Mini-Challenge: Pout
I found this while dragging my feet through more notes. (*whine* I hate htmlising this junk ...) Will anyone believe me if I say I'm 90% confident this is the last one?
I remember writing this at 3am. It shows. It is completely and utterly idiotic, but then so am I.
Estelhari and Arathalian have a very singular disagreement over interior decorating.
The Living Room
Estelhari lay on the couch, angry and miserable. The household was dark, because bright illumina were too magic-expensive, like bowers.
She had spent so much time on it - time and love - but what did adjutants and soldiers understand of real Making? All the plants she had sung of ether were gone. All the little blossoms she had coaxed out of thought with her fingers were gone. She remembered all the mornings she had sat and talked to the trees, and the trees had cheerily talked back, bright and innocent as children, because she had given them voices.
And now she had taken their voices away, because they had forced her to, and the bower was quiet except for the wind. Lovely - still lovely, the eucalypts, always - but not hers.
As she lay there, staring down at the floor, she heard someone sing the door open in the atrium. Soon Arathalian came in, a clinging white illumina throwing long, sharp shadows beside him.
“Estelhari,” he said with absent courtesy, stretching out on his own couch.
“Good evening,” she replied. “Could you get rid of that illumina in here, please? Remember the rationing.”
“Don’t be childish,” he said, closing his eyes. “I heard about your bower and I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“I’ve already tried to explain to your idiot castellan -”
“- his name is Lascanyn and you know it -”
“- that you’d save the same amount of energy, and in useable quantities, if the people of the court only cut down on their silly wardrobes, but we don’t see that happening.”
“We may yet,” he replied shortly. “We may see that and much more. Spathcora still isn’t eating enough.”
“Well, shouldn’t be trying to house a wyrm with a middling-sized city, now, should we?”
“Yes, let’s beat the ironbloods off with sticks,” he said. “I’m really, really not in the mood for your carping tonight, Estelhari. I want to rest. Are you going to let me, or will I save time and go to my room now?”
“Stay there and conserve a bit more precious energy,” she snapped, swirling to her feet and sweeping away from the couches. She opened the door to her room by hand rather than sing it open with will, not caring that she’d already passed the borders of petty, and slid it shut - hard - behind her.
It was very dark in her room. Very dark and very quiet.
Arathalian rested his chin on the raised prop of the couch and lay there, eyes only half-open, watching the rising moon spread slowly over the floor. The draught from the balcony window was cold without a little ward of magic to keep it away, so he curled one of his loose-falling ironwings over himself to keep the warmth in.
In Calcanel or Iscanon, there’d have been enough magic to warrant removing and resinging wings, too. Here, he just had to put up with the same things all day and night.
No wonder the year-shifters hate furniture, he thought, smiling into the couch. For a moment more he thought of Cochalyon, too, but lingering there would have opened the door for all the other ghosts, and dearly though he loved them, he didn’t want them on his mind all the time.
Bad enough that he had Estelhari in his ear all the time. She took visible pleasure in harrying him whenever she was angry or upset - which seemed to be a fairly constant state these days. He had given up trying to argue, or to point out that very little of it was specifically his fault. Neither made the slightest difference.
The balcony draught really was bitter. Arathalian groaned in his throat and slid off the couch, going to close the doors by hand. The relief was almost immediate.
He moved to lie down on the closer couch, Estelhari’s, and to his groggy surprise hit the floor instead, landing painfully on one arm. “Idiot,” he muttered, reaching a hand towards the couch to pull himself up.
The couch slid sharply away.
How a piece of furniture could radiate such dislike, he didn’t know, but it was.
Estelhari, he thought, gritting his teeth.
“I suppose you talk as well,” he snapped.
“Pthhh,” the couch replied.
“Interesting choice of last words.”
“The Beyond holdeth no fear!” it threw back proudly as he lifted hand and will. “May my brothers and sisters avenge me!”
