Post by devilinthedetails on Feb 17, 2021 2:31:13 GMT 10
Title: Love's Labyrinth
Rating: PG-13 for racism and sexism.
Word Count: 4009
Summary: Across the years and the distance, Gwynnen loves Gary.
Love’s Labyrinth
Lost Ribbons and Prickly Bushes
Gwynnen was a child of the court, and so was Gary. She spent the long, hazy summer of her youth--all seasons felt like the gloriously free expanse of summer to a child innocent of political wrangling and cunning court games--running wild as the restless winds rustling the leaves in the Royal Forest.
One of her earliest memories consisted of giggling and shrieking as she darted through a labyrinth of hedgerows made even harder to navigate by a gray mist off the Olorun.
The mist clung to the silk of her dress like morning dew sticking to green shoots of grass. Her feet were flying because Gary was hot on her heels, threatening to pull on her braids and tug the ribbons out of her hair that was copper as the soil of the rolling eastern hills where she had been born on her father’s fief.
Mother claimed Gary pulled on her braids and tugged the ribbons out of her hair because he liked her, but, as usual, Mother didn’t know what she was talking about. Gwynnen had the mischievous spirit of youth dancing inside her, and so she could recognize it in others. That’s how she understood that Gary only chased after her to pull on her braids and tug out her ribbons because it was a fun prank, and he was teasing her as he did everyone else. Gary could no more have stopped teasing and pranking anyone he met that he could have stopped breathing.
Her flying feet must have taken her down a wrong turn for she found herself racing straight at a dead end of shrubbery that promised to be extremely thorny.
She glanced over her shoulder to check if she had the time and space to flee in a different direction. She saw that she didn’t. Gary, a wicked grin lighting his face like jagged lightning slicing across a summer sky, was only a few paces behind her.
Preparing for the inevitable and unavoidable pain, Gwynnen plunged into the bushes. Prickles like a hundred needles stabbing her where she wasn’t wearing a thimble jabbed at her skin through the thin fabric of her dress as she crossed through the hedges and emerged with numerous small scrapes her nursemaid would cluck over later on the opposite side.
By that point, her hair was in disarray. Strands of it had fallen out of her once-neat braids, and two ribbons had somehow gotten caught on a pair of branches. She could see them fluttering like pennants at a tournament in the enshrouding mist.
Before she could grab them, Gary’s hand stretched through the bush, and he snatched them with a triumphant crow that quickly transformed into a yelp like a dog kicked for stealing meat from the dinner table.
“That bush prickles!” Gary’s hand retreated as rapidly as it had advanced. “It’s like grasping a porcupine!”
“Serves you right for chasing after a young lady and trying to steal her ribbons.” Gwynnen stuck out her tongue, pleased that he had gotten pricked for teasing her.
“A young lady.” Gary’s laugh was mocking, but that somehow made Gwynnen smile until she thought her face might break. “A young lady wouldn’t tear her dresses and lose her ribbons in thorny bushes as often as you do.”
Spiders and Snake Eyes
Most of the girls growing up at court were scared of spiders and would squeak like shy mice and frightened weasels whenever they saw one, but Gwynnen wasn’t intimidated by them.
When Gary dropped a spider into most girls’ hair or onto the folds of her dress, she would scream and run from the room, fingers frantically seeking to dislodge the offending arachnid.
However, when Gary dumped a spider on Gwynnen, she would remain cool as water in a spring brook. She’d gently remove the spider from her gown or hair and let it crawl across her palm for a minute, tickling her skin. She’d observe the movements of its many long legs before setting it softly on the floor to resume weaving webs in windows and corners to make less valiant girls squeal like soon-to-be-slaughtered pigs.
Since she wasn’t scared of the spiders he dropped on her, Gary soon nicknamed her snake eyes. When she asked him why he called her that, he looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes the color of Midwinter chestnuts roasting over an open fire. “Your eyes are reptile green, snake green, aren’t they? And snakes eat spiders and a host of other animals, don’t they? So it seems appropriate.”
“I don’t eat spiders.” Gwynnen rolled her snake eyes. “I’m just not terrified of them like other girls.”
“I don’t let facts interfere with the creation of fun nicknames.” Gary nudged her with a shoulder, and that was how she was dubbed Snake Eyes, an epithet that stuck with her through the years like mud on a ruined pair of fancy shoes.
Over time, the nickname became a mark of Gary’s affection for her, a sign of their friendship. As it did so, it became less annoying for its inaccuracy and more endearing. Time could smooth over the wrinkles of any childhood irritation, transfiguring it into something that shimmered with the silver veneer of nostalgia.
Horror Stories and All Hallow’s Eve
On All Hallow’s Eve, the court children stayed up late into the night when the black veil separating the living and the dead was pulled back, allowing restless souls to roam the world.
They would eat crisp, tart Olau apples sweetened with brown caramel that stuck to their fingers like threads of a destroyed spider web as they gathered in circles illuminated by the flickering candles.
