[Witches' Horses] Sibir
Title: in plain sight
'Verse/characters: Sibir; Sergeievich, Marya Ivanovna
Prompt: 86C "invisibility", 'a moment of unguarded pleasure' (klgaffney)
Word Count: 1117
Notes: billradish kept going 'Sibir? Sibir? Sibir? Sibir?'; Marya Ivanovna was introduced in no head for the waters of life. Realistically this is one thread of a chapter or so.
Vocabulary and other notes: Strelnitzi are essentially aircraft carriers, meant to carry horses. Medsestra is short for 'meditsinskaya sestra'; essentially, a nurse. Boyardoms are still planets, terems are still space stations, either can be referred to by historical city names. A banya is a variation on the theme of wet sauna. A druzhina was the entourage and lesser heros associated with a Hero; it's being used for unit, here. A rotmistr is a captain of cavalry.
---
Marya Ivanovna wasn't a secretary. She wasn't an aide de camp to one of the other captains. If any of the captains he'd met in this camp--including the married ones--had caught on to the fact that pretty women were good for more than arm decoration he'd start drinking the vodka from the still the horse-engineers had built from half a broken horse's air vent system and powered with the gravity coils, which even the sergeants admitted wasn't fit to use for solvent, let alone drink.
His personal theory was that they had some kind of contest going with the strelnitzi-engineers as to who could protect their harvest best from the soldiers and riders. Normally it was a point of pride to make good vodka, after all, or at least vodka that wouldn't send you to visit an exasperated medsestra with a stomach pump on a half-bottle's acquaintance.
Marya Ivanovna also wasn't a medsestra, or a doctor--Stas knew the shift schedules of the medical staff well enough that he could recite them dead-drunk, and Marya Ivanovna was off-shift at the wrong times to be associated with them.
If she was someone's wife, she hid it remarkably well; the wives who'd come out with their husbands from boyardoms and terems to the camps tended to band together and present a united--slightly terrifying, he wished he could aim them at the enemy or at least at the people at the other end of the supply lines--front.
Which left Marya Ivanovna a bit of a mystery, one he worried at--Stas claimed he looked like a dog with a bone, and since of the two of them Stas was the one who'd actually seen dogs he'd had to let the judgement stand--whenever he had a free moment.
She drank well, took her tea with lemon preserves when she could get them and declined sweeteners entirely when it was Suzdal-processed strawberries or currants. She knew her way around a samovar, enough that she'd pour out tea concentrate for grimy exhausted workers with deft flicks of her fingers instead of letting them fumble with the small pot.
She kept herself clean, though, so the samovar might merely be that she didn't want to find greasy fingerprints on the metal.
Stas claimed that noticing that someone was clean was a sign of interest. He'd choked on his beer when Ruslan had pointed out that he could recite Stas' time slots for banya and sonics for the last week without even thinking hard, then amended his statement to noticing that someone of the opposite gender was clean--and smelled good--was a sign of interest.
All of which left him slightly hesitant, after she'd not shown up at her usual tea-time for two days, to try to track her down.
But the druzhina was scheduled to go back out in three days, and he wanted to say goodbye.
What came out of his mouth when he found her hard at work in one of the rotating-captains offices was "May I ask a question?"
She lifted an eyebrow without looking up, shifting tablets around on the magnets, even flipping one over so he couldn't read--upside down--the information on it before she finally raised her eyes and smiled a greeting. "You may ask any question you like, but I won't promise you an answer."
"I'm motivated by curiousity, not espionage, if that makes any difference," he offered, then actually asked the question. "Why do you use 'Marya', instead of 'Marina'?"
Her laugh was startlingly deep, no light titter of put-on agreement but the bright noise of someone honestly and unguardedly amused. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear that laugh from one of Stas' riders; on a woman it was astonishing.
She laughed harder at his expression, eventually covering the bottom half of her face with one hand and flipping her seat-back down several degrees with the other so she could meet his eyes without craning her neck. "Rotmistr Sergeievich," she said after she got her voice under some semblance of control, and he noted the way she used the correct captain-word without stumbling, "has anyone ever told you your curiousity may get you shot, one of these years?"
"No," he admitted, half-smiling, "but I imagine the odds of my surviving to the end of the war make for unpopular bets."
