Fic: Performing on a Harp of Gold
Title: Performing on a Harp of Gold
Fandom: Simoun
Characters/Pairing: Rodoreamon/Mamiina
Summary: Rodoreamon comes to a crossroads and calls on a dead and living thing for help.
Word count: 1,386
Comments: chibirachy made me do it. Switched to a new poet for this title!
Warnings: I refuse on principle to ‘warn’ for homosexuality. But there are spoilers for the entire series.
Performing on a Harp of Gold
Pen scratched and paper moved across the polished surface of Rodoreamon’s desk. She steadied the paper with her left hand and continued to write with her right. Her hand ached. She was becoming increasingly accustomed to typewriters of late. But this was something that deserved a handwritten message.
‘It’s all so terribly depressing,’ came Mamiina’s snide voice, ‘isn’t it, little ladyship?’
‘Mamiina?’ Rodoreamon looked up. She was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where…where are you?’
‘I am here and I will continue but I think that, physically, I might distract you.’
Rodoreamon frowned. ‘I see,’ she said.
She wrote on. There was a shimmer in the air as Mamiina stabilized her existence a bit between the dying and living world. The dead and living girl moved down through the air and was invisible again, like a cold haze trickling down from dreams to wakefulness.
‘Do you understand what the problem is, Mamiina?’ asked Rodoreamon.
Mamiina laughed. ‘Who do you think I am, Rodore? Of course. I understand perfectly fine. Wars end. Governments change. When you lose, your government changes against the will of your people. When you win, it often still changes democratically afterwards.’ She stifled a little chuckle. ‘Pseudo-democratically, in Simulacrum’s case.’
‘Mamiina!’
‘Oh, come off it. You know I couldn’t vote for you.’
Dead girls didn’t vote. It had been a year since these visitations had begun. In that time, Rodoreamon had questioned her sanity every day. Nobody else ever saw Mamiina and it often seemed that Mamiina told her Rodore exactly what she most needed to hear. -But then, Rodoreamon thought, it would be more likely the case that a hallucination would tell her what she wanted to hear. Mamiina told her what she genuinely needed. That exactitude, the honesty with precision, had also been hers in life.
Yet ghostly companionship…well, it was strange, you know? On windy nights when the rain beat against the shingled roof and blown-paned windows of Mofas Manor, Rodoreamon shivered in her blankets, reverting to the girl of seventeen that she had been in those days, and it took the presence of somebody who had died six years ago to calm her back into the state of the young Home Secretary.
Former Home Secretary.
‘At the age of twenty-three,’ said Rodoreamon sadly, ‘I believe I may be the youngest former Cabinet minister in Simulacran history.’
‘These things happen,’ Mamiina said. ‘Little ladyship, you mustn’t take it personally. A wartime government will often fall in peace.’
‘Don’t you have better things to be doing than spouting historical truisms at me, Mamiina?’ Rodoreamon suddenly snapped. She turned and fixed her eyes on the shimmery space. ‘Like…communing with other dead souls? Singing the praises of Tempus Spatium?’
‘Time doesn’t exactly go right when you’re in my position,’ said Mamiina. ‘I have all the time that ever was to do those things. Right now, you are what I care about, until we can be together again.’
Rodoreamon could not help but blush-and could not help but want to cry.
‘Let’s discuss our emotions later,’ said Mamiina, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to say.
‘All right.'
‘For now, I’d like to address that letter that you are writing. You were selected for another term in Parliament, you know. Your faction losing its place in the Governing Council doesn’t mean that…’
‘It wasn’t Yun’s fault,’ said Rodoreamon.
‘What? Of course it’s not her fault! When did I ever say it was?’ scoffed Mamiina. ‘Rodore…you need to stop getting so defensive so easily!
‘All right!’ Rodoreamon squealed.
Mamiina smirked in the manner of an unincarnate being, an act of the soul that was what a smirk was to the acts of the body. Rodoreamon was so, so cute sometimes…
‘I could…’ began Rodoreamon. ‘That is, if I resign from Parliament…I could…go into business?’
‘You’re too kind to be sullied by the dominant system of business in this world,’ said Mamiina without hesitation.