He dropped his hand. “Your what?”
The couch lapsed into guarded silence.
Arathalian turned to scan the outer apartment. Suddenly every table and wall hanging seemed alive with menace. The rug was most definitely growling.
“I am married to a madwoman,” he said, glaring down a footstool.
“Thou art the undeserving consort of a Circle-perfect porphyry,” retorted Estelhari’s couch icily. “Eve after eve, mine heart singeth to claim the sweet embraces thou scornest.”
“It singeth, does it?” asked Arathalian acridly. “Well, if my couch danceth, I am going to smasheth the lot of you.”
“Rust-feather’d tyrant! I fear thee none and love thee less!”
“Ignore him,” a shy voice from his own couch said further back. “I still like you.”
Arathalian turned towards Estelhari’s door, but was foiled by the aggressive, interposing slide of her couch.
“The maid lieth in repose!” it hissed. “Thou shalt not intrude!”
“I am not going to stand here and swap threats with my furniture. Get out of the way.”
“Have at thee, then!”
The couch skidded forward. Arathalian jumped to one side, startled, but it swung again towards him as the rug tangled around his legs, and he fell; only the heroic, intervening slide of his own couch saved him.
Thoughts of magical rationing began to mix with thoughts of violent incineration. Luckily for the furniture, he happened to catch sight of himself in the hall mirror (which had come out to see what the disturbance was). There was something about the tableau of an Inyaronian prince locked in mortal combat with a rug which was hard to scowl at.
“Okay, stop,” he said, raising his hands. The rug tried to wrap around his face. “Let’s call a truce for a moment.”
“That thou mayest prepare thine eldritch fire?” scoffed Estelhari’s couch. “I think not.”
“No eldritch fire. I promise.”
“Thou fallest then upon my mercy?”
“Don’t push it.”
The rug slid slowly away, giving a parting growl. Estelhari’s couch slid warily back into its former position, while his own slid up loyally behind him so he could pull himself off the floor.
As he sat there, looking around the shadowy apartments, it struck him for a moment that Inyamenna would have loved a house like this. Inya didn’t intrude much on the present - she was a happy little light fixed only in memory - so it was a rare and welcome moment.
He realised then that he probably owed someone ... or somechair ... for that.
“I would hear thy terms,” said Estelhari’s couch stiffly.
“Don’t interrupt. I’m trying to think. I don’t know what to do with you.” He paused to pick rug-fluff out of his ironfeathers. “I don’t suppose Estelhari has mentioned the overtaxing of the wellsprings to you.”
“On the contrary,” the couch retorted, “our lady hath spoken at length upon the very same. Her grief woundeth all with heart to feel it.”
“You’re a couch and you don’t have a heart,” he replied with asperity. “And as a matter of fact, most people in Anisca feel sad to see any work of Estelhari’s go, because she is a master of the craft. But if she keeps even a moderate drain on the wellspring, our defences -”
“We take nothing of the spring of Anisca!” The couch jittered with outrage. “Our sustenance cometh from the sweet lady herself!”
“It does?” No wonder she hasn’t woken for all this racket. “Then that’s even worse. She’ll start to tire quickly. She’ll feel weaker than she should.”
The furniture started to look glum. Arathalian wondered how he could tell.
“Fair Estelhari must needs suffer for our meagre sakes?” asked the couch at last, its voice choked with emotion. “It cannot be borne.”
“Indeed. I know the Makers love their craft, but she’ll just have to wait until we move on again.”
Arathalian’s couch shifted underneath him, an uncomfortable little movement.
“But she’s so lonely,” it sighed.
The morose furniture was silent for a while. So was Arathalian.
Of course. She was lonely. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that she was lonely? All her family were in Corruth. She didn’t have any friends among the Anisca Makers; she only had liegemen and women. She spent so much time being - and was so good at being - a proud, collected princess that he simply forgot to speculate about the young woman behind it all.
