Post by max on Feb 14, 2013 12:19:03 GMT 10
Title: Crypsis for beginners
Rating: PG
MPP: #77 – There and back again.
Summary: The more things change, the more they don’t stay the same. Kel-centric. AU.
Notes: There’s a shift in tone and everyone’s probably totally OOC but that’s what you get in AUs, right?
‘You have no need to worry,’ Yuki tells her, stepping back to survey Kel’s appearance a final time – the rice paint, the darkened lashes. Her hair fastened by lacquered Jindadzhen combs dripping ornamental flowers – before reaching out to straighten the sleeve of her haori with a smooth finality. ‘You look beautiful.’
And Yuki never lies – Kel knows this – but she looks down at her hands, clasped loosely in a semblance of calm when she is anything but, and says ‘You weren’t here last time,’ because she wasn’t.
Her voice is softer than usual. This is the only outward indication of how nervous she is, but more than enough for any Yamani to realise the coiling sea creature her insides twist with. Yuki frowns and from his position by the door, Renji offers, ‘Be as stone’ – but he doesn’t have to go at all.
‘Perhaps you would be better served if you were as jade,’ Shinko suggests, walking into the room behind them and waving away the bows they are in the process of addressing to her as she does so. ‘But you ought to feel Yuki is right.’
‘As I invariably am.’
And as always, Kel feels herself relax at the sight of Shinkokami: luminous and so very lovely in her silk and jewels. Her father’s disgrace hadn’t long outlasted the burgeoning of her beauty, the cool serenity she seems to radiate. Calm even in the face of her marriage to a barbarian prince (‘After all,’ she had said, when word came of the Emperor’s wish, ‘Some of my best friends are easterners’); calm when they had been obliged to fight the rogue clans who had tried to kidnap her en route to the ship to prevent the marriage. And as Haname tows her over to a full-length mirror, Kel realises how perfectly silly she is being.
It has been five years now, after all.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑ
Beneath her lashes (eyes modestly lowered) Kel watches the ballroom as she descends the grand staircase with Haname and Yuki. There, the training master who had sent her away. Neal, who had written to her from that first summer and until he was squired to the Lionness, when she stopped writing back. The boys she had fought with – squires now: for the most part she has forgotten their names, if not their faces – the boys she had studied with. Beautiful, terrible Joren. Seaver, whom she had saved. They approach the dais and she sees Zahir standing in Conte colours behind the king, who had broken his own laws. The Queen, who had let him.
As one, she and her friends rise from their bows, but in this moment she registers the prince’s eyes on her alone. And – questioningly and curiously and in a way she will later regret but is at the time wholly inadvertent, (t)he(i)r gaze locks.
For a moment there is nothing but this sightline between them.
She notices his eyes are a deeper, more secret blue than his father’s famously effulgent pair.
She feels the air around the two of them somehow tighten.
‘Lady Keladry,’ the king says, the warm way in which he feigns friendliness. She thinks the Emperor entertains no such pretences because he is an honourable man, and smiles politely. ‘Your radiance tonight is surely second only to your mistress’.’
‘Your majesty is very kind,’ she responds, unhooking her focus from Roald, though her senses are now completely attuned to him. ‘To remember this servant of the princess.’
She accepts the Queen’s laughed ‘Nonsense!’ and a compliment to her mother – she had learnt court talk when she went back to Yaman. Had decided on the voyage west that if duty were to be spoken in a different language because she was a girl, there would be no other choice for her but fluency.
But then Roald says, ‘It is good to see you again, Lady Kel,’ and there is a different weight behind the words than those she had exchanged with his parents. A different way in which he meets her eyes with his own, oceanic pair.
Because she has held duty above everything else since she was a child, she was asked to accompany the princess to Tortall. Because Shinko is one of her dearest friends, she had come. So – knowing the trap this time – she doesn’t meet his eyes when she says, ‘And you, your highness.’
But between them, she feels an invisible thread bleed red anyway.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑ
They move on, and Yuki whispers, ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ ignoring the gentle, inconspicuous way Haname nudges her for speaking Yamani where they had agreed they would not. Through her lashes, Kel sees that the eyes of all the young men in the room are following them: the power of their beauty like the power she had been denied in her erstwhile life by these very people; a mantle that settles over the kimono the Emperor had given them for this occasion. She leans into her friend and nods.
Roald’s eyes on hers the dark, wild colour of the western sea. The cool shock of knowledge that had coursed between them and the secret spreading like a dark creeper over the walls of her heart.
Shinko, whom she loves. Who had taught her how to orchestrate a presentation with all the precision of a general at war and now sits, glittering, in silk of pale gold.
She had had every reason to worry about returning here.
They had worried she would destroy their world if she had been a page.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑ
Renji is just a random name I gave a random guard, if you were wondering.
