Post by lisajane on Feb 22, 2009 6:21:51 GMT -5
Enjoy, subject is rather self-explanatory. If only I put this much effort into my fiction writing.
***
Running past multiple legs - those of the blank-faced visored men, those wrapped by pretty gowns, and those belonging to people she didn’t know - and ignoring the surprised gasps, mutters and sworn oaths of those above her, three-winter-old Aurin ran.
Aurin flew along between the people as fast as she could, her arms clutched around her pink glitter ball, a ball which seemed to glow from within. She had no idea now where she was - all the corridors of Fane Aracq looked the same to her; the only way she knew that she’d gone too far was that the white glowstones had turned orange. She had hardly even seen the orange glowstones before; she knew she was not allowed to leave the royal chambers without her parents - she only remembered seeing these glowstones when her mother had taken her out of the palace to visit Festide.
Her nanny had surely by now raised the alarm that the princess had escaped her rooms - or perhaps her nanny was simply looking on her own, too afraid of the consequences of losing the princess. Aurin didn’t understand why she had to play with the other children, and why the other children wanted to play with her toys, the toys that her daddy had brought for her, and not them. Her ball was the latest toy that the other children wanted to play with her, and it was one toy too many - so Aurin had ran away with it.
As she had run blindly through the royal chambers, Aurin knew that she didn’t need to play with the children - she had her mother. If she found her mother, she would make the children go away, and her mother would play with her in her room like they always did.
But as Aurin continued to run, tears pricked at the back of her eyes when she remembered that her mother wasn’t here, and that it seemed like she’d been away for a million cycles. Her mother had never been away so long, or so it seemed - she’d left in angry mood and Aurin was frightened she’d hated her mother away, despite the fact that her mother had shouted at her daddy with words Aurin didn’t understand, then seemed to flicker out of the room. With fears that her mother wasn’t coming back, these cycles seemed incredibly long, stuck with her nanny and those children all the time - but her daddy was around somewhere; he’d been in her rooms a short while earlier to check on her then left again.
So Aurin had changed her mind halfway through her run and decided to find her daddy instead, whom she hadn’t passed as he would’ve stopped her by now, and decided to keep running through Fane Aracq until she did find him. As an adult, it would later occur to Aurin that within the labyrinth of rooms and corridors in Fane Aracq, this search could have taken several days, Dominion-time. Lost in her angry state of mind, directed to both parents for the same reason - Aurin dropped her ball, and it bounced down a flight of stairs.
Aurin looked down the stairs, and a bad feeling crept over her, a feeling that told her that down those stairs was somewhere she didn’t want to go. Peering carefully, she could see rows of doors with little wind holes in them, like the ones in her room but so small she didn’t think she could push her tiny fingers through them.
But beyond that, she could hear shouting, and when it fell quiet, she could then hear her daddy shouting; again, words that she didn’t understand. Aurin was surprised in a way that she knew it was him shouting - he didn’t shout, he never had to say anything to her when she was in trouble, just the expression on his face sent her running for her mother. And even when her mother had been shouting at him lately, he didn’t shout back; he just seemed to remain calm. But despite this, Aurin still recognised his voice, and hoped that if the ball arrived to him (it had longed bounced away out of her view), maybe he would play with her until her mother came home.
Her mind made up, Aurin started to dart down the stairs after the ball, until a voice behind her stopped her. ‘Princess, I will retrieve the ball for you.’
Aurin glared at a blank-faced visored man at the top of the stairs, then puffed up her chest and decided to speak to him the way her daddy spoke to them. They always obeyed him. ‘No. It’s my ball, I’m getting it.’
The Guardsman paused, staring at the little face glaring back at him, taken aback about how stubborn the little princess was. She was beginning to act more and more like Macaan with each cycle (which, despite his loyalty, he wasn’t entirely sure if this was a good thing), and so even if she was only three-winters-old and barely came up to his knee, he decided to tread carefully. ‘Princess, I don’t think your father said you can go down here. Let me get that ball for you.’