He felt sorry for her. He didn’t like or dislike her, because he didn’t really know her well enough either way; that was the price of a busy political marriage. But he felt sorry for her. There just didn’t seem to be much that he could do about it.
“You should get her a pet,” said his couch helpfully. “A talking pet.”
“Why a talking pet?”
“Because she likes to talk.”
“So I’ve gathered!” He glanced towards her door, still at a loss. “She can’t have a talking pet. Nothing that eats magic. She’ll just have to try to become familiar with more of the householders.”
There was no reply from any quarter, high or low.
“I’m sorry about this,” said Arathalian. “I don’t know how she does it, but yes, I am genuinely sorry for my furniture. All the same, you’ll have to go.”
“Thou art mine enemy,” Estelhari’s couch replied darkly, “and yet this charge I must lay upon thee, if th’art a man: attend to our maiden maker of wonders! Thusly, too, I forewarn thee: shouldst fail thy charge, my spirit shalt not treat thee kindly.”
“I’m going to be haunted by the ghost of a couch, am I?”
“Tell her goodbye from all of us,” said Arathalian’s couch in a small voice. “Don’t forget the rug or the mirror.”
Arathalian covered his face with a hand. “Iron break it. I cannot believe how stupid this is.”
Estelhari woke before dawn, her body refreshed and her head light. Too light. The weight of murmuring thoughts was gone; all she could feel was the ambient pressure of the various wards she kept around the city.
She let out a small cry and rushed out into the main chambers, hearing the conscientious whisper of maid-feet around her; all the maids here were sun fae. One of them bade her good morning, but she barely heard. All her attention was levelled on the two new couches arrayed around the window, and the bare, rugless floor.
“May I fetch -?” one of the maids began. Estelhari turned sharply on her heel, anguished and angry, and half-swooped on Arathalian’s closed door, losing the last half of the maid’s suggestion.
“Arathalian!” she shouted, rattling the door with her voice. Rationing be damned! How much energy would it expend to remove a prince’s arms, she wondered? “If you’re in there, come out! Now!”
He was in there. She could feel it. When he failed to answer, she shouted louder, knowing full well how much he hated it. It was all ammunition for ill-wishers in the court. “Come out here! Come out or I’ll come in!”
Sure enough, the door lurched open only moments later, thrown aside by a short, sharp note. Arathalian stood in the doorway, either tired enough or angry enough to have forgotten his own rationing rules. His badly focussed eyes suggested the former.
“Oh, yes, you’re a lady, all right,” he muttered. “Stop shrieking and act like a woman. I could have married a screech-owl with more decorum than you.”
“Maybe I’ll make you a screech-owl to better facilitate the match,” Estelhari hissed. “How dare you touch my works? How dare you go over my head?”
“How dare you lie to me? How dare you make your toys in wartime? And so on, and so on,” replied Arathalian, rubbing at his face. “We could do this all morning, Estelhari, but it’d be far less painful just to shoot myself. Why don’t I shortcut some of the caterwauling by telling you I didn’t Unmake your silly chairs?”
Estelhari folded her arms across her chest and glared. She had to look up at him to do so, as with almost everyone, but she knew her glare had a cutting edge. “What did you do with them?”
“I’ve sent them to Yarisol, a place where the wellspring is not critically overtaxed,” he answered. “If and when we move on to Yarisol, thou mayest trade sweet words with thy couch again. -Why did you make it talk like that?”
“If any of them are hurt on the journey,” she replied, singing each word in curt staccato, “I will make you answer for it. And you know that I can, Arathalian.”
She narrowed her eyes in final promise, killing his retort before it passed his lips, and then swept away from the door again, content that the point had been made. No-one touched a Maker’s works. Certainly not hers.
“Stop reading knightly romances,” Arathalian’s voice called sourly after her back, but when she turned again, he’d shut the door.
Estelhari realised it was finally safe to smile, so she did. Her little ones were safe. Perhaps he didn’t realise that one victory, however small, set a precedent.
