Waking up...
*Cordelia raises her head from an unfamiliar pillow, awake abruptly between one breath and the next with no sense of transition.
Her hair falls across her face in a half-undone tangle of intricate twists. She pushes it aside, wincing at the stiffness of her neck and back, and wonders for a blurred moment where Aral is and why she fell asleep in her clothes last night.
Last night.
Oh dear.
She stretches out a hand and examines it. Hers, her hand. It's a little absurd to be so gratified by such a small thing, but there is a bubble of joy at the bottom of her throat that refuses to be waved away. She rolls over and swings her legs over the edge of the bed (her own legs, stiffer than the legs she had use of last night but still athletic and flexible, even at her age), twitches her skirts out of the way in an unthinking automatic gesture, and pads barefoot over to the room's mirror to try and unravel what remains of last night's elaborate coiffure.
The kinesthetic memory of last night is ... odd. It's been nearly half a century since Cordelia was last a teenager, and though transgender operations are common enough on her birthworld of Beta Colony, she's never been a boy before. To the best of her recollection, it is not so very different from being a girl at that age ... with a few obvious exceptions, of course. Say what he might about the other side of his nature, Will is -- physically, at least -- a normal adolescent male in every respect.
She pauses, fingers still in her hair, and glances at the pale underside of her left forearm. Will has a scar there, she saw last night; like an old burn. Or no, more like a brand, as its shape was sharply defined: a smooth circle, quartered by a cross. Had the Masters he'd mentioned once, the Old Ones who had claimed him at the age of eleven, scarred him so? An initiation of some kind, to mark him as one of them?
Cordelia tugs at her hair, and manages at last to undo the last snarled strands. The roan-red length of it ripples down her back, streaked liberally with silver. Sighing, she gathers it in two hands and coils it back up into a plain bun, securing it with a long pin. She brushes futilely at the wrinkles of her slept-in sleeveless gown, then casts about the small room for her bolero jacket and shoes.
There. She can be back to her home and her husband now, and Will can be back to his unending Duty. Perhaps he has already gone.
Duty. By destiny and birthright and choice, he had said, or words to that effect; and in the words she had felt echoes of the crushing pressures of Barrayar, closing around her son before he was even born.
How much like Barrayar are these Old Ones, these Masters of the Light that Will serves? How much like Barrayar that eats its children?
Cordelia shrugs into her jacket, steps into her shoes, dismisses the aching thoughts as much as possible, and heads downstairs to the bar.*
Her hair falls across her face in a half-undone tangle of intricate twists. She pushes it aside, wincing at the stiffness of her neck and back, and wonders for a blurred moment where Aral is and why she fell asleep in her clothes last night.
Last night.
Oh dear.
She stretches out a hand and examines it. Hers, her hand. It's a little absurd to be so gratified by such a small thing, but there is a bubble of joy at the bottom of her throat that refuses to be waved away. She rolls over and swings her legs over the edge of the bed (her own legs, stiffer than the legs she had use of last night but still athletic and flexible, even at her age), twitches her skirts out of the way in an unthinking automatic gesture, and pads barefoot over to the room's mirror to try and unravel what remains of last night's elaborate coiffure.
The kinesthetic memory of last night is ... odd. It's been nearly half a century since Cordelia was last a teenager, and though transgender operations are common enough on her birthworld of Beta Colony, she's never been a boy before. To the best of her recollection, it is not so very different from being a girl at that age ... with a few obvious exceptions, of course. Say what he might about the other side of his nature, Will is -- physically, at least -- a normal adolescent male in every respect.
She pauses, fingers still in her hair, and glances at the pale underside of her left forearm. Will has a scar there, she saw last night; like an old burn. Or no, more like a brand, as its shape was sharply defined: a smooth circle, quartered by a cross. Had the Masters he'd mentioned once, the Old Ones who had claimed him at the age of eleven, scarred him so? An initiation of some kind, to mark him as one of them?
Cordelia tugs at her hair, and manages at last to undo the last snarled strands. The roan-red length of it ripples down her back, streaked liberally with silver. Sighing, she gathers it in two hands and coils it back up into a plain bun, securing it with a long pin. She brushes futilely at the wrinkles of her slept-in sleeveless gown, then casts about the small room for her bolero jacket and shoes.
There. She can be back to her home and her husband now, and Will can be back to his unending Duty. Perhaps he has already gone.
Duty. By destiny and birthright and choice, he had said, or words to that effect; and in the words she had felt echoes of the crushing pressures of Barrayar, closing around her son before he was even born.
How much like Barrayar are these Old Ones, these Masters of the Light that Will serves? How much like Barrayar that eats its children?
Cordelia shrugs into her jacket, steps into her shoes, dismisses the aching thoughts as much as possible, and heads downstairs to the bar.*