In these circles, they would exchange ancient stories that expressed all the most primordial fears of humanity. Widows who could not remain in their graves because their husbands had been lost to battles on distant borderlands where spilled blood could reshape maps. Ghosts of mothers who creaked the cradles of dead sons and daughters who had been buried as babies long ago. Shades of soldiers who spent eternity marching into a fight they had lost centuries past. Spirits of anger, grief, and loss. Spirits of the past who refused to accept that the past was the past, and so dragged it horrifyingly into the present.
On All Hallow’s Eve, Gary, caramel dripping like old blood from his lips, would tell the best, most delightfully terrifying tales. Tales that made a shiver ripple through the entire circle of spellbound listeners who couldn’t help but gasp when Gary revealed the dreadful twists of his story.
Watching Gary relate his terrifying tales with a wide-eyed mixture of fear and admiration, Gwynnen wondered if he could provoke such horror and heart-pounding tension in them because he read more than all of them combined. Because he studied his history more than any of them, and what was history except horror after horror, pain after pain, wrong after wrong? And what was reading without the savoring of tension--the celebration of drama and tragedy?
Strawberry Summer Kisses
In the past, it had been Gary who made Gwynnen run from him as he sought to pull her braids and tug the ribbons from her hair, but, one summer, Gwynnen defiantly decided that she would flip the tables on him.
She would force him to be the one to flee from her as she hunted him down to steal fleeting summer kisses.
Whenever she caught him and planted a kiss on his lips, he would wipe it away with a scowl and a swipe of his sleeve. Yet, he couldn’t wipe the memory of the kisses from Gwynnen’s mind so easily. She remembered the feel of his mouth wriggling beneath hers. She remembered how she could taste the strawberries they had picked and shoveled into their mouths lingering like a long, lazy sunset on his lips. She remembered the warmth of his sun-burned mouth.
She was certain that she would forever remember the fleeting summer kisses that she planted on Gary’s lips. It didn’t matter how swiftly he attempted to erase them with an embarrassed swipe of his sleeve.
Firefly Wishes
Gary’s last summer before he began page training, he and Gwynnen ran through the palace courtyards and gardens, chasing and catching a thousand fireflies.
Whenever their hands enclosed the lantern lights of fireflies, they would make a wish on the firefly before releasing it into the sky along with their hope.
Every time she captured and freed a firefly that summer, Gwynnen wished that Gary never had to begin page training. That he would never have to grow up and neither would she. That they could remain this age forever, eternally chasing fireflies in courtyards and gardens heady with the scent of blooming zinnias and dahlias.
She never shared these wishes with Gary, of course. Everyone who didn’t have rocks rattling in their skulls where they should have brains knew that wishes had to remain unspoken. Voicing wishes somehow made them lose their power and magic. Gwynnen didn’t know why any more than she knew why dropped objects plummeted to the ground. She only knew that this was so. That it was one of the laws of the universe in which she lived.
Duck Pond Discussion
Gwynnen stared into the duck pond, watching the water dimple in a spring drizzle as the ducks paddled their way through the narrow straits between lily pads. Droplets pattered onto her cloak from the weeping willow arched overhead, and she found the sound oddly soothing as she contemplated her miserable situation.
Soon she would be exiled to the convent where the priestesses would have the doubtlessly hopeless duty of turning her into a proper court lady suitable for a noble marriage she didn’t want when she could be running wild through courtyards and gardens. She had overheard her parents speaking of her fate this morning.
“She must be sent to the convent soon,” her mother had said. “She can’t be allowed to continue to run wild like this. She needs to be taught a lady’s proper graces and prepared for the best marriage we can arrange for her.”
“She never should have been allowed to run this wild,” her father had responded curtly. “It was a failing on the part of the nursemaids you hired that she was. It’s their fault that her dresses are always torn and there are brambles knotted into her hair whenever I see her.”
Listening to this, Gwynnen had felt her blood boil at how her father blamed her devoted nursemaids for her failings, instead of placing the blame on her where it belonged.
“The nursemaids have let her become wild as a Bazhir savage.” Gwynnen hadn’t needed to see her mother to know her mother’s lip was curling with contempt. “Even her skin is almost as brown as a Bazhir savage’s, because she’s allowed to spend too much time in the sun, and that ruins her complexion.”
Complexion was very important to Mother, who was very invested in a stringent skin care regime that demanded frequent use of vinegar on her face to keep her cheeks pale and the application of oatmeal to any freckles or spots she judged to be unsightly in an often unsuccessful effort to remove them.
Complexion was not so important to Gwynnen who thought the constellation of freckles speckling her nose gave her something interesting to look at in a mirror. She didn’t want a boring face that fit some ideal of feminine beauty. She wanted her own face however brown and freckled from the sun.
