Chocolate #15, Fudge Ripple #13, Sour Apple #23 - we all wear masks; we all are masks.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #15 - passion, Fudge Ripple #13 - doubt, Sour Apple #23 - and the winner is...
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 1895
The night that her kingdom fell, Asma danced.
Afterwards she dwelled on how perfectly it was timed - her twenty-first birthday, the day she would be crowned queen and Rocmother, when her name would be cast into oblivion forever. The day when her growth would be arrested and she would remain as she was, frozen into her human face. For decades.
No - centuries.
It was a coronation ceremony to rival that of many human ceremonies; yet the energy and the meaning was sapped from the people of the earth, and it seemed so often that no one cared of their ascension. They had traditions, surely, but they were not bound to them as the humans were.
She dressed in red. That was the custom. The color of blood that had so tainted their small, contained world; it was a sign that she would spill more, as the Rocmothers were expected to do - soldiers in their own right, warrior queens who loved their people as fiercely as they fought their enemies.
She dressed in red, and upon her feet she put the stiff, black shoes that Astor (it was worthless trying to forget his name) had brought her from England. The ones that had been far too large for her years ago fit her now, but the small and delicate pair she had learned to dance with were worn and tattered.
Asma regarded them with pity, and a sort of envy. That girl hadn't had her life torn from her by a woman professing only to love her, hadn't been victimized by those who swore to protect her. Hadn't lost the only honest friend she had ever made.
The ribbons gave Asma trouble, and once or twice she opened her mouth to call for Hana or Janan, but neither came; she didn't call. Yet finally the slick material was wound around her legs in a way that didn't completely strangle her. She tried a few experimental steps, wincing at the way her feet felt in these shoes that had been left for so long. She was fine. This would work.
"Princess Asma," she said aloud, savoring the way her name felt coming from her mouth. Soon she would be nothing but The Rocmother, as if her identity was meaningless, compared to her status. She would be another in a long line of Rocmothers, nothing to differ her from the past.
She regarded herself in the mirror that leaned against the wall. Her shoes were black and alien to the little world of the Rocs, creatures from an entirely different universe that did not have a niche; her dress a welcome and familiar presence of tradition that she was sure no one in this palace had ever expected her to live long enough to wear. Her eyes were blue and brilliant and her hair was long enough to brush her hips, and the silver circlet curled around her forehead like a hungry snake.
She looked, for the first time, every part a princess.
And she was fiercely happy for it.
~*~*~
It was not an odd collection of Rocs that gathered in the throne room, and yet it seemed that there was something off about it - and then Asma realized that there were none of silver hair there. Haytham and Janan were not present - her protectors since childhood, missing the most important day of a princess' life. She felt a surge of anger that passed in the briefest moment.
She was no longer part of their lives. It should not matter.
She stepped forward, her stiff and strange shoes making odd noises against the floor, and the sound froze those assembled. Feathers rustled; human eyes turned to stare curiously at her.
As if from a great distance, those eyes fixed on her; bright indigo, and cold. Her mother (it was useless pretending she was not) watched her. Her voice came down a tunnel: "Princess, you are late."
I always am, aren't I? Asma thought, and the first strains of the music came to her ears.
It was not happy, exactly, but it was quickstepping and passionate in its solemnity. Of course music was part of the ceremony, if Asma wished it to be (and she had, which was why she had arranged for the musicians to be here in the first place). Anything the participants thought was right for the ceremony - dance, music? Done. A ritual battle? Of course. A human sacrifice? Unless you proposed to sacrifice, say, a king, then it could be done the very day of the ceremony.
Anyone in high places of power needed to be captured beforehand.
The music made her think of battle, the strange lightstepping fighting she did that no one had been able to emulate. And it made her think of dance. And it made her think of Astor.
Because he had written it, Asma realized. He had written this, just for her, and for her change into something that was harsher and more dangerous than the hollow puppet-princess she had been.
Though he was long gone, and he did not look at her when they passed in the corridors anymore, he had taken the time to see what she herself had thought could only be guessed at. And turned it into this.
Her first few steps were careful and cautious, testing the floor as if it were swampland; she did not know whether she would slip and fall, in these odd and only vaguely familiar shoes. But the music urged her on, woodwind and the stretched-leather drums forcing her feet faster.