She snorted. "You'd be surprised." Steepling her fingers before her lips, elbows on the padded arms of her chair, "I didn't promise you an answer, but I'll give you a few anyway."
Her mouth quirked again at his expression, but her voice remained steady this time. "Now, for a woman to give the diminutive when introducing herself--perhaps she's superstitious, and worries about her full name in the hands of a stranger. Perhaps she's named for her mother or her grandmother, and is so accustomed to the shorter name being hers that it's the first one to her lips when she speaks. Perhaps that really is her name, her family having long since abandoned Marina, Evgenia and Aleksandra for the shorter Marya, Zhenia and Sascha. Perhaps--"
"Perhaps," he interrupted gently, watching her closely, "it's misdirection. Marya Ivanovna isn't the name people looking for Ivan's daughter Marina, who is not where she's expected to be, would examine in reports and news records."
She lifted her eyebrows again, fingers still steepled together neatly, face smooth.
He paused, about to push farther, then backed down. "I'm sorry--that was presumptuous and rude of me. I actually came to find you to say goodbye--our refit's supposedly complete tomorrow and we've a ride out on Sankt-Basil two days after that, so we can break everything we're able to before we're out of reach again."
"Ah," she replied slowly, then flicked her seat upright and rose, crossed to him, her feet terem-dweller light across the plates as his rider's boots just weren't. She looked up, met his eyes directly, then leaned up on her toes--he automatically slouched, only noticing afterwards, as her lips brushed his cheek.
She settled back down onto her heels, considered him, much as he'd been contemplated by a sergeant, not really so very long ago for all it felt like centuries.
"Chernigov," she said, and he blinked.
She smiled. "If you live, and you want to see who Ivan's daughter Marina is, look in Chernigov, Ruslan Sergeievich. In the meantime, Marya Ivanovna has work to do, and you surely have someone else to bother."
"My apologies for interrupting, Marya Ivanovna," he said after a moment, as he brain jarred itself back into motion. "Goodbye."
"Until tomorrow," she replied as she sat back down at her desk, her eye twinkling. "Surely the great Sergeievich can make time for tea."
He paused mid-salute in the doorway, then deliberately finished it, smiling with his eyes. "Until tomorrow."
'Verse/characters: Sibir; Sergeievich, Marya Ivanovna
Prompt: 86C "invisibility", 'a moment of unguarded pleasure' (klgaffney)
Word Count: 1117
Notes: billradish kept going 'Sibir? Sibir? Sibir? Sibir?'; Marya Ivanovna was introduced in no head for the waters of life. Realistically this is one thread of a chapter or so.
Vocabulary and other notes: Strelnitzi are essentially aircraft carriers, meant to carry horses. Medsestra is short for 'meditsinskaya sestra'; essentially, a nurse. Boyardoms are still planets, terems are still space stations, either can be referred to by historical city names. A banya is a variation on the theme of wet sauna. A druzhina was the entourage and lesser heros associated with a Hero; it's being used for unit, here. A rotmistr is a captain of cavalry.
---
Marya Ivanovna wasn't a secretary. She wasn't an aide de camp to one of the other captains. If any of the captains he'd met in this camp--including the married ones--had caught on to the fact that pretty women were good for more than arm decoration he'd start drinking the vodka from the still the horse-engineers had built from half a broken horse's air vent system and powered with the gravity coils, which even the sergeants admitted wasn't fit to use for solvent, let alone drink.
His personal theory was that they had some kind of contest going with the strelnitzi-engineers as to who could protect their harvest best from the soldiers and riders. Normally it was a point of pride to make good vodka, after all, or at least vodka that wouldn't send you to visit an exasperated medsestra with a stomach pump on a half-bottle's acquaintance.
Marya Ivanovna also wasn't a medsestra, or a doctor--Stas knew the shift schedules of the medical staff well enough that he could recite them dead-drunk, and Marya Ivanovna was off-shift at the wrong times to be associated with them.
If she was someone's wife, she hid it remarkably well; the wives who'd come out with their husbands from boyardoms and terems to the camps tended to band together and present a united--slightly terrifying, he wished he could aim them at the enemy or at least at the people at the other end of the supply lines--front.
Which left Marya Ivanovna a bit of a mystery, one he worried at--Stas claimed he looked like a dog with a bone, and since of the two of them Stas was the one who'd actually seen dogs he'd had to let the judgement stand--whenever he had a free moment.