She probably wouldn’t be able to spend much time in the sun at the convent, Gwynnen reflected gloomily as she gazed into the murky depths of the duck pond. At the convent, going outside at all would likely be heavily restricted and monitored. Likely the belief was that delicate young ladies did not require much exercise or air at all to survive. She might just wither and die from lack of sunlight at the convent.
The sound of boots splashing through the puddles on the stone path behind her made her twist around to see who was approaching her. The tension coiled inside her eased as she realized it was Gary.
He joined her at the muddy edge of the pond, holding out a loaf of bread to her. “I pilfered this from the kitchens. Thought you might like to feed the ducks while you tell me why you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying.” Gwynnen ripped off chunks of bread and tossed them into the water for the quacking ducks to devour and quarrel over. She wished that the tear tracks on her cheeks and her red-rimmed eyes didn’t supply so much incriminating evidence to betray her weakness and her lie. “I’m just going to be exiled to the convent.”
“It won’t be so bad.” Gary threw lumps of his own bread into the duck. “It’ll only be six years or so until you’re free. Less if the priestesses decide you’re a hopeless case even they can’t civilize. It’s not like you’re training to be a knight and have to endure eight years of misery, Snake Eyes.”
“Speaking of training to be a knight, aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Gwynnen arched an eyebrow.
“I’m cutting class, but what does it matter?” Gary shrugged. “I already know from my own reading almost everything the monks try to teach us, and I sensed you needed my company this morning.”
“How did you sense it?” Gwynnen hated how watery and tearful her voice sounded.
“Because we’ve been friends since we were little.” Gary ruffled her hair, a gesture that was only possible because after his latest growth spurt he was now a head taller than her. “Childhood friends can just sense things like that. Write to me from the convent telling me how terrible your lessons are, and I’ll return the favor by writing to you about all the bumps and bruises I sustain on my misguided quest for knighthood.”
Gwynnen chuckled and found that she felt at least marginally better. Marginally better was all she could expect with her exile to the convent looming over her.
Long-Distance Letters
Gwynnen did write to Gary from the convent. She told him how she struggled to remember which fork she was supposed to use for which course at banquets. How the priestesses chided her for a shrill singing voice that could make the glass window panes rattle. How her attempts at lute-playing made the priestesses worry she was tone-deaf. How her dancing earned her accusations of having two left feet. How her clumsy curtsies, never lowered to the right degree or sustained for the appropriate length of time--a time that made her knees ache, only reinforced that impression.
More than that, she related how she had become best friends with a girl named Cythera of Elden. How she had thought at first she wouldn’t like Cythera because she had been jealous of how the priestesses fawned over her blond, blue-eyed beauty and perfect manners, but how she had discovered the true sweetness and kindness behind the perfect manners. How she had learned that there wasn’t anything shallow about Cythera despite initial appearances. How Cythera was all substance and more resilient than she appeared. Cythera had needed to be resilient, she explained, losing her mother so early in her life.
In return, Gary wrote to her about the mishaps and misadventures of his knighthood training. He related in glorious, unapologetic detail the pranks he pulled and the resultant punishments. He seemed to take particular pride in kissing the notoriously ugly Lady Roxanne on a dare even if it did confine him to the palace for what felt like a century as he explained in his not-at-all-rueful letter on this subject. He even joked about how Gwynnen might some day introduce him to the paragon of beauty and sweetness that was her friend Cythera, and Gwynnen rolled her eyes, because everything was a joke to Gary.
She shared some of Gary’s jokes and pranks with Cythera because glimpses of life outside the convent were rare and treasured by all the girls. Cythera would giggle at these stories, and her eyes blue as a summer sky would sparkle as if in sunlight.
“He’s very clever and funny your friend, isn’t he?” Cythera’s cheeks had a strange pink flush, and Gwynnen wondered if she was feeling feverish. Fever was likely the best explanation for Cythera uttering such an obvious comment as if it were insightful.
“Of course he is.” Gwynnen gave an unladylike snort that would’ve earned her a reproachful glance and a punishment essay about the importance of avoiding impolite noises if a priestess had heard it. “All my friends are clever and funny. I wouldn’t be able to stomach having them as friends if they weren’t.”
Changes and Dances
“Gareth the Younger of Naxen.” Gwynnen dipped a curtsy that had over the years become acceptable to the priestesses, trying to prevent her eyes from widening in shock at how much her childhood friend had changed since she last saw him. He was a knight of the realm who towered over her now, and his shoulders were broad and strong. Looking at him, she couldn’t imagine him as the boy who had once chased her through a labyrinth to tug the ribbons from her braids or who had fled when she planted summer kisses on his lips. Yet somehow that boy must still be inside this man standing before her now. “A pleasure to see you again.”
“I’m sorry.” A furrow appeared in Gary’s forehead, and Gwynnen knew with some satisfaction that she wasn’t the only one who had difficulty recognizing a childhood friend who had grown up while distance had kept them apart. “Have we been introduced, Lady--”
“Gwynnen,” she supplied, tart as lemon.
