[✐ fanfic] yugioh: "the first theft"
Title: The First Theft
Prompt: "Gift"
Fandom: Yugioh: Duel Monsters
Summary: Isis has always taken it upon herself to be a good girl.
Isis has always taken it upon herself to be a good girl.
It isn't just because she fears and respects the gods they worship, including the Pharaoh, down in the dark beyond the light of day. It isn't just because her brother seems hell-bent on being a bad boy, always running off or hiding or just heedlessly doing whatever he pleases because he knows no one but his father has the actual authority to tell him "no".
No, Isis wants to be a good girl because no one else can, no one else in the tomb will set an example for Malik now that their mother is gone and Rishid is "just a servant". Isis wants to be the good girl so Malik doesn't think their father's lifestyle is the only way. She loves her father, she respects and fears him. She would never disobey him - or so she thinks. But there's never any love in his eyes. Malik's already growing up without the sun. She won't let him grow up without love.
Isis gets to see the sun, once a month when the servant ladies make their sojourn to the nearest village; now that she's over ten years old, she as an Ishtar holds the highest rank among the women and directs the excursions. The outside world frightens her a little. Sometimes she's curious, but mostly she thinks there's a certain comfort to their way of life, a certainty the hustle and bustle of the marketplace can never provide.
Today there's something new in the market, Isis notices as she waits for the women to regroup by the same tent where they always gather; letting her companion, a weathered old woman who helps tend their meager garden, know where she's going, Isis wanders over to take a look. A new game, the vendor explains to the crowd of other children beaming eagerly at the tiny pile of slips he has in his hands, shuffling and spreading them out. A new game from America, rumored to have its origins here! So why don't you bring your parents over, children? It's already a hit in far-off Japan! Do you know where that is?
Isis doesn't. Isis has never heard of Japan or America, but she recognizes the images on the slips of stiff paper the man handles with such dexterity. She's seen them on the walls of her home countless times, seen her brother struggle to memorize them all in preparation for having three engraved on his back. She's learned legends and songs and histories, and now it's really beginning again. The prophecies in her home are coming true!
Malik will want to know, she realizes. What's more, Malik's been so scared lately. He just had another birthday: one closer to his tenth. And everywhere he turns, everything reminds him of what's going to happen. He has nothing but work. He wants to play! she's heard him complain, but no one is in a position to listen or heed his cries. He just wants to play....
A good girl wouldn't, Isis knows, slip in unnoticed while the vendor makes his sales pitch to the clamoring children's parents. She wouldn't quickly dart a hand out, slipping a few of the bright, crinkly-wrapped packages up into her sleeve, then retreat before anyone could call her on what she's done. What the packages are doing in her hand all of a sudden, then, she hasn't the slightest idea, because she's a good girl. Isn't she? Apparently not, but then the caravan of tombkeepers begins reconvening and Isis has to hurry back over, to count heads and see to it all their money has been spent wisely.
She does so one-handed, the other still clutching the fruits of her crime. This is it, she realizes sadly. A test of her morality and she's failed it, somehow. She's been trying so hard but there's something inside of her, some fate, that she just can't avoid. She isn't a good girl. She's a thief. She's bad.
Yet fate apparently works in ways so mysterious that even Isis, its firmest acolyte, cannot always understand. For watching her brother's face as he unwraps the cards that evening, eyes brightening as his fingers slip over the first objects from aboveground he could really call his own, Isis doesn't feel like a bad girl at all.
Prompt: "Gift"
Fandom: Yugioh: Duel Monsters
Summary: Isis has always taken it upon herself to be a good girl.
Isis has always taken it upon herself to be a good girl.
It isn't just because she fears and respects the gods they worship, including the Pharaoh, down in the dark beyond the light of day. It isn't just because her brother seems hell-bent on being a bad boy, always running off or hiding or just heedlessly doing whatever he pleases because he knows no one but his father has the actual authority to tell him "no".
No, Isis wants to be a good girl because no one else can, no one else in the tomb will set an example for Malik now that their mother is gone and Rishid is "just a servant". Isis wants to be the good girl so Malik doesn't think their father's lifestyle is the only way. She loves her father, she respects and fears him. She would never disobey him - or so she thinks. But there's never any love in his eyes. Malik's already growing up without the sun. She won't let him grow up without love.
Isis gets to see the sun, once a month when the servant ladies make their sojourn to the nearest village; now that she's over ten years old, she as an Ishtar holds the highest rank among the women and directs the excursions. The outside world frightens her a little. Sometimes she's curious, but mostly she thinks there's a certain comfort to their way of life, a certainty the hustle and bustle of the marketplace can never provide.
Today there's something new in the market, Isis notices as she waits for the women to regroup by the same tent where they always gather; letting her companion, a weathered old woman who helps tend their meager garden, know where she's going, Isis wanders over to take a look. A new game, the vendor explains to the crowd of other children beaming eagerly at the tiny pile of slips he has in his hands, shuffling and spreading them out. A new game from America, rumored to have its origins here! So why don't you bring your parents over, children? It's already a hit in far-off Japan! Do you know where that is?
Isis doesn't. Isis has never heard of Japan or America, but she recognizes the images on the slips of stiff paper the man handles with such dexterity. She's seen them on the walls of her home countless times, seen her brother struggle to memorize them all in preparation for having three engraved on his back. She's learned legends and songs and histories, and now it's really beginning again. The prophecies in her home are coming true!
Malik will want to know, she realizes. What's more, Malik's been so scared lately. He just had another birthday: one closer to his tenth. And everywhere he turns, everything reminds him of what's going to happen. He has nothing but work. He wants to play! she's heard him complain, but no one is in a position to listen or heed his cries. He just wants to play....
A good girl wouldn't, Isis knows, slip in unnoticed while the vendor makes his sales pitch to the clamoring children's parents. She wouldn't quickly dart a hand out, slipping a few of the bright, crinkly-wrapped packages up into her sleeve, then retreat before anyone could call her on what she's done. What the packages are doing in her hand all of a sudden, then, she hasn't the slightest idea, because she's a good girl. Isn't she? Apparently not, but then the caravan of tombkeepers begins reconvening and Isis has to hurry back over, to count heads and see to it all their money has been spent wisely.
She does so one-handed, the other still clutching the fruits of her crime. This is it, she realizes sadly. A test of her morality and she's failed it, somehow. She's been trying so hard but there's something inside of her, some fate, that she just can't avoid. She isn't a good girl. She's a thief. She's bad.
Yet fate apparently works in ways so mysterious that even Isis, its firmest acolyte, cannot always understand. For watching her brother's face as he unwraps the cards that evening, eyes brightening as his fingers slip over the first objects from aboveground he could really call his own, Isis doesn't feel like a bad girl at all.