17 09:50 pm (UTC)Learn to anticipate his moods and his needs, how to soothe his temper before it builds, how to gently coax his troubles out of him and offer comfort and all with grace, finesse, and delicacy: being too obvious with placation will only make him irritated or upset, and men are the way they are. Learn what he likes and doesn't like and how he likes it, be beautiful and demure and an ornament, as well as keeping your eyes and ears open. It's hard work, in an entirely different way than your work as a shrine maiden, your work as intermediary with the gods, but you can apply many of the same skills.
You'd known what being a concubine meant before you'd married him: he married you for his comfort and pleasure, not yours, and you are fine with that. There are things that cannot remain, things that must be given up, and you'd learned, young, that your needs matter the least of all. So you stay in the house or the garden most of the time, read his half-dozen book collection that he'd spent so much money on, practice your dancing and singing and poetry recital or any of the ornamental skills you're expected to have: as much as you would like to visit your mother or your sisters, you know he's a jealous man and doesn't want you wandering too far and catching some other man's eyes. Especially the wrong man's eyes who won't respect the fact that you already belong to him (because men cannot control themselves). So your visits home are rare: your mother comes sometimes, when she can spare the time from farm work, or your sisters, but they are all busy too.
(You are one of the most beautiful people in all of the Hundred Kingdoms, even the entire East: eclipses the moon, shames flowers. The only reasons the tales of your beauty have taken so long to spread is that your village is remote and you have spent most of your life in seclusion of one kind or another. You remember what happened when he brought you to the domain court the one time, and you know that if you had grown up somewhere more populated, there would be no way your mother could have had a peaceful life. So you stay inside.)
Your needs, your wants, you don't consider too closely; they don't matter, and your focus is on pleasing your husband in every way that you can. Your efforts seem to be paying off, at least a little bit: he sometimes considers your advice, if you manage to present it in a subtle enough way that he'll listen to it, and his mood is better. His duties are stressful, as the area administrator, especially with High Lady Kaoru being...the way she is...but you can at least try to sway him. Careful, gently, not too overt. The one time you'd forgotten your place and been too forward with your advice, your husband had been...displeased.
("What does a former shrine maiden, sacred and secluded, know about politics?" his hand, heavy on your shoulder, possessive grip bruising-tight and a warning, far below his full strength. You're more careful the next time. You never say anything directly or certain: demure hesitance and uncertainty. You are not a spouse on equal ground, equal station. You never tell him no, not directly.)
But you think you've found the right balance, now, and you're patient. Patience and endurance, that's the key., and a careful, careful balance. You do find pleasure in your marriage bed: you hadn't entirely expected to, before your wedding night. You'd expected him to not be gentle, to be primarily concerned with his own pleasure - which had been right, and remains true, though he coaxes you into having yours, too, once he's had his. You aren't the one who determines how or when your body finds its pleasure, it's him, if he chooses to allow it, as is his right, though usually he does. He teaches you how he likes it, how to please him, and you're pleasing and graceful in this, too. You're learning.
And in the end, if all your efforts mean that you can make a difference, that's all you want. That, in the end, this will be enough.
Notes:
Black-haired Persephone in this memory and he looks the same age as he does now. Dressing in sapphire blue in this memory.
His husband. Who is fairly obviously sixteen years older than him.
Memory #24 (cw: threat of sexual violence/menace, age difference)
Date: 2020-08-13 04:01 pm (UTC)"I am," you say serenely. The wandering seer - or so he names himself, anyway -shrugs.
Even you have to admit this is a bit of a chancy plan. Normally, it wouldn't work - your husband normally favors female officers and soldiers in his army, having grown up in Tsubaki Province, served alongside and under many more women than men, and despite choosing to try to take power himself now, has not entirely lost all his sense. (As much as you hate to admit it. ) But t: his particular elite unit had been recruited from domains further away, that didn't follow the same norms and didn't understand how things should be. It's mostly men, led by a male officer, and it's that fact which gave you this idea: you know your appeal and how to exploit it, you've done it to so many men by now.
"I trust your capabilities, Bride." he says, making sure his dagger is close to hand and picking up the book he always carries with him. "But if something goes wrong -"
You can sense the worried violet star-eyes on you, but while he can say all he likes about helping you in case something goes wrong, you're used to having to solve your problems yourself. You can get yourself out of whatever happens, with or without his help - or endure whatever happens next.
~~~
It's not hard to find their quarters. They're quartered somewhat away from the rest of the city, though still within the walls.