And perhaps it was easier to win than she’d always assumed.
I remember writing this at 3am. It shows. It is completely and utterly idiotic, but then so am I.
Estelhari and Arathalian have a very singular disagreement over interior decorating.
The Living Room
Estelhari lay on the couch, angry and miserable. The household was dark, because bright illumina were too magic-expensive, like bowers.
She had spent so much time on it - time and love - but what did adjutants and soldiers understand of real Making? All the plants she had sung of ether were gone. All the little blossoms she had coaxed out of thought with her fingers were gone. She remembered all the mornings she had sat and talked to the trees, and the trees had cheerily talked back, bright and innocent as children, because she had given them voices.
And now she had taken their voices away, because they had forced her to, and the bower was quiet except for the wind. Lovely - still lovely, the eucalypts, always - but not hers.
As she lay there, staring down at the floor, she heard someone sing the door open in the atrium. Soon Arathalian came in, a clinging white illumina throwing long, sharp shadows beside him.
“Estelhari,” he said with absent courtesy, stretching out on his own couch.
“Good evening,” she replied. “Could you get rid of that illumina in here, please? Remember the rationing.”
“Don’t be childish,” he said, closing his eyes. “I heard about your bower and I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“I’ve already tried to explain to your idiot castellan -”
“- his name is Lascanyn and you know it -”
“- that you’d save the same amount of energy, and in useable quantities, if the people of the court only cut down on their silly wardrobes, but we don’t see that happening.”
“We may yet,” he replied shortly. “We may see that and much more. Spathcora still isn’t eating enough.”
“Well, shouldn’t be trying to house a wyrm with a middling-sized city, now, should we?”
“Yes, let’s beat the ironbloods off with sticks,” he said. “I’m really, really not in the mood for your carping tonight, Estelhari. I want to rest. Are you going to let me, or will I save time and go to my room now?”
“Stay there and conserve a bit more precious energy,” she snapped, swirling to her feet and sweeping away from the couches. She opened the door to her room by hand rather than sing it open with will, not caring that she’d already passed the borders of petty, and slid it shut - hard - behind her.
It was very dark in her room. Very dark and very quiet.
Arathalian rested his chin on the raised prop of the couch and lay there, eyes only half-open, watching the rising moon spread slowly over the floor. The draught from the balcony window was cold without a little ward of magic to keep it away, so he curled one of his loose-falling ironwings over himself to keep the warmth in.
In Calcanel or Iscanon, there’d have been enough magic to warrant removing and resinging wings, too. Here, he just had to put up with the same things all day and night.
No wonder the year-shifters hate furniture, he thought, smiling into the couch. For a moment more he thought of Cochalyon, too, but lingering there would have opened the door for all the other ghosts, and dearly though he loved them, he didn’t want them on his mind all the time.
Bad enough that he had Estelhari in his ear all the time. She took visible pleasure in harrying him whenever she was angry or upset - which seemed to be a fairly constant state these days. He had given up trying to argue, or to point out that very little of it was specifically his fault. Neither made the slightest difference.
The balcony draught really was bitter. Arathalian groaned in his throat and slid off the couch, going to close the doors by hand. The relief was almost immediate.
He moved to lie down on the closer couch, Estelhari’s, and to his groggy surprise hit the floor instead, landing painfully on one arm. “Idiot,” he muttered, reaching a hand towards the couch to pull himself up.
The couch slid sharply away.
How a piece of furniture could radiate such dislike, he didn’t know, but it was.
Estelhari, he thought, gritting his teeth.
“I suppose you talk as well,” he snapped.
“Pthhh,” the couch replied.
“Interesting choice of last words.”
“The Beyond holdeth no fear!” it threw back proudly as he lifted hand and will. “May my brothers and sisters avenge me!”
He dropped his hand. “Your what?”
The couch lapsed into guarded silence.