‘Oh,’ said Rodoreamon. A pure, accepting ‘oh’. She looked down. ‘Well, a lot of my tasks have had to do with children, so…a school? A proper, comprehensive school, not the sort of…haphazard way that this country has so often done such things.’
‘Yes,’ said Mamiina, ‘but…what would you teach? In the past you could have instructed sibyllae but I doubt you want to move to the Plumbish border.’
‘Writing?’
‘You may run out of patience.’
‘Religion?’
‘You have devotion down,’ said Mamiina, ‘but not the sort of grasp of doctrine that some may seek. In general I would set that aside for the clergy in any case-as opposed, I mean, to former clergy.’
‘A sibylla is always a sibylla,’ Rodoreamon said, quietly but firmly.
‘That may be even so,’ said Mamiina. ‘But do you honestly want to keep pulling the ‘Rodoreamon, daughter of Raef, Lady Kyabyu Mofas, Simoun sibylla’ card all your life? It seems that that is scarcely better than ‘Rodoreamon, daughter of Raef, Lady Kyabyu Mofas, former Home Secretary’ which you are so keen to avoid.’
‘I don’t,’ said Rodoreamon. ‘I want to do things. Things that will…’ She thought about what she wanted to say for a few minutes. ‘Things that will allow me to continue on in this life that I have made for myself, but-well, you know, things. What do you say to religious work?’
‘Bad idea,’ said Mamiina. ‘We don’t have much of a religious administration any more, and of course you were never one for going about praying for people and laying hands on them.’
Rodoreamon frowned, and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I see…I see your…’
‘Let’s look over the letter,’ said Mamiina, and finally made herself apparent.
She was dressed, as often in recent days, not in her flight suit, not in her prayer dress, not in her maid uniform, but in a pure white raiment that fluttered like falling feathers as she walked. The familiar cold that did not register on any thermometer filled Rodoreamon’s study.
‘You represent the estate of Mofas,’ said Mamiina, ‘the House of Kyabyu Mofas, and the Beliel constituency of Simulacrum East Centre.’ Her voice was weirdly husky.
‘Why are you talking like that?’ asked Rodoreamon.
‘Because,’ said Mamiina, trailing immaterial coldness along her Rodore’s cheek and down her neck and shoulder and arm, whispering into her love’s braid made in memory of her own, ‘I don’t want to be talking about this.’
Rodoreamon, as was her wont, flushed and giggled. ‘Later, later,’ she said. ‘Mamiina, we have to get this done.’
‘Why can’t it wait?’ Mamiina asked. ‘It takes a new Parliament long enough to assemble, anyway. At least a few more weeks, especially just after a war.’
Rodoreamon sighed. ‘The Military Governor from Argentum for a few years back is leading the munities in their capital, you know,’ she said. ‘After, you remember, what little he did in his two years in our capital. It all comes round again.’
‘It does at that,’ said Mamiina.
‘Even…even your presence here.’
Mamiina nodded.
‘Mamiina?’ said Rodoreamon.
‘What is it?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course you can ask me a question. I’ve no way of stopping you asking it, now, have I?’
Rodoreamon giggled. ‘No, what I mean is…that is to say…’ She coughed. ‘Mamiina, are you, really, in essence, illusory?’
Mamiina gulped. ‘What brings this on, Rodore?’
‘It’s just…’ Rodoreamon hung her head. ‘Ghosts aren’t usually the sort of people who…who people should have as friends-as confidantes-as loves.’
‘Twenty-three-year-olds also aren’t usually the sort of people who can introduce themselves as ‘former Home Secretary and Minister for Children, Schools, and Families’, Rodore,’ said Mamiina. ‘You are…a unique person, my dear. Tempus Spatium knows I certainly am not, being as I am just a lowly servant.’
Rodoreamon tensed. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘Never, never say that.’
‘All right,’ said Mamiina, ‘little ladyship.’
'Say, should I visit Yun?'
'Yes. Later.'
'All right.'
Rodoreamon shoved her Letter of Resignation from Parliament, signed but not sealed, into the top drawer of her desk for a later day. Turning round and smiling, the Home Secretary in dignified fall took the dead and living girl who loved her and embarked on a new day’s journey into the sacred, while the adult world of politics and war remained below, wrapped in the old miasmas.