‘No, you stay.’ Aurin snapped back at him. Her mother and daddy called her a princess - Aurin had no sense of what the word meant, but by the way everyone acted around her parents, she figured she must be important. ‘I’m getting it.’
The Guardsman sighed inwardly. Yes, she was turning into Macaan, and he realised that he had to treat the little princess in the same manner - know quietly that the idea was stupid and idiotic, but not dare argue it. ‘Alright Princess, but you need to return here right away.’
Aurin smiled. ‘Okay,’ she replied, with no intention of coming back, and ran quickly down the stairs and through the short corridor, without the blank-visored man calling her back. She saw light through an archway at the end of the corridor, and ran through it.
She found herself in a large, circular room, with high walls and people, mainly men, seated in rows above the wall. In the middle of the room stood another man, one Aurin didn’t recongise, who was pale and shaking and nearly seemed to be crying, and behind a soldier, holding a sword but not as pretty as the one her daddy had, one she was not allowed to touch. Speaking of, she could hear her daddy’s voice above her head, and guessing he was in the crowd, she was pleased that he was in the same room.
And nearby, maybe a few metres away along the wall, Aurin spotted her pink glitter ball lying against a small ledge. Excited to have found the ball, Aurin began to run towards it, barely hearing the slight swish of wind but skidding to a complete stop when a severed head landed at her feet, spraying blood on her face and on the creamstone wall and floor around her. In horror, she looked to the middle of the room where the crying man now laid slumped and headless on the ground, and the sword-holding man, whose sword glistened with blood and who looked back at her with equal horror - he hadn’t seen the little girl until it was too late.
Winters later, when Ryushi would be kept in one of the cells and they would occasionally share details about their childhoods with each other, Aurin would tell him this story, about her first execution. Ryushi would be horrified that Macaan had had someone killed right in front of his young daughter, whether he knew she was there or not, and saddened at the calm voice (but ladened with newly-found guilt underneath) that Aurin used to re-tell the story, but at the time Aurin had not been calm - she’d reacted the same way that any three-winter-old child would, which was to suddenly break into hysterical crying.
Over her crying, she could hear the surprised rumble of the crowd, but it was just background noise to her crying. Aurin had forgotten about her ball, about her daddy now - she just wanted to run out of the room, but her small legs wouldn’t move her.
‘Aurin? Aurin!’
Aurin looked up towards her daddy’s voice, over her head. Macaan was leaning over the wall above her, calling out her name to get her attention, his stark white hair shorter but his eyes still the colour of ice, but his face reflecting the horror that was on Aurin’s face. He swore loudly at the situation, frightening those around him with his choice of words, and Aurin watched through her tears as he suddenly turned away from her sight, rushing up the rows of people, before she ran away herself back through the arch way.
Aurin ran back past the doors with the wind holes, tears still streaming down her cheeks, towards the stairs, her ball long forgotten. The corridor had not seemed so long the first time she’d ran down it, and the stairs were going to present a challenge - Aurin could run down the stairs quickly, but they took her forever to climb. When she made it to the top she begun to run back in the direction that she thought she’d come from; the blank-visored man had left his post and even if he hadn’t, Aurin didn’t care.
She didn’t make it very far up the corridor before two strong hands grabbed her from under her arms, lifting her high into the air before resting against her daddy’s chest and shoulder. ‘Come on, Aurin,’ Macaan muttered softly to her. Aurin wrapped herself up into his cloak and watched quietly as people in front of them leapt to the sides of the corridor in fear as they walked past.
Aurin’s tears were near dry by the time they’d walked into the royal chambers, but they started up again when she spotted her mother striding out of her room, her face a picture of fury, and started to struggle out of Macaan’s arms. ‘Mummy!’
Her mother’s face flashed from fury to relief at the sight of having found her daughter - she’d returned from the Dominions to find the royal chambers completely devoid of people - and she ran over to snatch Aurin away from Macaan, kissing her cheek. ‘Are you alright, sweetheart? What happened?’
