[Wild Roses] a bit from after the wars
Title: light in the dark
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Midori d'Bordeaux
Prompt: 82A "spirit of a gentleman"
Word Count: 509
Rating: all ages; moderately melancholy.
Notes: Midori was first encountered in here as a redhead in gray, and again here, this time by name. She is the current Bordeaux pack-witch, one of the pack's higher ranking members (Donovan, the current packleader, is the other so-far named one).
It wasn't impossible to see the father in the sons; the elder's careful awareness of what he was asking, when he did, the younger's bright, hungry grin (though his made appearances far more often than his father's had; age and survival carried prices he hadn't paid yet).
Impossible, no. Difficult, oh, yes. Neither of his sons smelled anything like the sense of steel carefully clothed in wood and leather, careful of its edges and utterly aware of them. The elder was deep water, for all his love of air and ease in map-making, the sort that did not give back what it took below. The younger was fire and air and indefinably foreign, the scales in his background as evident as the fur in hers.
They ruled the pack with a careful lack of leadership, trusting the pack to sort themselves out, to ask if help was needed and not to start wars. Their father had ruled the pack like one of the nobility would rule a fleet--trusted them to not start wars (or to mean it when they did, aware of the consequences of their actions) and to report to him as both adviser and as leader.
The pack missed him, in the same cool unshakable way they missed the sun in winter. Some sang, on the day of equals that marked the passing of the sun, sang the passing of a man in the same sweet tones they sang light home.
She didn't, but she listened to them as silently as she listened to the songs of the Longest Night, her title a silent permission for the continuation of mourning.
She heard his voice in her head at times, the rough wry exasperation of a Prince called to duty despite himself, the soft gentle tones of a father. She sent wolves to the house when it seemed right, came herself to weed his wife's garden and to revel in the layered, intoxicating smell of fresh-crushed mint. Listened to the affectionate growl in Donovan's voice when he reminded the elder of her lord's sons to eat better, and the amused horror in everyone else's voices when the younger son found something new and wonderful to eat. She was braver than the others, there, willing to lay small scraps of ginger or sharp-pickled fruits on her tongue, to analyse the flavours and sensations aloud for the prince's son.
That, she admitted in the privacy of her own head, was half to give the boy an ally at home, and half for the expression of awe on her pack's faces when they realised what she'd done. There was something to be said for furthering one's reputation as the pack-witch. Which always got inaudible familiar laughter, her teacher's and her lord's separately or together, sometimes her mother's, remembered amusement at her daughter's conniving tendencies.
She missed them all. But she wasn't sweet-voiced enough to sing, as wolves did, or human enough to make candles from the abandoned hives of wild bees. Her mourning was in silence, in the voices in her head, and in what she did in response to remembered ideas.
’Verse/characters: Wild Roses; Midori d'Bordeaux
Prompt: 82A "spirit of a gentleman"
Word Count: 509
Rating: all ages; moderately melancholy.
Notes: Midori was first encountered in here as a redhead in gray, and again here, this time by name. She is the current Bordeaux pack-witch, one of the pack's higher ranking members (Donovan, the current packleader, is the other so-far named one).
It wasn't impossible to see the father in the sons; the elder's careful awareness of what he was asking, when he did, the younger's bright, hungry grin (though his made appearances far more often than his father's had; age and survival carried prices he hadn't paid yet).
Impossible, no. Difficult, oh, yes. Neither of his sons smelled anything like the sense of steel carefully clothed in wood and leather, careful of its edges and utterly aware of them. The elder was deep water, for all his love of air and ease in map-making, the sort that did not give back what it took below. The younger was fire and air and indefinably foreign, the scales in his background as evident as the fur in hers.
They ruled the pack with a careful lack of leadership, trusting the pack to sort themselves out, to ask if help was needed and not to start wars. Their father had ruled the pack like one of the nobility would rule a fleet--trusted them to not start wars (or to mean it when they did, aware of the consequences of their actions) and to report to him as both adviser and as leader.
The pack missed him, in the same cool unshakable way they missed the sun in winter. Some sang, on the day of equals that marked the passing of the sun, sang the passing of a man in the same sweet tones they sang light home.
She didn't, but she listened to them as silently as she listened to the songs of the Longest Night, her title a silent permission for the continuation of mourning.
She heard his voice in her head at times, the rough wry exasperation of a Prince called to duty despite himself, the soft gentle tones of a father. She sent wolves to the house when it seemed right, came herself to weed his wife's garden and to revel in the layered, intoxicating smell of fresh-crushed mint. Listened to the affectionate growl in Donovan's voice when he reminded the elder of her lord's sons to eat better, and the amused horror in everyone else's voices when the younger son found something new and wonderful to eat. She was braver than the others, there, willing to lay small scraps of ginger or sharp-pickled fruits on her tongue, to analyse the flavours and sensations aloud for the prince's son.
That, she admitted in the privacy of her own head, was half to give the boy an ally at home, and half for the expression of awe on her pack's faces when they realised what she'd done. There was something to be said for furthering one's reputation as the pack-witch. Which always got inaudible familiar laughter, her teacher's and her lord's separately or together, sometimes her mother's, remembered amusement at her daughter's conniving tendencies.
She missed them all. But she wasn't sweet-voiced enough to sing, as wolves did, or human enough to make candles from the abandoned hives of wild bees. Her mourning was in silence, in the voices in her head, and in what she did in response to remembered ideas.