Fandom: Simoun
Characters/Pairing: Rodoreamon/Mamiina
Summary: Rodoreamon comes to a crossroads and calls on a dead and living thing for help.
Word count: 1,386
Comments: chibirachy made me do it. Switched to a new poet for this title!
Warnings: I refuse on principle to ‘warn’ for homosexuality. But there are spoilers for the entire series.
Performing on a Harp of Gold
Pen scratched and paper moved across the polished surface of Rodoreamon’s desk. She steadied the paper with her left hand and continued to write with her right. Her hand ached. She was becoming increasingly accustomed to typewriters of late. But this was something that deserved a handwritten message.
‘It’s all so terribly depressing,’ came Mamiina’s snide voice, ‘isn’t it, little ladyship?’
‘Mamiina?’ Rodoreamon looked up. She was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where…where are you?’
‘I am here and I will continue but I think that, physically, I might distract you.’
Rodoreamon frowned. ‘I see,’ she said.
She wrote on. There was a shimmer in the air as Mamiina stabilized her existence a bit between the dying and living world. The dead and living girl moved down through the air and was invisible again, like a cold haze trickling down from dreams to wakefulness.
‘Do you understand what the problem is, Mamiina?’ asked Rodoreamon.
Mamiina laughed. ‘Who do you think I am, Rodore? Of course. I understand perfectly fine. Wars end. Governments change. When you lose, your government changes against the will of your people. When you win, it often still changes democratically afterwards.’ She stifled a little chuckle. ‘Pseudo-democratically, in Simulacrum’s case.’
‘Mamiina!’
‘Oh, come off it. You know I couldn’t vote for you.’
Dead girls didn’t vote. It had been a year since these visitations had begun. In that time, Rodoreamon had questioned her sanity every day. Nobody else ever saw Mamiina and it often seemed that Mamiina told her Rodore exactly what she most needed to hear. -But then, Rodoreamon thought, it would be more likely the case that a hallucination would tell her what she wanted to hear. Mamiina told her what she genuinely needed. That exactitude, the honesty with precision, had also been hers in life.
Yet ghostly companionship…well, it was strange, you know? On windy nights when the rain beat against the shingled roof and blown-paned windows of Mofas Manor, Rodoreamon shivered in her blankets, reverting to the girl of seventeen that she had been in those days, and it took the presence of somebody who had died six years ago to calm her back into the state of the young Home Secretary.
Former Home Secretary.
‘At the age of twenty-three,’ said Rodoreamon sadly, ‘I believe I may be the youngest former Cabinet minister in Simulacran history.’
‘These things happen,’ Mamiina said. ‘Little ladyship, you mustn’t take it personally. A wartime government will often fall in peace.’
‘Don’t you have better things to be doing than spouting historical truisms at me, Mamiina?’ Rodoreamon suddenly snapped. She turned and fixed her eyes on the shimmery space. ‘Like…communing with other dead souls? Singing the praises of Tempus Spatium?’
‘Time doesn’t exactly go right when you’re in my position,’ said Mamiina. ‘I have all the time that ever was to do those things. Right now, you are what I care about, until we can be together again.’
Rodoreamon could not help but blush-and could not help but want to cry.
‘Let’s discuss our emotions later,’ said Mamiina, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to say.
‘All right.'
‘For now, I’d like to address that letter that you are writing. You were selected for another term in Parliament, you know. Your faction losing its place in the Governing Council doesn’t mean that…’
‘It wasn’t Yun’s fault,’ said Rodoreamon.
‘What? Of course it’s not her fault! When did I ever say it was?’ scoffed Mamiina. ‘Rodore…you need to stop getting so defensive so easily!
‘All right!’ Rodoreamon squealed.
Mamiina smirked in the manner of an unincarnate being, an act of the soul that was what a smirk was to the acts of the body. Rodoreamon was so, so cute sometimes…
‘I could…’ began Rodoreamon. ‘That is, if I resign from Parliament…I could…go into business?’
‘You’re too kind to be sullied by the dominant system of business in this world,’ said Mamiina without hesitation.