Arathalian turned to scan the outer apartment. Suddenly every table and wall hanging seemed alive with menace. The rug was most definitely growling.
“I am married to a madwoman,” he said, glaring down a footstool.
“Thou art the undeserving consort of a Circle-perfect porphyry,” retorted Estelhari’s couch icily. “Eve after eve, mine heart singeth to claim the sweet embraces thou scornest.”
“It singeth, does it?” asked Arathalian acridly. “Well, if my couch danceth, I am going to smasheth the lot of you.”
“Rust-feather’d tyrant! I fear thee none and love thee less!”
“Ignore him,” a shy voice from his own couch said further back. “I still like you.”
Arathalian turned towards Estelhari’s door, but was foiled by the aggressive, interposing slide of her couch.
“The maid lieth in repose!” it hissed. “Thou shalt not intrude!”
“I am not going to stand here and swap threats with my furniture. Get out of the way.”
“Have at thee, then!”
The couch skidded forward. Arathalian jumped to one side, startled, but it swung again towards him as the rug tangled around his legs, and he fell; only the heroic, intervening slide of his own couch saved him.
Thoughts of magical rationing began to mix with thoughts of violent incineration. Luckily for the furniture, he happened to catch sight of himself in the hall mirror (which had come out to see what the disturbance was). There was something about the tableau of an Inyaronian prince locked in mortal combat with a rug which was hard to scowl at.
“Okay, stop,” he said, raising his hands. The rug tried to wrap around his face. “Let’s call a truce for a moment.”
“That thou mayest prepare thine eldritch fire?” scoffed Estelhari’s couch. “I think not.”
“No eldritch fire. I promise.”
“Thou fallest then upon my mercy?”
“Don’t push it.”
The rug slid slowly away, giving a parting growl. Estelhari’s couch slid warily back into its former position, while his own slid up loyally behind him so he could pull himself off the floor.
As he sat there, looking around the shadowy apartments, it struck him for a moment that Inyamenna would have loved a house like this. Inya didn’t intrude much on the present - she was a happy little light fixed only in memory - so it was a rare and welcome moment.
He realised then that he probably owed someone ... or somechair ... for that.
“I would hear thy terms,” said Estelhari’s couch stiffly.
“Don’t interrupt. I’m trying to think. I don’t know what to do with you.” He paused to pick rug-fluff out of his ironfeathers. “I don’t suppose Estelhari has mentioned the overtaxing of the wellsprings to you.”
“On the contrary,” the couch retorted, “our lady hath spoken at length upon the very same. Her grief woundeth all with heart to feel it.”
“You’re a couch and you don’t have a heart,” he replied with asperity. “And as a matter of fact, most people in Anisca feel sad to see any work of Estelhari’s go, because she is a master of the craft. But if she keeps even a moderate drain on the wellspring, our defences -”
“We take nothing of the spring of Anisca!” The couch jittered with outrage. “Our sustenance cometh from the sweet lady herself!”
“It does?” No wonder she hasn’t woken for all this racket. “Then that’s even worse. She’ll start to tire quickly. She’ll feel weaker than she should.”
The furniture started to look glum. Arathalian wondered how he could tell.
“Fair Estelhari must needs suffer for our meagre sakes?” asked the couch at last, its voice choked with emotion. “It cannot be borne.”
“Indeed. I know the Makers love their craft, but she’ll just have to wait until we move on again.”
Arathalian’s couch shifted underneath him, an uncomfortable little movement.
“But she’s so lonely,” it sighed.
The morose furniture was silent for a while. So was Arathalian.
Of course. She was lonely. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that she was lonely? All her family were in Corruth. She didn’t have any friends among the Anisca Makers; she only had liegemen and women. She spent so much time being - and was so good at being - a proud, collected princess that he simply forgot to speculate about the young woman behind it all.
He felt sorry for her. He didn’t like or dislike her, because he didn’t really know her well enough either way; that was the price of a busy political marriage. But he felt sorry for her. There just didn’t seem to be much that he could do about it.