"What is it?" the unit's commander asks, sounding suspicious, until Kirsi - still playing his part - draws down the hood of his cloak, revealing your face - and for a moment, there's silence. A flurry of whispers from somewhere behind you as Kirsi spins the tale that the two of you had woven together, about a courtesan who wanted to do his part to raise morale through a performance, though you're not certain most of them are even listening, their eyes firmly on you.
You have their attention, well before you even start performing, well before you draw off the cloak with a flourish to reveal your dancer's silks. You are the most beautiful youth in the Hundred Kingdoms, if not the entire East, and their eyes are on you, even before you dance, all unearthly grace and skill. Transcendent, perfect in every way, and you sing as you dance, songs that have nothing to do with war and the will to fight, and as they watch and listen to you, they forget their loyalties to your husband, forget what was so carefully drilled into them, forget everything except their desires. Base lust, obsessive love, and -
(the tension crackles, like a storm about to break-)
"You've done enough," Kirsi whispers, urgently, in your ear, and then the cloak - and his arms - are around you, just before he steps between you and them, calling out clear that the show is over. (You don't need his protection, you can take care of yourself-) You can hear the flurry of angry whispers, angry shouting, and it's only a matter of time, not long, before violence breaks out, as any and each of them would do anything to have you, It's only a matter of time, whether they fight amongst themselves or attack Kirsi or both, and you don't know which will happen first, except that it will-
(So beautiful and beloved that kings and princes would draw swords and kill in order to possess you-)
You don't see which of them throws the first punch, except that soon after, a brawl breaks out, almost alarmingly quickly, all cohesion forgotten. Dimly, you can see a hand reaching for a dagger, and Kirsi immediately frowns.
"Time to go," he mutters, and grabs you up over his shoulder while the soldiers are distracted. He doesn't waste time and he's already leaping up, bouncing onto a nearby railing, seeming not even burdened with your weight, and then from there to a nearby rooftop, leaping from roof to roof with lithe agility, not even missing a step. He could have put you down when you were well away from the soldiers but instead he doesn't until you're well out of town, dropping down next to the river and setting you down. Doesn't take his cloak off you, but just leaves it.
"That was...exciting," he says, ruefully, crossing his arms over his chest: he's very stiff in his body language, you notice, extremely tense. "But extremely...effective. Though you probably shouldn't come back here for...a while."
"I wasn't planning on it," you say, gently. You have other things to be doing, both on this side of Creation and in the Underworld, and returning to this town now that you've broken the morale of this unit is not something you plan on doing.
"Good," Kirsi says, even more awkwardly. "You'll be alright for yourself for a little while, right?"
You've been alright by yourself since before the wandering seer ever found you, and you both know it. "Of course," you say, demurely, without a trace of bitterness in your voice. "Do you have something you need to do?"
Kirsi swallows, hard. "I just. Need to be elsewhere," he says, his voice strangled despite how he tries to speak like nothing's wrong, hands clenching at his sides. Immediately, you recognize the problem: Kirsi (who already wanted you, though he's remarkably restrained in his desires and refuses to act on them) must have been caught by your performance as well, even if only by the edges of it. And entirely refuses to give in, despite how much he wants: it's almost admirable, really, given how men are and have been around you since you grew from a very pretty child into a youth of legendary beauty (eclipses the moon, shames flowers), despite when you tease him, testing what he'll do, to see when he'll crack and just take what he wants. Like any other man: you don't expect better, in the end. "I'll..return when I can. Take care."
And immediately, without hesitation, he just jumps into the cold water and allows the current to bear him away.
Notes:
Kirsi. His most distinctive feature is his eyes, which are a deep, clear and unusual shade of purple with stars in them. Like, he literally has constellations in his eyes if you look closely enough. He also looks like he's in his mid-thirties.
So, that performance? It's pretty clearly beyond mortal limits. Like, this performance is like legendary once-in-a-lifetime level for even a skilled genius and he just like...did it.
Memory #25 (cw: abusive relationships, age difference, domestic violence, threat of murder-)
Date: 2021-01-13 02:10 am (UTC)Time goes by, and everything gets worse. High Lady Kaoru's paranoia, backed by her decrees, is an ever-present oppressive pressure weighing down, and it only grows worse and worse: the taxes go up, again, and even though you try your best to gently, demurely influence your husband, there is only so much you can do. Offer soft, delicate suggestions in what veiled, circumspect ways that you can ("what does a shrine maiden know about politics?") , offer what prayers you can, because the gods will still hear even though you are no longer their maiden and never will be again, try to soothe his increasingly-fraying and increasingly-awful temper the best you can, in whatever ways you can.