She drank well, took her tea with lemon preserves when she could get them and declined sweeteners entirely when it was Suzdal-processed strawberries or currants. She knew her way around a samovar, enough that she'd pour out tea concentrate for grimy exhausted workers with deft flicks of her fingers instead of letting them fumble with the small pot.
She kept herself clean, though, so the samovar might merely be that she didn't want to find greasy fingerprints on the metal.
Stas claimed that noticing that someone was clean was a sign of interest. He'd choked on his beer when Ruslan had pointed out that he could recite Stas' time slots for banya and sonics for the last week without even thinking hard, then amended his statement to noticing that someone of the opposite gender was clean--and smelled good--was a sign of interest.
All of which left him slightly hesitant, after she'd not shown up at her usual tea-time for two days, to try to track her down.
But the druzhina was scheduled to go back out in three days, and he wanted to say goodbye.
What came out of his mouth when he found her hard at work in one of the rotating-captains offices was "May I ask a question?"
She lifted an eyebrow without looking up, shifting tablets around on the magnets, even flipping one over so he couldn't read--upside down--the information on it before she finally raised her eyes and smiled a greeting. "You may ask any question you like, but I won't promise you an answer."
"I'm motivated by curiousity, not espionage, if that makes any difference," he offered, then actually asked the question. "Why do you use 'Marya', instead of 'Marina'?"
Her laugh was startlingly deep, no light titter of put-on agreement but the bright noise of someone honestly and unguardedly amused. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear that laugh from one of Stas' riders; on a woman it was astonishing.
She laughed harder at his expression, eventually covering the bottom half of her face with one hand and flipping her seat-back down several degrees with the other so she could meet his eyes without craning her neck. "Rotmistr Sergeievich," she said after she got her voice under some semblance of control, and he noted the way she used the correct captain-word without stumbling, "has anyone ever told you your curiousity may get you shot, one of these years?"
"No," he admitted, half-smiling, "but I imagine the odds of my surviving to the end of the war make for unpopular bets."
She snorted. "You'd be surprised." Steepling her fingers before her lips, elbows on the padded arms of her chair, "I didn't promise you an answer, but I'll give you a few anyway."
Her mouth quirked again at his expression, but her voice remained steady this time. "Now, for a woman to give the diminutive when introducing herself--perhaps she's superstitious, and worries about her full name in the hands of a stranger. Perhaps she's named for her mother or her grandmother, and is so accustomed to the shorter name being hers that it's the first one to her lips when she speaks. Perhaps that really is her name, her family having long since abandoned Marina, Evgenia and Aleksandra for the shorter Marya, Zhenia and Sascha. Perhaps--"
"Perhaps," he interrupted gently, watching her closely, "it's misdirection. Marya Ivanovna isn't the name people looking for Ivan's daughter Marina, who is not where she's expected to be, would examine in reports and news records."
She lifted her eyebrows again, fingers still steepled together neatly, face smooth.
He paused, about to push farther, then backed down. "I'm sorry--that was presumptuous and rude of me. I actually came to find you to say goodbye--our refit's supposedly complete tomorrow and we've a ride out on Sankt-Basil two days after that, so we can break everything we're able to before we're out of reach again."
"Ah," she replied slowly, then flicked her seat upright and rose, crossed to him, her feet terem-dweller light across the plates as his rider's boots just weren't. She looked up, met his eyes directly, then leaned up on her toes--he automatically slouched, only noticing afterwards, as her lips brushed his cheek.
She settled back down onto her heels, considered him, much as he'd been contemplated by a sergeant, not really so very long ago for all it felt like centuries.
"Chernigov," she said, and he blinked.
She smiled. "If you live, and you want to see who Ivan's daughter Marina is, look in Chernigov, Ruslan Sergeievich. In the meantime, Marya Ivanovna has work to do, and you surely have someone else to bother."
"My apologies for interrupting, Marya Ivanovna," he said after a moment, as he brain jarred itself back into motion. "Goodbye."
"Until tomorrow," she replied as she sat back down at her desk, her eye twinkling. "Surely the great Sergeievich can make time for tea."
He paused mid-salute in the doorway, then deliberately finished it, smiling with his eyes. "Until tomorrow."