“You should get her a pet,” said his couch helpfully. “A talking pet.”
“Why a talking pet?”
“Because she likes to talk.”
“So I’ve gathered!” He glanced towards her door, still at a loss. “She can’t have a talking pet. Nothing that eats magic. She’ll just have to try to become familiar with more of the householders.”
There was no reply from any quarter, high or low.
“I’m sorry about this,” said Arathalian. “I don’t know how she does it, but yes, I am genuinely sorry for my furniture. All the same, you’ll have to go.”
“Thou art mine enemy,” Estelhari’s couch replied darkly, “and yet this charge I must lay upon thee, if th’art a man: attend to our maiden maker of wonders! Thusly, too, I forewarn thee: shouldst fail thy charge, my spirit shalt not treat thee kindly.”
“I’m going to be haunted by the ghost of a couch, am I?”
“Tell her goodbye from all of us,” said Arathalian’s couch in a small voice. “Don’t forget the rug or the mirror.”
Arathalian covered his face with a hand. “Iron break it. I cannot believe how stupid this is.”
Estelhari woke before dawn, her body refreshed and her head light. Too light. The weight of murmuring thoughts was gone; all she could feel was the ambient pressure of the various wards she kept around the city.
She let out a small cry and rushed out into the main chambers, hearing the conscientious whisper of maid-feet around her; all the maids here were sun fae. One of them bade her good morning, but she barely heard. All her attention was levelled on the two new couches arrayed around the window, and the bare, rugless floor.
“May I fetch -?” one of the maids began. Estelhari turned sharply on her heel, anguished and angry, and half-swooped on Arathalian’s closed door, losing the last half of the maid’s suggestion.
“Arathalian!” she shouted, rattling the door with her voice. Rationing be damned! How much energy would it expend to remove a prince’s arms, she wondered? “If you’re in there, come out! Now!”
He was in there. She could feel it. When he failed to answer, she shouted louder, knowing full well how much he hated it. It was all ammunition for ill-wishers in the court. “Come out here! Come out or I’ll come in!”
Sure enough, the door lurched open only moments later, thrown aside by a short, sharp note. Arathalian stood in the doorway, either tired enough or angry enough to have forgotten his own rationing rules. His badly focussed eyes suggested the former.
“Oh, yes, you’re a lady, all right,” he muttered. “Stop shrieking and act like a woman. I could have married a screech-owl with more decorum than you.”
“Maybe I’ll make you a screech-owl to better facilitate the match,” Estelhari hissed. “How dare you touch my works? How dare you go over my head?”
“How dare you lie to me? How dare you make your toys in wartime? And so on, and so on,” replied Arathalian, rubbing at his face. “We could do this all morning, Estelhari, but it’d be far less painful just to shoot myself. Why don’t I shortcut some of the caterwauling by telling you I didn’t Unmake your silly chairs?”
Estelhari folded her arms across her chest and glared. She had to look up at him to do so, as with almost everyone, but she knew her glare had a cutting edge. “What did you do with them?”
“I’ve sent them to Yarisol, a place where the wellspring is not critically overtaxed,” he answered. “If and when we move on to Yarisol, thou mayest trade sweet words with thy couch again. -Why did you make it talk like that?”
“If any of them are hurt on the journey,” she replied, singing each word in curt staccato, “I will make you answer for it. And you know that I can, Arathalian.”
She narrowed her eyes in final promise, killing his retort before it passed his lips, and then swept away from the door again, content that the point had been made. No-one touched a Maker’s works. Certainly not hers.
“Stop reading knightly romances,” Arathalian’s voice called sourly after her back, but when she turned again, he’d shut the door.
Estelhari realised it was finally safe to smile, so she did. Her little ones were safe. Perhaps he didn’t realise that one victory, however small, set a precedent.
And perhaps it was easier to win than she’d always assumed.