“Snake Eyes.” Gary bowed gallantly, which was another change since he had never bowed to her before. His gaze roved over her as he rose, and Gwynnen sensed that he too was evaluating how much she had changed since they last saw each other. “Forgive me. I didn’t recognize you with an untorn, unstained dress and no brambles in your hair.”
“You were often the one making me run so I’d tear and stain my dress or get brambles in my hair,” she retorted just to prove that not everything about her had changed.
“Indeed I was.” The mischief in Gary’s eyes showed he hadn’t entirely changed either. Extending his hand to her as the musicians in the corner of the ballroom struck up a fresh tune, “Will you allow me to make amends? May I have this dance, my lady?”
“You may.” Gwynnen permitted him to guide her onto the dance floor, where they joined the swirling couples, her unstained and untorn gown swaying about her ankles in its own seductive form of music.
“I hope you don’t still have two left feet,” Gary teased, and Gwynnen was happy he had remembered the accounts of her dancing lessons at the convent from the letters she had sent him.
“Only one way to find out.” She laughed, tossing her head so that her copper hair cascaded down her back. “You must dance with me, or we’ll never know.”
Gary did dance with her. He spun her all across the dance floor as the music faded into the background, lost in her joy at being wrapped in Gary’s arms. At being reunited with him at last, and discovering that he hadn’t changed in any important way during all their years apart.
Picnicking and Pairing
“You are old friends with Lady Cythera,” Gary remarked to Gwynnen as they sat side-by-side on the same blanket at a court picnic. An elm overhead provided shade from the sun.
“I don’t like being called ‘old.’” Gwynnen as she stabbed her fork into her slice of mallard pie. “Few ladies do, in fact. Including Lady Cythera.”
“I wasn’t calling you old. I was commenting on how well-acquainted with the beautiful Lady Cythera you are.” Gary looked at her but only as a friend. Not as he looked at Lady Cythera. Not as if he saw a potential lover and future wife. Goddess knew, Gwynnen would’ve given every piece of jewelry she owned for Gary to gaze at her just once as he did Lady Cythera. “Since you’re in Lady Cythera’s good graces, I thought you might be so kind as to tell me whether I might have cause to hope that Lady Cythera could ever take an interest in me or return my affections?”
Gwynnen remembered how Cythera flushed and giggled in Gary’s presence. How she complimented him for his cleverness and his keen wit. Even the smartest of men were truly oblivious in matters of love, Gwynnen thought. Any girl could’ve seen how Cythera was attracted to Gary.
“I can’t speak for Lady Cythera of course.” Gwynnen told herself that she would not stand in the way if Gary and Cythera fell in love. That she wouldn’t be selfish and focused on her own desires. That she would be truly happy for them, sharing in their joy as if it were her own, no matter how much it hurt to see Gary end up with someone else when she was starting to realize that across the years and the distance, she had come to love Gary herself. “However, I do think she would be interested if you expressed interest in her, and that she might come to return your affections if you offered them to her.”
“I’ll do that then.” Gary leaned over to peck her on the cheek. “Thank you. You are a good friend to me.”
A good friend but nothing else, Gwynnen thought and was surprised by how the idea could be a lance of pain in her heart.
Maid of Honor
“Gary proposed to me!” Cythera was bubbling with excitement. “I’m going to be married! Will you be my maid of honor, Gwynnen?”
Gwynnen didn’t have time to force an answer from between lips that felt frozen in a sudden frost, because Cythera hugged her and went on, “Oh, say that you will, darling. Both Gary and I want you to be maid of honor! It would mean so much to us!”
“Of course I’ll be maid of honor.” Gwynnen returned Cythera’s embrace and made her numb lips smile. “I’m so happy for you two, and the joy you’ve found together.”
That was what true love and friendship demanded, Gwynnen told herself. She had to watch from a distance as Gary and Cythera exchanged their vows and discovered their happy ending with her only as the humble maid of honor to Cythera’s beautiful bride. Loving them, being their friend, meant feeling their joy as if it were her own, and ignoring her own pain. It meant being selfless.
“We’ll find a good, clever man for you too.” Cythera gave Gwynnen a final squeeze before releasing her. “Don’t worry.”
“My man can wait.” Gwynnen laughed at the ever-kind Cythera’s lopsided priorities. “We have a wedding plan. We have to decide what dress you’re going to wear and what flowers you’re going to hold as you walk down the aisle. We have to decide what food will be served at the banquet, what music will be played, and what the decorations will be. We have to…”
“Gary said you’d be an absolute tyrant about the wedding plans,” Cythera interrupted with a flick of her fan. “He was right.”
“Yes, I am going to be an absolute tyrant about the wedding plans.” Gwynnen gave a smug nod. “Your wedding to Gary is going to be the most perfect one in history if I have anything to do with it.”
That would be her gift to Gary and to Cythera. Her way of wishing them love and happiness in their marriage. Her way of accepting that her position would be to always love in subtle ways from a distance.
