[Wild Roses] Spawn (technically, spawn's wife)
Title: sweetgrass and smoke
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Natalia, Aodh, the chaos!twins
Prompt: 17C "superiority"
Word Count: 407
Notes: She's feeling a little overwhelmed. Third person present; Natalia is the new wife of one of Hazel's sons. I think this is the latest in the chronology.
Their sisters are terrifying, she thinks, though for very different reasons. They don't seem to see it, spilling laughing challenges to the one like someone else might flip a fishing line over the water, mock-protective posturing around the other like they're much older than they are, and their sister all of ten.
Maybe everyone here is terrifying, and exposure will make her as blasé as everyone else?
She isn't sure if she should fear that happening, or hope it gets here soon.
She's polite--knows she sounds shy, but can't help it and isn't sure she wants to--to them all, even and especially the ones that scare her. So she's gracious when their sisters take her shopping, help her pick out fabrics and argue with the tailor about style and cut. They wander in at some point, and much to her surprise it's Griffin who checks on her (it shouldn't surprise her, they're older than they look and act at home, and she's seen him hunting), asks what she wants from her clothes, and she's startled enough that she admits to missing home's thick, colourful embroidery.
Mischa mock-growls at his sisters, who throw things at him, but by the end of the day they've all helped her sketch out what she means in embroidery, and the tailor is looking intrigued.
She's sitting on the porch, taking a moment away from the light and the noise and the happy arguments of the family she's been adopted by when she smells sweetgrass and smoke and nearly falls off the porch when their --uncle? their mother calls him 'cousin', though--relative says good evening in a language she doesn't have to concentrate to understand.
He grins, small bright flash of teeth in the dark, then inhales, the end of his cigarette glowing cherry-bright. "Weren't expecting this, when you said yes, were you."
"No," she admits in the same language. "I don't know what I was expecting, though."
"Copper, silver, gold?" he offers, and she laughs. "Seriously, though, next time they start overwhelming, ask one of them to teach you something. How to read, cats' cradles, something. They'll calm down."
He stands, stretches, taps ash off the side of the porch onto recently weeded dirt. "Or go find Isael."
"Isa--" she breaks off when she realises he's disappeared, as will-o'-the-wisp as any fairytale. If she hadn't seen their mother hug him, she'd almost wonder if he were one of the family's many ghosts.
'Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Natalia, Aodh, the chaos!twins
Prompt: 17C "superiority"
Word Count: 407
Notes: She's feeling a little overwhelmed. Third person present; Natalia is the new wife of one of Hazel's sons. I think this is the latest in the chronology.
Their sisters are terrifying, she thinks, though for very different reasons. They don't seem to see it, spilling laughing challenges to the one like someone else might flip a fishing line over the water, mock-protective posturing around the other like they're much older than they are, and their sister all of ten.
Maybe everyone here is terrifying, and exposure will make her as blasé as everyone else?
She isn't sure if she should fear that happening, or hope it gets here soon.
She's polite--knows she sounds shy, but can't help it and isn't sure she wants to--to them all, even and especially the ones that scare her. So she's gracious when their sisters take her shopping, help her pick out fabrics and argue with the tailor about style and cut. They wander in at some point, and much to her surprise it's Griffin who checks on her (it shouldn't surprise her, they're older than they look and act at home, and she's seen him hunting), asks what she wants from her clothes, and she's startled enough that she admits to missing home's thick, colourful embroidery.
Mischa mock-growls at his sisters, who throw things at him, but by the end of the day they've all helped her sketch out what she means in embroidery, and the tailor is looking intrigued.
She's sitting on the porch, taking a moment away from the light and the noise and the happy arguments of the family she's been adopted by when she smells sweetgrass and smoke and nearly falls off the porch when their --uncle? their mother calls him 'cousin', though--relative says good evening in a language she doesn't have to concentrate to understand.
He grins, small bright flash of teeth in the dark, then inhales, the end of his cigarette glowing cherry-bright. "Weren't expecting this, when you said yes, were you."
"No," she admits in the same language. "I don't know what I was expecting, though."
"Copper, silver, gold?" he offers, and she laughs. "Seriously, though, next time they start overwhelming, ask one of them to teach you something. How to read, cats' cradles, something. They'll calm down."
He stands, stretches, taps ash off the side of the porch onto recently weeded dirt. "Or go find Isael."
"Isa--" she breaks off when she realises he's disappeared, as will-o'-the-wisp as any fairytale. If she hadn't seen their mother hug him, she'd almost wonder if he were one of the family's many ghosts.