‘Oh,’ said Rodoreamon. A pure, accepting ‘oh’. She looked down. ‘Well, a lot of my tasks have had to do with children, so…a school? A proper, comprehensive school, not the sort of…haphazard way that this country has so often done such things.’
‘Yes,’ said Mamiina, ‘but…what would you teach? In the past you could have instructed sibyllae but I doubt you want to move to the Plumbish border.’
‘Writing?’
‘You may run out of patience.’
‘Religion?’
‘You have devotion down,’ said Mamiina, ‘but not the sort of grasp of doctrine that some may seek. In general I would set that aside for the clergy in any case-as opposed, I mean, to former clergy.’
‘A sibylla is always a sibylla,’ Rodoreamon said, quietly but firmly.
‘That may be even so,’ said Mamiina. ‘But do you honestly want to keep pulling the ‘Rodoreamon, daughter of Raef, Lady Kyabyu Mofas, Simoun sibylla’ card all your life? It seems that that is scarcely better than ‘Rodoreamon, daughter of Raef, Lady Kyabyu Mofas, former Home Secretary’ which you are so keen to avoid.’
‘I don’t,’ said Rodoreamon. ‘I want to do things. Things that will…’ She thought about what she wanted to say for a few minutes. ‘Things that will allow me to continue on in this life that I have made for myself, but-well, you know, things. What do you say to religious work?’
‘Bad idea,’ said Mamiina. ‘We don’t have much of a religious administration any more, and of course you were never one for going about praying for people and laying hands on them.’
Rodoreamon frowned, and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I see…I see your…’
‘Let’s look over the letter,’ said Mamiina, and finally made herself apparent.
She was dressed, as often in recent days, not in her flight suit, not in her prayer dress, not in her maid uniform, but in a pure white raiment that fluttered like falling feathers as she walked. The familiar cold that did not register on any thermometer filled Rodoreamon’s study.
‘You represent the estate of Mofas,’ said Mamiina, ‘the House of Kyabyu Mofas, and the Beliel constituency of Simulacrum East Centre.’ Her voice was weirdly husky.
‘Why are you talking like that?’ asked Rodoreamon.
‘Because,’ said Mamiina, trailing immaterial coldness along her Rodore’s cheek and down her neck and shoulder and arm, whispering into her love’s braid made in memory of her own, ‘I don’t want to be talking about this.’
Rodoreamon, as was her wont, flushed and giggled. ‘Later, later,’ she said. ‘Mamiina, we have to get this done.’
‘Why can’t it wait?’ Mamiina asked. ‘It takes a new Parliament long enough to assemble, anyway. At least a few more weeks, especially just after a war.’
Rodoreamon sighed. ‘The Military Governor from Argentum for a few years back is leading the munities in their capital, you know,’ she said. ‘After, you remember, what little he did in his two years in our capital. It all comes round again.’
‘It does at that,’ said Mamiina.
‘Even…even your presence here.’
Mamiina nodded.
‘Mamiina?’ said Rodoreamon.
‘What is it?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course you can ask me a question. I’ve no way of stopping you asking it, now, have I?’
Rodoreamon giggled. ‘No, what I mean is…that is to say…’ She coughed. ‘Mamiina, are you, really, in essence, illusory?’
Mamiina gulped. ‘What brings this on, Rodore?’
‘It’s just…’ Rodoreamon hung her head. ‘Ghosts aren’t usually the sort of people who…who people should have as friends-as confidantes-as loves.’
‘Twenty-three-year-olds also aren’t usually the sort of people who can introduce themselves as ‘former Home Secretary and Minister for Children, Schools, and Families’, Rodore,’ said Mamiina. ‘You are…a unique person, my dear. Tempus Spatium knows I certainly am not, being as I am just a lowly servant.’
Rodoreamon tensed. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘Never, never say that.’
‘All right,’ said Mamiina, ‘little ladyship.’
'Say, should I visit Yun?'
'Yes. Later.'
'All right.'
Rodoreamon shoved her Letter of Resignation from Parliament, signed but not sealed, into the top drawer of her desk for a later day. Turning round and smiling, the Home Secretary in dignified fall took the dead and living girl who loved her and embarked on a new day’s journey into the sacred, while the adult world of politics and war remained below, wrapped in the old miasmas.