Rating: PG-13 for racism and sexism.
Word Count: 4009
Summary: Across the years and the distance, Gwynnen loves Gary.
Love’s Labyrinth
Lost Ribbons and Prickly Bushes
Gwynnen was a child of the court, and so was Gary. She spent the long, hazy summer of her youth--all seasons felt like the gloriously free expanse of summer to a child innocent of political wrangling and cunning court games--running wild as the restless winds rustling the leaves in the Royal Forest.
One of her earliest memories consisted of giggling and shrieking as she darted through a labyrinth of hedgerows made even harder to navigate by a gray mist off the Olorun.
The mist clung to the silk of her dress like morning dew sticking to green shoots of grass. Her feet were flying because Gary was hot on her heels, threatening to pull on her braids and tug the ribbons out of her hair that was copper as the soil of the rolling eastern hills where she had been born on her father’s fief.
Mother claimed Gary pulled on her braids and tugged the ribbons out of her hair because he liked her, but, as usual, Mother didn’t know what she was talking about. Gwynnen had the mischievous spirit of youth dancing inside her, and so she could recognize it in others. That’s how she understood that Gary only chased after her to pull on her braids and tug out her ribbons because it was a fun prank, and he was teasing her as he did everyone else. Gary could no more have stopped teasing and pranking anyone he met that he could have stopped breathing.
Her flying feet must have taken her down a wrong turn for she found herself racing straight at a dead end of shrubbery that promised to be extremely thorny.
She glanced over her shoulder to check if she had the time and space to flee in a different direction. She saw that she didn’t. Gary, a wicked grin lighting his face like jagged lightning slicing across a summer sky, was only a few paces behind her.
Preparing for the inevitable and unavoidable pain, Gwynnen plunged into the bushes. Prickles like a hundred needles stabbing her where she wasn’t wearing a thimble jabbed at her skin through the thin fabric of her dress as she crossed through the hedges and emerged with numerous small scrapes her nursemaid would cluck over later on the opposite side.
By that point, her hair was in disarray. Strands of it had fallen out of her once-neat braids, and two ribbons had somehow gotten caught on a pair of branches. She could see them fluttering like pennants at a tournament in the enshrouding mist.
Before she could grab them, Gary’s hand stretched through the bush, and he snatched them with a triumphant crow that quickly transformed into a yelp like a dog kicked for stealing meat from the dinner table.
“That bush prickles!” Gary’s hand retreated as rapidly as it had advanced. “It’s like grasping a porcupine!”
“Serves you right for chasing after a young lady and trying to steal her ribbons.” Gwynnen stuck out her tongue, pleased that he had gotten pricked for teasing her.
“A young lady.” Gary’s laugh was mocking, but that somehow made Gwynnen smile until she thought her face might break. “A young lady wouldn’t tear her dresses and lose her ribbons in thorny bushes as often as you do.”
Spiders and Snake Eyes
Most of the girls growing up at court were scared of spiders and would squeak like shy mice and frightened weasels whenever they saw one, but Gwynnen wasn’t intimidated by them.
When Gary dropped a spider into most girls’ hair or onto the folds of her dress, she would scream and run from the room, fingers frantically seeking to dislodge the offending arachnid.
However, when Gary dumped a spider on Gwynnen, she would remain cool as water in a spring brook. She’d gently remove the spider from her gown or hair and let it crawl across her palm for a minute, tickling her skin. She’d observe the movements of its many long legs before setting it softly on the floor to resume weaving webs in windows and corners to make less valiant girls squeal like soon-to-be-slaughtered pigs.
Since she wasn’t scared of the spiders he dropped on her, Gary soon nicknamed her snake eyes. When she asked him why he called her that, he looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes the color of Midwinter chestnuts roasting over an open fire. “Your eyes are reptile green, snake green, aren’t they? And snakes eat spiders and a host of other animals, don’t they? So it seems appropriate.”
“I don’t eat spiders.” Gwynnen rolled her snake eyes. “I’m just not terrified of them like other girls.”
“I don’t let facts interfere with the creation of fun nicknames.” Gary nudged her with a shoulder, and that was how she was dubbed Snake Eyes, an epithet that stuck with her through the years like mud on a ruined pair of fancy shoes.
Over time, the nickname became a mark of Gary’s affection for her, a sign of their friendship. As it did so, it became less annoying for its inaccuracy and more endearing. Time could smooth over the wrinkles of any childhood irritation, transfiguring it into something that shimmered with the silver veneer of nostalgia.
Horror Stories and All Hallow’s Eve
On All Hallow’s Eve, the court children stayed up late into the night when the black veil separating the living and the dead was pulled back, allowing restless souls to roam the world.
They would eat crisp, tart Olau apples sweetened with brown caramel that stuck to their fingers like threads of a destroyed spider web as they gathered in circles illuminated by the flickering candles.