She moved as she had not in years, the red swirling about her knees like water, the cool indifferent regard of the Rocmother a mere distraction to her now. Leaps and spins and the giddy rushing of the dance itself - it seemed like an epiphany; this is a sort of combat, and combat itself a child of this.
She did this with a sword in her hand and a snarl on her face, and it was strange and wonderful to throw those away now and just move.
The music changed, and now it was of Janan and Haytham she was reminded, those she had betrayed when she tried to love them. She stumbled, a heartwrenching instant when her balance threw her forward - and then stepped out, dancing on, for them instead of against them.
Oriana, Hana. The notes seemed to spell out their names.
But instead of falling, she danced faster, a bitter sort of liveliness that took her twirling around the perimeter of the room, a snarl-smile fixed upon her face. Perhaps a few young Rocs stepped forward, hesitantly, as if to join her - she waved them away with a flick of her hand, turning from them in derision and a vague sadness. This was her dance, and like her life, she would do it alone.
Mother.
The last few notes took her from the door to the throne, a whirl in red and black and blue. And on the final note, the Rocmother did something she had not done for Asma in a very long time.
She smiled.
~*~*~
It passed in a blur; brief formalities flew over her head as she knelt, frozen, at the queen's feet. A few words - "yes," "I will," "for the good of our people, I promise" - were all that were needed from her, and she said them automatically. In other situations a princess would be required to display the control of her change, but Asma was the flawed princess - that should be my title, she thought, with a sort of sardonic amusement, Asma the Broken Princess - and of course, she couldn't.
"Princess," the Rocmother's voice came, and there was an odd cool feeling along her skin, a needling of snow against her neck - but she looked up to stare at her mother.
Her smile was gone, and Asma's trepidation grew; a brief motion behind the throne drew her eye, and for a moment relief drowned the sudden fear that had overtaken her. Janan waved timidly from her mother's left, Haytham smiling at her from the queen's right - They were here, she thought. They were here; they wouldn't miss it.
Now her mother was speaking, and she tried to pay attention, but that smile of Haytham's -
It touched the burned wound of her heart, urged it with gentle words to open, open. The scar had healed over long before, a thread pulling shut with every battle, a stitch neatly removed with every victory. It brought to mind memories of a young girl, clutching onto him in the dead of night, biting down the questions she wanted answers to.
Haytham, did you ever really care at all? she almost asked, and then her mother jerked her from her reverie - "Asma," she said, and stood.
Asma remained as she knew she should, at the base of the dais where the throne sat, and watched as her mother reached up. The crown she wore was one Asma knew well, one that had slipped around her shoulder when she tried it on at first (she had been four or five); silver and ornate, feathers overlapping and curling around her mother's forehead almost like vines, with a single teardrop-shaped sapphire that rested squarely on her mother's brow.
It slipped off her head so easily that Asma was almost startled, and she looked so naked without it that a touch of pity crept up on her daughter. The princess reached up to remove her own meager silver circlet, cradling it against her chest - it and its predecessors had been her security blanket through the years; they'd been there when she fought, when she'd run away and hid as a child. Her history was caught up in these crowns.
They made her different. They made her better than the others in this castle, though she was lesser in the most important way. They'd made her a creature to be despised, the human playing at being princess. They'd elevated her even as she fell.
But Astor had never treated her as the pathetic princess, and for a horrible blinding moment she missed him so badly that her eyes watered. But he'd betrayed her, and she couldn't let that go.
The formalities were over. She'd made her vows, this marriage to her country, and now her mother would tell her who she would truly wed - who would be expected to keep her company and pretend to love her. Her mother was lucky; so many times Janan had told her the pretty fairytale, her grandmother placing the crown on her mother's head - "Love," she said simply, instead of the name of the Roc.
Her mother was lucky, but her mother was crazy, and her mother was a monster, and Asma was suddenly afraid again - her fear had nothing to do with the spouse or her ascension or Astor. It was a niggling terror, an unserious one that simply nudged at her to notice it.
She looked up at her mother, and saw the name form on her lips as the Rocmother lowered the crown to her forehead - her heart seized in her chest, and she half-stood, stumbling backwards -
And then the doors burst open, and the Rocs began to fall.
