ooX ✘ and i- i took the one less traveled by [ location: gatas castle | visual ]
As she stirs, it's almost immediately clear to Petrana that she isn't where she belongs. This is not Riva, nor any of the bedchambers she's most accustomed to occupying there or elsewhere. She considers this new development in her situation with slightly more tranquility than might be expected of her, her hands folded on her stomach as she regards ( Read more... )
Showing up unannounced was okay the first time; she wasn't going to push her luck when the routine of introduction had already been established.
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Visitors. Of course. Petra is a little reluctant to receive her alternate's guests, but she comes down in one of the Countess's own light white lounging dresses and is waiting for River when she's led in.
"I'm sorry you've come all this way for the wrong Petrana," she says, mildly. "Do sit."
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(There's fire and ash, all of the parts of the world that crumbled without a second thought into too many cells and kelodial tissue. Vineyards grow up behind her, overrun and withered flourishing but broken promises make bitter wine and he won't be coming home again. Of course, neither will she, shrouded in 'if's and 'maybe's. Maybe they should put up green later, to not ruin the surprise.)
"I saw," River says, sounding distracted and confused. Then her staring dips down to Petra's stomach before bouncing up to her eyes. "You're new."
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It's everything Petra can do not to instinctively cover- not the scar, the scar she wears like a medal of honour for what she suffered to get it, but her abdomen, where the baby she's yet keeping a secret is still barely more than a glimmer.
"Temporarily, so I'm told," she says, carefully. "My name is still Petrana, but I'm the witch of Riva. Advisor to King Belgarion and Queen Ce'Nedra. Tell me your name?"
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First, "River," as she cants her head to the side and focuses on pushing the thought of pyres out and away. Second, with her other hand twitching at her side to point-not-point (and she keeps it toward the ground, as much as she can, but everyone has their failing moments), "It's a divergence."
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"Yes," she agrees, watching River - mad? powerful? both? - with a steady, thoughtful gaze. "My late husband's fault, or so I'm coming to suspect. I had a child and she didn't."
Not this one; Veda. Petra remembers waiting to be sure and not knowing what answer she hoped for, and she wonders if their daughter had been an acceptable sacrifice for the Countess or if Veda had simply never been, if she'd stayed because there was nothing to drive her to leave.
She wants to know, but the only woman who knows is the one whose place she's taken.
"It's interesting to see what life would have been like."
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"You paint," said as fact, an example of of the casual similarity, and as an offering. 'Welcome to Taxon, you're not who you're supposed to be but we'll find common ground around here somewhere.'
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"I don't have the time for it now that I used to," she admits, leaning forward to rest her hands on her knees. Her studio at the Rivan citadel is modest compared to the one that Petra spends hours and days in here in Gatas, or compared to the one that Martel provided in their compound. It's not that she couldn't have something grander, but that her work no longer allows her to while away so much time on her art. A trade off, maybe. "My old master would be very disappointed in me."
Common ground. People and places from before there was a Countess and a witch, and there was just Petrana with two paths waiting for her to choose between them.
"Do you?"
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"My lines aren't on a canvas." Somehow she manages to get that out as if she knows exactly where it is her lines are supposed to go.
That common ground in the past, the one that spreads out before the split and divide, is almost sacred. Once she answers River takes a moment to kick the heel of one boot with the toe of the other and wonder if today hadn't been a good day to go barefoot, after all.
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"Tell me about where they are instead," she invites- she's not quite so free with her affection as the Countess, but she's warm and quiet and steady. Her steadiness is not born out of a need for it, out of repression or fear, but simple self-assurance. She knows who she is, she knows what her life is, she's been through hell and picked herself back up again, and now she's calm without locking parts of her in little boxes.
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River isn't sure if that makes things easier or harder, but, "And dance," is her second answer.
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"I thought I was quite a dancer until I met the dryads in my adoptive family," Petra says, in a confiding tone that makes her sound a little more like the Countess; she thinks of Ce'Nedra, wistfully, of red hair and gold bells and how deeply she loves her. "Do you dance much here in Taxon? I wish I could more often."
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There's a moment then, still smiling, where she lets go of the chair and tilts her head to look at Petra again. Her face, not her scar, like she's trying to see right through to the Petra she's supposed to be, tilting a little more until all the parallels line up just right.
When she's done, River moves on tip-toes to sit and bunches her still-fidgeting fingers in the fabric of her sleeves.
"Is she yours?" Speaking of Ce'Nedra, mostly, with the tiniest counter question hidden between the lines of or are you hers?
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A jolted silence follows that - mind reader? crosses her thoughts and her face, which is all the warning there is before her mind turns abruptly opaque (in a lovely shade of purple). Her head tips slightly to the side as she considers River, and whether or not she intends to answer that question at all.
"She's my queen," Petra says levelly, which answers both questions with yes. "What else did you see?"
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She almost misses the first part in her bewildered staring past Petra's shoulder but settles nicely into confused and more than a little worried about the implications of being found out.
"Ash," said softly after a long pause. We speak out loud here. It's polite. "The places you can't go back to, all of it full. Sent you. Forks in the road and someone's in there." River pauses again, worries a corner of her lip between her teeth as she tries to remember the things that are relevant, pull up only this Petra, only this intrusion. "Red hair is a recessive gene."
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The first response to this is dry-voiced: "Her father is blond." (Petra knows she's carrying a girl for the simple reason that Garion has been informed by the highest authority there is that he'll have no more sons. Just lots of daughters. With his family history of twins, she's mildly concerned.)
...the rest of it, though. Zemoch, fire, what used to be home, Martel at the crossroads; she exhales, breathes calm back in and has altogether very little sympathy for the plainly unsettled reaction to her sudden silence.
And then, slowly, she begins to smile.
"Would you like to help me find something here?"
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