In these circles, they would exchange ancient stories that expressed all the most primordial fears of humanity. Widows who could not remain in their graves because their husbands had been lost to battles on distant borderlands where spilled blood could reshape maps. Ghosts of mothers who creaked the cradles of dead sons and daughters who had been buried as babies long ago. Shades of soldiers who spent eternity marching into a fight they had lost centuries past. Spirits of anger, grief, and loss. Spirits of the past who refused to accept that the past was the past, and so dragged it horrifyingly into the present.
On All Hallow’s Eve, Gary, caramel dripping like old blood from his lips, would tell the best, most delightfully terrifying tales. Tales that made a shiver ripple through the entire circle of spellbound listeners who couldn’t help but gasp when Gary revealed the dreadful twists of his story.
Watching Gary relate his terrifying tales with a wide-eyed mixture of fear and admiration, Gwynnen wondered if he could provoke such horror and heart-pounding tension in them because he read more than all of them combined. Because he studied his history more than any of them, and what was history except horror after horror, pain after pain, wrong after wrong? And what was reading without the savoring of tension--the celebration of drama and tragedy?
Strawberry Summer Kisses
In the past, it had been Gary who made Gwynnen run from him as he sought to pull her braids and tug the ribbons from her hair, but, one summer, Gwynnen defiantly decided that she would flip the tables on him.
She would force him to be the one to flee from her as she hunted him down to steal fleeting summer kisses.
Whenever she caught him and planted a kiss on his lips, he would wipe it away with a scowl and a swipe of his sleeve. Yet, he couldn’t wipe the memory of the kisses from Gwynnen’s mind so easily. She remembered the feel of his mouth wriggling beneath hers. She remembered how she could taste the strawberries they had picked and shoveled into their mouths lingering like a long, lazy sunset on his lips. She remembered the warmth of his sun-burned mouth.
She was certain that she would forever remember the fleeting summer kisses that she planted on Gary’s lips. It didn’t matter how swiftly he attempted to erase them with an embarrassed swipe of his sleeve.
Firefly Wishes
Gary’s last summer before he began page training, he and Gwynnen ran through the palace courtyards and gardens, chasing and catching a thousand fireflies.
Whenever their hands enclosed the lantern lights of fireflies, they would make a wish on the firefly before releasing it into the sky along with their hope.
Every time she captured and freed a firefly that summer, Gwynnen wished that Gary never had to begin page training. That he would never have to grow up and neither would she. That they could remain this age forever, eternally chasing fireflies in courtyards and gardens heady with the scent of blooming zinnias and dahlias.
She never shared these wishes with Gary, of course. Everyone who didn’t have rocks rattling in their skulls where they should have brains knew that wishes had to remain unspoken. Voicing wishes somehow made them lose their power and magic. Gwynnen didn’t know why any more than she knew why dropped objects plummeted to the ground. She only knew that this was so. That it was one of the laws of the universe in which she lived.
Duck Pond Discussion
Gwynnen stared into the duck pond, watching the water dimple in a spring drizzle as the ducks paddled their way through the narrow straits between lily pads. Droplets pattered onto her cloak from the weeping willow arched overhead, and she found the sound oddly soothing as she contemplated her miserable situation.
Soon she would be exiled to the convent where the priestesses would have the doubtlessly hopeless duty of turning her into a proper court lady suitable for a noble marriage she didn’t want when she could be running wild through courtyards and gardens. She had overheard her parents speaking of her fate this morning.
“She must be sent to the convent soon,” her mother had said. “She can’t be allowed to continue to run wild like this. She needs to be taught a lady’s proper graces and prepared for the best marriage we can arrange for her.”
“She never should have been allowed to run this wild,” her father had responded curtly. “It was a failing on the part of the nursemaids you hired that she was. It’s their fault that her dresses are always torn and there are brambles knotted into her hair whenever I see her.”
Listening to this, Gwynnen had felt her blood boil at how her father blamed her devoted nursemaids for her failings, instead of placing the blame on her where it belonged.
“The nursemaids have let her become wild as a Bazhir savage.” Gwynnen hadn’t needed to see her mother to know her mother’s lip was curling with contempt. “Even her skin is almost as brown as a Bazhir savage’s, because she’s allowed to spend too much time in the sun, and that ruins her complexion.”
Complexion was very important to Mother, who was very invested in a stringent skin care regime that demanded frequent use of vinegar on her face to keep her cheeks pale and the application of oatmeal to any freckles or spots she judged to be unsightly in an often unsuccessful effort to remove them.
Complexion was not so important to Gwynnen who thought the constellation of freckles speckling her nose gave her something interesting to look at in a mirror. She didn’t want a boring face that fit some ideal of feminine beauty. She wanted her own face however brown and freckled from the sun.
She probably wouldn’t be able to spend much time in the sun at the convent, Gwynnen reflected gloomily as she gazed into the murky depths of the duck pond. At the convent, going outside at all would likely be heavily restricted and monitored. Likely the belief was that delicate young ladies did not require much exercise or air at all to survive. She might just wither and die from lack of sunlight at the convent.