Challenge: Chocolate #15 - passion, Fudge Ripple #13 - doubt, Sour Apple #23 - and the winner is...
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 1895
The night that her kingdom fell, Asma danced.
Afterwards she dwelled on how perfectly it was timed - her twenty-first birthday, the day she would be crowned queen and Rocmother, when her name would be cast into oblivion forever. The day when her growth would be arrested and she would remain as she was, frozen into her human face. For decades.
No - centuries.
It was a coronation ceremony to rival that of many human ceremonies; yet the energy and the meaning was sapped from the people of the earth, and it seemed so often that no one cared of their ascension. They had traditions, surely, but they were not bound to them as the humans were.
She dressed in red. That was the custom. The color of blood that had so tainted their small, contained world; it was a sign that she would spill more, as the Rocmothers were expected to do - soldiers in their own right, warrior queens who loved their people as fiercely as they fought their enemies.
She dressed in red, and upon her feet she put the stiff, black shoes that Astor (it was worthless trying to forget his name) had brought her from England. The ones that had been far too large for her years ago fit her now, but the small and delicate pair she had learned to dance with were worn and tattered.
Asma regarded them with pity, and a sort of envy. That girl hadn't had her life torn from her by a woman professing only to love her, hadn't been victimized by those who swore to protect her. Hadn't lost the only honest friend she had ever made.
The ribbons gave Asma trouble, and once or twice she opened her mouth to call for Hana or Janan, but neither came; she didn't call. Yet finally the slick material was wound around her legs in a way that didn't completely strangle her. She tried a few experimental steps, wincing at the way her feet felt in these shoes that had been left for so long. She was fine. This would work.
"Princess Asma," she said aloud, savoring the way her name felt coming from her mouth. Soon she would be nothing but The Rocmother, as if her identity was meaningless, compared to her status. She would be another in a long line of Rocmothers, nothing to differ her from the past.
She regarded herself in the mirror that leaned against the wall. Her shoes were black and alien to the little world of the Rocs, creatures from an entirely different universe that did not have a niche; her dress a welcome and familiar presence of tradition that she was sure no one in this palace had ever expected her to live long enough to wear. Her eyes were blue and brilliant and her hair was long enough to brush her hips, and the silver circlet curled around her forehead like a hungry snake.
She looked, for the first time, every part a princess.
And she was fiercely happy for it.
~*~*~
It was not an odd collection of Rocs that gathered in the throne room, and yet it seemed that there was something off about it - and then Asma realized that there were none of silver hair there. Haytham and Janan were not present - her protectors since childhood, missing the most important day of a princess' life. She felt a surge of anger that passed in the briefest moment.
She was no longer part of their lives. It should not matter.
She stepped forward, her stiff and strange shoes making odd noises against the floor, and the sound froze those assembled. Feathers rustled; human eyes turned to stare curiously at her.
As if from a great distance, those eyes fixed on her; bright indigo, and cold. Her mother (it was useless pretending she was not) watched her. Her voice came down a tunnel: "Princess, you are late."
I always am, aren't I? Asma thought, and the first strains of the music came to her ears.
It was not happy, exactly, but it was quickstepping and passionate in its solemnity. Of course music was part of the ceremony, if Asma wished it to be (and she had, which was why she had arranged for the musicians to be here in the first place). Anything the participants thought was right for the ceremony - dance, music? Done. A ritual battle? Of course. A human sacrifice? Unless you proposed to sacrifice, say, a king, then it could be done the very day of the ceremony.
Anyone in high places of power needed to be captured beforehand.
The music made her think of battle, the strange lightstepping fighting she did that no one had been able to emulate. And it made her think of dance. And it made her think of Astor.
Because he had written it, Asma realized. He had written this, just for her, and for her change into something that was harsher and more dangerous than the hollow puppet-princess she had been.
Though he was long gone, and he did not look at her when they passed in the corridors anymore, he had taken the time to see what she herself had thought could only be guessed at. And turned it into this.
Her first few steps were careful and cautious, testing the floor as if it were swampland; she did not know whether she would slip and fall, in these odd and only vaguely familiar shoes. But the music urged her on, woodwind and the stretched-leather drums forcing her feet faster.