Aurin shook her head against her mother’s neck, breathing in her scent. Her nightmare of what had happened was already drifting away, her mother made everything better. She heard her mother’s lips move against the top of her head, ‘Can I put you down for a moment?’, and Aurin nodded her head in response, allowing herself to be put down on her feet before crouching down in front of her extravagant dollhouse. She watched as her mother’s face went back from relief to fury, turning away from her to her daddy. ‘What happened, Macaan? Where is her nanny?’
Aurin figured her mother didn’t like the answer, because her mother started shouting at him, again. Aurin turned to her dollhouse, studying it carefully, attempting to tune out the argument. She didn’t understand this dollhouse; it was as if the house was just the royal chambers. Where were the other rooms, all the stairways she’d ran down, all the other people that she didn’t know? She picked up the three little smiling figures from where she’d last left them, sitting around their tiny wooden kitchen table. The little people always smiled, because they were always happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy - they didn’t fight, their daddy was always inside the house, they didn’t see any other little people get killed and nothing was ever going to change. Aurin felt teary again at this idea; staying in the royal chambers by herself was a poor excuse for this dollhouse. But she was a strong little girl, she wouldn’t cry. She’d cried enough.
The slamming of a door made Aurin look up. Her daddy wasn’t in the room anymore, but her mother stood at the wind hole, her back to Aurin, her long black hair swept from the sides of her face with ornate silver clips. Aurin could hear the clicking of her mother’s nails against the sill.
‘Mummy?’
Her mother didn’t turn around, so Aurin stood up and ran over to stand next to her, holding the little smiling figures, looking up to her mother’s face. Her mother looked pale lately, even more pale than her daddy; and she always looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept in a long time. She was biting into her lower lip, and Aurin was afraid she might bite too hard. ‘Mummy? Are you okay?’
It took a moment or two for her mother to respond, and when she did, Aurin thought that her voice didn’t sound quite right. ‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’
Aurin reached her hand up to her mother’s hip, and opened her hand to show the little people. ‘Can you play with me?’
Her mother smiled, a smile that didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes, and led her back to the dollhouse. ‘Of course I can.’ And this was all Aurin wanted, because if she had her mother with her, everything would be fine.
***
Running past multiple legs - those of the blank-faced visored men, those wrapped by pretty gowns, and those belonging to people she didn’t know - and ignoring the surprised gasps, mutters and sworn oaths of those above her, three-winter-old Aurin ran.
Aurin flew along between the people as fast as she could, her arms clutched around her pink glitter ball, a ball which seemed to glow from within. She had no idea now where she was - all the corridors of Fane Aracq looked the same to her; the only way she knew that she’d gone too far was that the white glowstones had turned orange. She had hardly even seen the orange glowstones before; she knew she was not allowed to leave the royal chambers without her parents - she only remembered seeing these glowstones when her mother had taken her out of the palace to visit Festide.
Her nanny had surely by now raised the alarm that the princess had escaped her rooms - or perhaps her nanny was simply looking on her own, too afraid of the consequences of losing the princess. Aurin didn’t understand why she had to play with the other children, and why the other children wanted to play with her toys, the toys that her daddy had brought for her, and not them. Her ball was the latest toy that the other children wanted to play with her, and it was one toy too many - so Aurin had ran away with it.
As she had run blindly through the royal chambers, Aurin knew that she didn’t need to play with the children - she had her mother. If she found her mother, she would make the children go away, and her mother would play with her in her room like they always did.
But as Aurin continued to run, tears pricked at the back of her eyes when she remembered that her mother wasn’t here, and that it seemed like she’d been away for a million cycles. Her mother had never been away so long, or so it seemed - she’d left in angry mood and Aurin was frightened she’d hated her mother away, despite the fact that her mother had shouted at her daddy with words Aurin didn’t understand, then seemed to flicker out of the room. With fears that her mother wasn’t coming back, these cycles seemed incredibly long, stuck with her nanny and those children all the time - but her daddy was around somewhere; he’d been in her rooms a short while earlier to check on her then left again.