The sound of boots splashing through the puddles on the stone path behind her made her twist around to see who was approaching her. The tension coiled inside her eased as she realized it was Gary.
He joined her at the muddy edge of the pond, holding out a loaf of bread to her. “I pilfered this from the kitchens. Thought you might like to feed the ducks while you tell me why you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying.” Gwynnen ripped off chunks of bread and tossed them into the water for the quacking ducks to devour and quarrel over. She wished that the tear tracks on her cheeks and her red-rimmed eyes didn’t supply so much incriminating evidence to betray her weakness and her lie. “I’m just going to be exiled to the convent.”
“It won’t be so bad.” Gary threw lumps of his own bread into the duck. “It’ll only be six years or so until you’re free. Less if the priestesses decide you’re a hopeless case even they can’t civilize. It’s not like you’re training to be a knight and have to endure eight years of misery, Snake Eyes.”
“Speaking of training to be a knight, aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Gwynnen arched an eyebrow.
“I’m cutting class, but what does it matter?” Gary shrugged. “I already know from my own reading almost everything the monks try to teach us, and I sensed you needed my company this morning.”
“How did you sense it?” Gwynnen hated how watery and tearful her voice sounded.
“Because we’ve been friends since we were little.” Gary ruffled her hair, a gesture that was only possible because after his latest growth spurt he was now a head taller than her. “Childhood friends can just sense things like that. Write to me from the convent telling me how terrible your lessons are, and I’ll return the favor by writing to you about all the bumps and bruises I sustain on my misguided quest for knighthood.”
Gwynnen chuckled and found that she felt at least marginally better. Marginally better was all she could expect with her exile to the convent looming over her.
Long-Distance Letters
Gwynnen did write to Gary from the convent. She told him how she struggled to remember which fork she was supposed to use for which course at banquets. How the priestesses chided her for a shrill singing voice that could make the glass window panes rattle. How her attempts at lute-playing made the priestesses worry she was tone-deaf. How her dancing earned her accusations of having two left feet. How her clumsy curtsies, never lowered to the right degree or sustained for the appropriate length of time--a time that made her knees ache, only reinforced that impression.
More than that, she related how she had become best friends with a girl named Cythera of Elden. How she had thought at first she wouldn’t like Cythera because she had been jealous of how the priestesses fawned over her blond, blue-eyed beauty and perfect manners, but how she had discovered the true sweetness and kindness behind the perfect manners. How she had learned that there wasn’t anything shallow about Cythera despite initial appearances. How Cythera was all substance and more resilient than she appeared. Cythera had needed to be resilient, she explained, losing her mother so early in her life.
In return, Gary wrote to her about the mishaps and misadventures of his knighthood training. He related in glorious, unapologetic detail the pranks he pulled and the resultant punishments. He seemed to take particular pride in kissing the notoriously ugly Lady Roxanne on a dare even if it did confine him to the palace for what felt like a century as he explained in his not-at-all-rueful letter on this subject. He even joked about how Gwynnen might some day introduce him to the paragon of beauty and sweetness that was her friend Cythera, and Gwynnen rolled her eyes, because everything was a joke to Gary.
She shared some of Gary’s jokes and pranks with Cythera because glimpses of life outside the convent were rare and treasured by all the girls. Cythera would giggle at these stories, and her eyes blue as a summer sky would sparkle as if in sunlight.
“He’s very clever and funny your friend, isn’t he?” Cythera’s cheeks had a strange pink flush, and Gwynnen wondered if she was feeling feverish. Fever was likely the best explanation for Cythera uttering such an obvious comment as if it were insightful.
“Of course he is.” Gwynnen gave an unladylike snort that would’ve earned her a reproachful glance and a punishment essay about the importance of avoiding impolite noises if a priestess had heard it. “All my friends are clever and funny. I wouldn’t be able to stomach having them as friends if they weren’t.”
Changes and Dances
“Gareth the Younger of Naxen.” Gwynnen dipped a curtsy that had over the years become acceptable to the priestesses, trying to prevent her eyes from widening in shock at how much her childhood friend had changed since she last saw him. He was a knight of the realm who towered over her now, and his shoulders were broad and strong. Looking at him, she couldn’t imagine him as the boy who had once chased her through a labyrinth to tug the ribbons from her braids or who had fled when she planted summer kisses on his lips. Yet somehow that boy must still be inside this man standing before her now. “A pleasure to see you again.”
“I’m sorry.” A furrow appeared in Gary’s forehead, and Gwynnen knew with some satisfaction that she wasn’t the only one who had difficulty recognizing a childhood friend who had grown up while distance had kept them apart. “Have we been introduced, Lady--”
“Gwynnen,” she supplied, tart as lemon.