(It's not enough. You know it's not enough. But you still have to try-)
What is the domain lord so paranoid about? Your mother's continued existence, for one, though she has no ambition and is content to live her peaceful life in the confines of your village: your mother is a powerful Prince of the Earth as well, perhaps even more powerful than Kaoru herself, legendary and beloved. The more she wants nothing, the more paranoid Kaoru becomes, and it isn't helped by the rumors of war among the other domain lords and petty princes.
(As if it ever stops, here in the Hundred Kingdoms, but close enough to worry, except no one would dare to disturb the peace of the White Lily's village. but that fear did not extend for safety for the rest of Kaoru's domain-)
Night after night after night, you watch your husband with his paperwork spread around him and Kaoru's decrees. (And you look at it during the day, when he is out doing his duty as local area administrator, and quietly pass on the information-). The strain on him is clear. caught between how he would personally want to rule, faced with the needs of his people, and the unyielding, harsh demands of High Lady Kaoru, who will not allow him any leeway, and he is merely mortal, unable to defy the will of a Prince of the Earth at least not without consequences, and it only grows worse, the tension of a situation that is unable to give, unable to change, but will. (it will break and bend and snap-) And -
Miura Hiroto was never a gentle man or a kind husband, but he only grows worse during these dark months. He grows more jealous and more controlling and more possessive: your husband already had a temper, though he kept it in check most of the time before this, and you're careful to anticipate his needs, to anticipate his moods, to keep him calm, no more than the occasional broken sake or tea cup in his hands or very, very occasional thrown object, aimed for the wall. Nothing breakable.
Tonight, another sake cup is cracked in his hand, just before you start singing, gentle and sweet, and watch as his expression smooths out as he listens, though his eyes are still dark.
"Ah, my flower..." he murmurs, gaze focused on you. There is something terrifying in his eyes, as well as something almost soft, and- "This world really doesn't deserve you."
Your husband reaches out and rests his hand on your throat with the barest of pressure as you go still, so very still,, but you know the carefully controlled strength in his hands. The threat is there: he could kill you, easily, and you also know that he is thinking about it. That he could. That he will, one way or another.
(He lets you go, tonight, but that is tonight, and-)
If he hurts you, come home. your mother had said, but you hadn't, because he wasn't hurting you, not really, not in any way that mattered or counted. Come home.
But you know you can't, even now that the lines are clear for you to see, because if you do, your mother will kill him. She'll kill him and the domain lord, ever-paranoid, (especially about your mother, who is legendary and powerful and independent) will see your village as in rebellion (too soon, much too soon) and have you all killed, and you can't let that happen. You can't.
(But if your husband kills you, and your mother kills him for it, it would be a justified act. Even High Lady Kaoru, brutal and paranoid, would not be able to see the shadow of rebellion in a grieving mother's retribution. It would buy more time, and that's what they need, more than anything, time.
You are no kind of leader, nothing of the kind, but you can be a symbol, and-)
Not tonight, you know, and not tomorrow night, but sometime, sometime, sometime, your husband will kill you. It will happen, inevitable as the tide, as the sun and moon and stars in the sky, and all there is to do is wait a little longer. You were going to die when you were still the maiden, too, and you'd accepted it then, and you accept it now, and all you really wanted and all you really want is to make a difference to the people you love, to make your death mean something-
Notes:
Black-haired Persephone.
So...yeah. Just...yeah. It should be fairly easy to tell that Hiroto is in love, just also said love is extremely, extremely, extremely fucked up.
They're both mortals, here.
Memory #26 (cw: self-sacrifice to the point of suicidal ideation)
Date: 2021-11-09 04:38 am (UTC)(This is the price you pay, and it is a price you pay willingly-)
When you aren't actively doing your duties as a shrine maiden, you spend more and more time resting. Sometimes in the garden, but more and more often in your bedroom, looking out the window into the garden as you rest in bed, saving your strength for your work. You can barely eat, even the tropical fruit that Lord Miura continues to pay for for...some reason is too heavy. Someone - perhaps the shrine scrapes together the money, perhaps Lord Miura, you don't know who - pays for a physician to come from the domain capital.
(You submit to their examinations, drink their bitter medicines, but you already know what the answer will be-)
"Maiden," the physician says, their face grave, and you know that this is the answer they will give the shrine as well. "If you do not step down, you will die."
(But what else can you do? You would not mind if you died dancing, if you could make a difference for those you love-)
Notes:
Persephone is about 15-16 in this memory: it's sometime after memory #14, for those who saw that.
He's dressed like this. He also has black hair in this memory, not white.