So Aurin had changed her mind halfway through her run and decided to find her daddy instead, whom she hadn’t passed as he would’ve stopped her by now, and decided to keep running through Fane Aracq until she did find him. As an adult, it would later occur to Aurin that within the labyrinth of rooms and corridors in Fane Aracq, this search could have taken several days, Dominion-time. Lost in her angry state of mind, directed to both parents for the same reason - Aurin dropped her ball, and it bounced down a flight of stairs.
Aurin looked down the stairs, and a bad feeling crept over her, a feeling that told her that down those stairs was somewhere she didn’t want to go. Peering carefully, she could see rows of doors with little wind holes in them, like the ones in her room but so small she didn’t think she could push her tiny fingers through them.
But beyond that, she could hear shouting, and when it fell quiet, she could then hear her daddy shouting; again, words that she didn’t understand. Aurin was surprised in a way that she knew it was him shouting - he didn’t shout, he never had to say anything to her when she was in trouble, just the expression on his face sent her running for her mother. And even when her mother had been shouting at him lately, he didn’t shout back; he just seemed to remain calm. But despite this, Aurin still recognised his voice, and hoped that if the ball arrived to him (it had longed bounced away out of her view), maybe he would play with her until her mother came home.
Her mind made up, Aurin started to dart down the stairs after the ball, until a voice behind her stopped her. ‘Princess, I will retrieve the ball for you.’
Aurin glared at a blank-faced visored man at the top of the stairs, then puffed up her chest and decided to speak to him the way her daddy spoke to them. They always obeyed him. ‘No. It’s my ball, I’m getting it.’
The Guardsman paused, staring at the little face glaring back at him, taken aback about how stubborn the little princess was. She was beginning to act more and more like Macaan with each cycle (which, despite his loyalty, he wasn’t entirely sure if this was a good thing), and so even if she was only three-winters-old and barely came up to his knee, he decided to tread carefully. ‘Princess, I don’t think your father said you can go down here. Let me get that ball for you.’
‘No, you stay.’ Aurin snapped back at him. Her mother and daddy called her a princess - Aurin had no sense of what the word meant, but by the way everyone acted around her parents, she figured she must be important. ‘I’m getting it.’
The Guardsman sighed inwardly. Yes, she was turning into Macaan, and he realised that he had to treat the little princess in the same manner - know quietly that the idea was stupid and idiotic, but not dare argue it. ‘Alright Princess, but you need to return here right away.’
Aurin smiled. ‘Okay,’ she replied, with no intention of coming back, and ran quickly down the stairs and through the short corridor, without the blank-visored man calling her back. She saw light through an archway at the end of the corridor, and ran through it.
She found herself in a large, circular room, with high walls and people, mainly men, seated in rows above the wall. In the middle of the room stood another man, one Aurin didn’t recongise, who was pale and shaking and nearly seemed to be crying, and behind a soldier, holding a sword but not as pretty as the one her daddy had, one she was not allowed to touch. Speaking of, she could hear her daddy’s voice above her head, and guessing he was in the crowd, she was pleased that he was in the same room.
And nearby, maybe a few metres away along the wall, Aurin spotted her pink glitter ball lying against a small ledge. Excited to have found the ball, Aurin began to run towards it, barely hearing the slight swish of wind but skidding to a complete stop when a severed head landed at her feet, spraying blood on her face and on the creamstone wall and floor around her. In horror, she looked to the middle of the room where the crying man now laid slumped and headless on the ground, and the sword-holding man, whose sword glistened with blood and who looked back at her with equal horror - he hadn’t seen the little girl until it was too late.
Winters later, when Ryushi would be kept in one of the cells and they would occasionally share details about their childhoods with each other, Aurin would tell him this story, about her first execution. Ryushi would be horrified that Macaan had had someone killed right in front of his young daughter, whether he knew she was there or not, and saddened at the calm voice (but ladened with newly-found guilt underneath) that Aurin used to re-tell the story, but at the time Aurin had not been calm - she’d reacted the same way that any three-winter-old child would, which was to suddenly break into hysterical crying.