“Snake Eyes.” Gary bowed gallantly, which was another change since he had never bowed to her before. His gaze roved over her as he rose, and Gwynnen sensed that he too was evaluating how much she had changed since they last saw each other. “Forgive me. I didn’t recognize you with an untorn, unstained dress and no brambles in your hair.”
“You were often the one making me run so I’d tear and stain my dress or get brambles in my hair,” she retorted just to prove that not everything about her had changed.
“Indeed I was.” The mischief in Gary’s eyes showed he hadn’t entirely changed either. Extending his hand to her as the musicians in the corner of the ballroom struck up a fresh tune, “Will you allow me to make amends? May I have this dance, my lady?”
“You may.” Gwynnen permitted him to guide her onto the dance floor, where they joined the swirling couples, her unstained and untorn gown swaying about her ankles in its own seductive form of music.
“I hope you don’t still have two left feet,” Gary teased, and Gwynnen was happy he had remembered the accounts of her dancing lessons at the convent from the letters she had sent him.
“Only one way to find out.” She laughed, tossing her head so that her copper hair cascaded down her back. “You must dance with me, or we’ll never know.”
Gary did dance with her. He spun her all across the dance floor as the music faded into the background, lost in her joy at being wrapped in Gary’s arms. At being reunited with him at last, and discovering that he hadn’t changed in any important way during all their years apart.
Picnicking and Pairing
“You are old friends with Lady Cythera,” Gary remarked to Gwynnen as they sat side-by-side on the same blanket at a court picnic. An elm overhead provided shade from the sun.
“I don’t like being called ‘old.’” Gwynnen as she stabbed her fork into her slice of mallard pie. “Few ladies do, in fact. Including Lady Cythera.”
“I wasn’t calling you old. I was commenting on how well-acquainted with the beautiful Lady Cythera you are.” Gary looked at her but only as a friend. Not as he looked at Lady Cythera. Not as if he saw a potential lover and future wife. Goddess knew, Gwynnen would’ve given every piece of jewelry she owned for Gary to gaze at her just once as he did Lady Cythera. “Since you’re in Lady Cythera’s good graces, I thought you might be so kind as to tell me whether I might have cause to hope that Lady Cythera could ever take an interest in me or return my affections?”
Gwynnen remembered how Cythera flushed and giggled in Gary’s presence. How she complimented him for his cleverness and his keen wit. Even the smartest of men were truly oblivious in matters of love, Gwynnen thought. Any girl could’ve seen how Cythera was attracted to Gary.
“I can’t speak for Lady Cythera of course.” Gwynnen told herself that she would not stand in the way if Gary and Cythera fell in love. That she wouldn’t be selfish and focused on her own desires. That she would be truly happy for them, sharing in their joy as if it were her own, no matter how much it hurt to see Gary end up with someone else when she was starting to realize that across the years and the distance, she had come to love Gary herself. “However, I do think she would be interested if you expressed interest in her, and that she might come to return your affections if you offered them to her.”
“I’ll do that then.” Gary leaned over to peck her on the cheek. “Thank you. You are a good friend to me.”
A good friend but nothing else, Gwynnen thought and was surprised by how the idea could be a lance of pain in her heart.
Maid of Honor
“Gary proposed to me!” Cythera was bubbling with excitement. “I’m going to be married! Will you be my maid of honor, Gwynnen?”
Gwynnen didn’t have time to force an answer from between lips that felt frozen in a sudden frost, because Cythera hugged her and went on, “Oh, say that you will, darling. Both Gary and I want you to be maid of honor! It would mean so much to us!”
“Of course I’ll be maid of honor.” Gwynnen returned Cythera’s embrace and made her numb lips smile. “I’m so happy for you two, and the joy you’ve found together.”
That was what true love and friendship demanded, Gwynnen told herself. She had to watch from a distance as Gary and Cythera exchanged their vows and discovered their happy ending with her only as the humble maid of honor to Cythera’s beautiful bride. Loving them, being their friend, meant feeling their joy as if it were her own, and ignoring her own pain. It meant being selfless.
“We’ll find a good, clever man for you too.” Cythera gave Gwynnen a final squeeze before releasing her. “Don’t worry.”
“My man can wait.” Gwynnen laughed at the ever-kind Cythera’s lopsided priorities. “We have a wedding plan. We have to decide what dress you’re going to wear and what flowers you’re going to hold as you walk down the aisle. We have to decide what food will be served at the banquet, what music will be played, and what the decorations will be. We have to…”
“Gary said you’d be an absolute tyrant about the wedding plans,” Cythera interrupted with a flick of her fan. “He was right.”
“Yes, I am going to be an absolute tyrant about the wedding plans.” Gwynnen gave a smug nod. “Your wedding to Gary is going to be the most perfect one in history if I have anything to do with it.”
That would be her gift to Gary and to Cythera. Her way of wishing them love and happiness in their marriage. Her way of accepting that her position would be to always love in subtle ways from a distance.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!