Red threads.
Crypsis.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Rating: PG
MPP: #77 – There and back again.
Summary: The more things change, the more they don’t stay the same. Kel-centric. AU.
Notes: There’s a shift in tone and everyone’s probably totally OOC but that’s what you get in AUs, right?
‘You have no need to worry,’ Yuki tells her, stepping back to survey Kel’s appearance a final time – the rice paint, the darkened lashes. Her hair fastened by lacquered Jindadzhen combs dripping ornamental flowers – before reaching out to straighten the sleeve of her haori with a smooth finality. ‘You look beautiful.’
And Yuki never lies – Kel knows this – but she looks down at her hands, clasped loosely in a semblance of calm when she is anything but, and says ‘You weren’t here last time,’ because she wasn’t.
Her voice is softer than usual. This is the only outward indication of how nervous she is, but more than enough for any Yamani to realise the coiling sea creature her insides twist with. Yuki frowns and from his position by the door, Renji offers, ‘Be as stone’ – but he doesn’t have to go at all.
‘Perhaps you would be better served if you were as jade,’ Shinko suggests, walking into the room behind them and waving away the bows they are in the process of addressing to her as she does so. ‘But you ought to feel Yuki is right.’
‘As I invariably am.’
And as always, Kel feels herself relax at the sight of Shinkokami: luminous and so very lovely in her silk and jewels. Her father’s disgrace hadn’t long outlasted the burgeoning of her beauty, the cool serenity she seems to radiate. Calm even in the face of her marriage to a barbarian prince (‘After all,’ she had said, when word came of the Emperor’s wish, ‘Some of my best friends are easterners’); calm when they had been obliged to fight the rogue clans who had tried to kidnap her en route to the ship to prevent the marriage. And as Haname tows her over to a full-length mirror, Kel realises how perfectly silly she is being.
It has been five years now, after all.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑ
Beneath her lashes (eyes modestly lowered) Kel watches the ballroom as she descends the grand staircase with Haname and Yuki. There, the training master who had sent her away. Neal, who had written to her from that first summer and until he was squired to the Lionness, when she stopped writing back. The boys she had fought with – squires now: for the most part she has forgotten their names, if not their faces – the boys she had studied with. Beautiful, terrible Joren. Seaver, whom she had saved. They approach the dais and she sees Zahir standing in Conte colours behind the king, who had broken his own laws. The Queen, who had let him.
As one, she and her friends rise from their bows, but in this moment she registers the prince’s eyes on her alone. And – questioningly and curiously and in a way she will later regret but is at the time wholly inadvertent, (t)he(i)r gaze locks.
For a moment there is nothing but this sightline between them.
She notices his eyes are a deeper, more secret blue than his father’s famously effulgent pair.
She feels the air around the two of them somehow tighten.
‘Lady Keladry,’ the king says, the warm way in which he feigns friendliness. She thinks the Emperor entertains no such pretences because he is an honourable man, and smiles politely. ‘Your radiance tonight is surely second only to your mistress’.’
‘Your majesty is very kind,’ she responds, unhooking her focus from Roald, though her senses are now completely attuned to him. ‘To remember this servant of the princess.’
She accepts the Queen’s laughed ‘Nonsense!’ and a compliment to her mother – she had learnt court talk when she went back to Yaman. Had decided on the voyage west that if duty were to be spoken in a different language because she was a girl, there would be no other choice for her but fluency.
But then Roald says, ‘It is good to see you again, Lady Kel,’ and there is a different weight behind the words than those she had exchanged with his parents. A different way in which he meets her eyes with his own, oceanic pair.
Because she has held duty above everything else since she was a child, she was asked to accompany the princess to Tortall. Because Shinko is one of her dearest friends, she had come. So – knowing the trap this time – she doesn’t meet his eyes when she says, ‘And you, your highness.’
But between them, she feels an invisible thread bleed red anyway.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑ
They move on, and Yuki whispers, ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ ignoring the gentle, inconspicuous way Haname nudges her for speaking Yamani where they had agreed they would not. Through her lashes, Kel sees that the eyes of all the young men in the room are following them: the power of their beauty like the power she had been denied in her erstwhile life by these very people; a mantle that settles over the kimono the Emperor had given them for this occasion. She leans into her friend and nods.
Roald’s eyes on hers the dark, wild colour of the western sea. The cool shock of knowledge that had coursed between them and the secret spreading like a dark creeper over the walls of her heart.
Shinko, whom she loves. Who had taught her how to orchestrate a presentation with all the precision of a general at war and now sits, glittering, in silk of pale gold.
She had had every reason to worry about returning here.
They had worried she would destroy their world if she had been a page.
ᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑᴑ
Renji is just a random name I gave a random guard, if you were wondering.
Red threads.
Crypsis.
Happy Valentine's Day!