Over her crying, she could hear the surprised rumble of the crowd, but it was just background noise to her crying. Aurin had forgotten about her ball, about her daddy now - she just wanted to run out of the room, but her small legs wouldn’t move her.
‘Aurin? Aurin!’
Aurin looked up towards her daddy’s voice, over her head. Macaan was leaning over the wall above her, calling out her name to get her attention, his stark white hair shorter but his eyes still the colour of ice, but his face reflecting the horror that was on Aurin’s face. He swore loudly at the situation, frightening those around him with his choice of words, and Aurin watched through her tears as he suddenly turned away from her sight, rushing up the rows of people, before she ran away herself back through the arch way.
Aurin ran back past the doors with the wind holes, tears still streaming down her cheeks, towards the stairs, her ball long forgotten. The corridor had not seemed so long the first time she’d ran down it, and the stairs were going to present a challenge - Aurin could run down the stairs quickly, but they took her forever to climb. When she made it to the top she begun to run back in the direction that she thought she’d come from; the blank-visored man had left his post and even if he hadn’t, Aurin didn’t care.
She didn’t make it very far up the corridor before two strong hands grabbed her from under her arms, lifting her high into the air before resting against her daddy’s chest and shoulder. ‘Come on, Aurin,’ Macaan muttered softly to her. Aurin wrapped herself up into his cloak and watched quietly as people in front of them leapt to the sides of the corridor in fear as they walked past.
Aurin’s tears were near dry by the time they’d walked into the royal chambers, but they started up again when she spotted her mother striding out of her room, her face a picture of fury, and started to struggle out of Macaan’s arms. ‘Mummy!’
Her mother’s face flashed from fury to relief at the sight of having found her daughter - she’d returned from the Dominions to find the royal chambers completely devoid of people - and she ran over to snatch Aurin away from Macaan, kissing her cheek. ‘Are you alright, sweetheart? What happened?’
Aurin shook her head against her mother’s neck, breathing in her scent. Her nightmare of what had happened was already drifting away, her mother made everything better. She heard her mother’s lips move against the top of her head, ‘Can I put you down for a moment?’, and Aurin nodded her head in response, allowing herself to be put down on her feet before crouching down in front of her extravagant dollhouse. She watched as her mother’s face went back from relief to fury, turning away from her to her daddy. ‘What happened, Macaan? Where is her nanny?’
Aurin figured her mother didn’t like the answer, because her mother started shouting at him, again. Aurin turned to her dollhouse, studying it carefully, attempting to tune out the argument. She didn’t understand this dollhouse; it was as if the house was just the royal chambers. Where were the other rooms, all the stairways she’d ran down, all the other people that she didn’t know? She picked up the three little smiling figures from where she’d last left them, sitting around their tiny wooden kitchen table. The little people always smiled, because they were always happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy - they didn’t fight, their daddy was always inside the house, they didn’t see any other little people get killed and nothing was ever going to change. Aurin felt teary again at this idea; staying in the royal chambers by herself was a poor excuse for this dollhouse. But she was a strong little girl, she wouldn’t cry. She’d cried enough.
The slamming of a door made Aurin look up. Her daddy wasn’t in the room anymore, but her mother stood at the wind hole, her back to Aurin, her long black hair swept from the sides of her face with ornate silver clips. Aurin could hear the clicking of her mother’s nails against the sill.
‘Mummy?’
Her mother didn’t turn around, so Aurin stood up and ran over to stand next to her, holding the little smiling figures, looking up to her mother’s face. Her mother looked pale lately, even more pale than her daddy; and she always looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept in a long time. She was biting into her lower lip, and Aurin was afraid she might bite too hard. ‘Mummy? Are you okay?’
It took a moment or two for her mother to respond, and when she did, Aurin thought that her voice didn’t sound quite right. ‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’
Aurin reached her hand up to her mother’s hip, and opened her hand to show the little people. ‘Can you play with me?’
Her mother smiled, a smile that didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes, and led her back to the dollhouse. ‘Of course I can.’ And this was all Aurin wanted, because if she had her mother with her, everything would be fine.