She moved as she had not in years, the red swirling about her knees like water, the cool indifferent regard of the Rocmother a mere distraction to her now. Leaps and spins and the giddy rushing of the dance itself - it seemed like an epiphany; this is a sort of combat, and combat itself a child of this.
She did this with a sword in her hand and a snarl on her face, and it was strange and wonderful to throw those away now and just move.
The music changed, and now it was of Janan and Haytham she was reminded, those she had betrayed when she tried to love them. She stumbled, a heartwrenching instant when her balance threw her forward - and then stepped out, dancing on, for them instead of against them.
Oriana, Hana. The notes seemed to spell out their names.
But instead of falling, she danced faster, a bitter sort of liveliness that took her twirling around the perimeter of the room, a snarl-smile fixed upon her face. Perhaps a few young Rocs stepped forward, hesitantly, as if to join her - she waved them away with a flick of her hand, turning from them in derision and a vague sadness. This was her dance, and like her life, she would do it alone.
Mother.
The last few notes took her from the door to the throne, a whirl in red and black and blue. And on the final note, the Rocmother did something she had not done for Asma in a very long time.
She smiled.
~*~*~
It passed in a blur; brief formalities flew over her head as she knelt, frozen, at the queen's feet. A few words - "yes," "I will," "for the good of our people, I promise" - were all that were needed from her, and she said them automatically. In other situations a princess would be required to display the control of her change, but Asma was the flawed princess - that should be my title, she thought, with a sort of sardonic amusement, Asma the Broken Princess - and of course, she couldn't.
"Princess," the Rocmother's voice came, and there was an odd cool feeling along her skin, a needling of snow against her neck - but she looked up to stare at her mother.
Her smile was gone, and Asma's trepidation grew; a brief motion behind the throne drew her eye, and for a moment relief drowned the sudden fear that had overtaken her. Janan waved timidly from her mother's left, Haytham smiling at her from the queen's right - They were here, she thought. They were here; they wouldn't miss it.
Now her mother was speaking, and she tried to pay attention, but that smile of Haytham's -
It touched the burned wound of her heart, urged it with gentle words to open, open. The scar had healed over long before, a thread pulling shut with every battle, a stitch neatly removed with every victory. It brought to mind memories of a young girl, clutching onto him in the dead of night, biting down the questions she wanted answers to.
Haytham, did you ever really care at all? she almost asked, and then her mother jerked her from her reverie - "Asma," she said, and stood.
Asma remained as she knew she should, at the base of the dais where the throne sat, and watched as her mother reached up. The crown she wore was one Asma knew well, one that had slipped around her shoulder when she tried it on at first (she had been four or five); silver and ornate, feathers overlapping and curling around her mother's forehead almost like vines, with a single teardrop-shaped sapphire that rested squarely on her mother's brow.
It slipped off her head so easily that Asma was almost startled, and she looked so naked without it that a touch of pity crept up on her daughter. The princess reached up to remove her own meager silver circlet, cradling it against her chest - it and its predecessors had been her security blanket through the years; they'd been there when she fought, when she'd run away and hid as a child. Her history was caught up in these crowns.
They made her different. They made her better than the others in this castle, though she was lesser in the most important way. They'd made her a creature to be despised, the human playing at being princess. They'd elevated her even as she fell.
But Astor had never treated her as the pathetic princess, and for a horrible blinding moment she missed him so badly that her eyes watered. But he'd betrayed her, and she couldn't let that go.
The formalities were over. She'd made her vows, this marriage to her country, and now her mother would tell her who she would truly wed - who would be expected to keep her company and pretend to love her. Her mother was lucky; so many times Janan had told her the pretty fairytale, her grandmother placing the crown on her mother's head - "Love," she said simply, instead of the name of the Roc.
Her mother was lucky, but her mother was crazy, and her mother was a monster, and Asma was suddenly afraid again - her fear had nothing to do with the spouse or her ascension or Astor. It was a niggling terror, an unserious one that simply nudged at her to notice it.
She looked up at her mother, and saw the name form on her lips as the Rocmother lowered the crown to her forehead - her heart seized in her chest, and she half-stood, stumbling backwards -
And then the doors burst open, and the Rocs began to fall.