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everwoodCharacters: Brandili
When: Just after Crosstrack
Wordcount: 1017
Summary: Brandili receives a note from a much hated man.
Notes: Crossposted torainbowfic
"You've delivered it. Now get out."
Brandili held the ivory tube in white-knuckled fists. She stood straight, mouth set, jaw tight. In this moment, she put on a regal air more than any women should in homespun, in her rough-hewn cabin built on the very edge of an empire. The only sound between her and the Duke's aides was the uncomfortable shifting of the shorter of them in her ornate uniform as the pair considered whether they should heed her words.
Brandili thought of Knick, propped over the fireplace some ten paces behind her. If the sword had been any closer, she might be telling her wife a different story tonight. As it stood, she'd grown up shouting up full-fledged centaurs and shouting down sea-going scallywags. These two had the spirit of wet paper, and she waited, withering them both, taking only minor satisfaction in watching them crumple and evacuate her home.
She felt sullied. She closed the door very quietly and willed Akadine not to bring her girls home--not to bring her blood-daughter home--until after the lot of the messengers had gone. The ivory tube in her hands was capped in gold, and she knew it to be her ex-husband's get-off sort of message before she'd even taken it. Him and his white and his gold and his symbols of purity. He farted sunshine and belched rainbows. Too perfect by half, the way he put it.
She didn't want to read the message.
So far as Brandili knew it, this man who had taken her life and put himself in it and ruined it... and maybe her, she sometimes doubted, he'd had no clue of where she and the daughter he'd set on her had got to. The way Owen said it, the man thought she was long gone, over the hills and far away. The way she thought it, he lived on in her memories as a bugbear, lean and pretty as a snake, to bite her thoughts when she wasn't careful. But she was living under his nose, and so was Anahi, and of course it wasn't far enough. She'd shorn her hair to fool the eyes he kept in his service, had trusted that being in the last place he'd look would give her enough time to raise Anahi to the point where they could both (all of them, her whole family) make for somewhere better. Yet here his message was.
She cracked the seal, the golden cap screwed on to one end of the tube. It crackled with magic, stung her, bright and blinding, leaving the cabin a shadow for a moment as it swept her up. Expensive, opulent, ugly, the spell traced around her and deposited her in the illusion of a study. Brandili didn't yell, but she dropped the tube and listened to it roll away, more muffled by the moment as it fell out of the complete illusion. More muffled by her, whose focus snapped sudden-like, on the man in the high-backed chair.
Duke Seldo Mayana, his face more sharp than she remembered, his inbred gaunt face and golden eyes more elegant. He'd brushed this illusion up, she figured, had it recorded and then demanded his magician make him up the way a court damsel might brush up her dowry solicitations. She hated him the most for his ego and his hideous narcissism. At least, until he opened his mouth and began to speak; she hated his voice, the burr, the over-careful enunciation.
He made as though to speak for a moment, and then sighed. "Brandili, you are a simple woman, with simple tastes and a rough-hewn life. I understand. I understand that you want our daughter to spend her first years close to the land, to learn what it means to live like a commoner. I even agree with you. I have been giving you a long leash because I am intrigued to see what comes of it She will need that kind of involvement to truly understand what the Everwood needs if she is to take my place one day.
"It will not go on forever. I wish to meet her and give her a proper name. Anahi, really? This isn't some barbarous hoard and she deserves a better moniker; she is of a very powerful line and when she is called to sit in court she will need a traditional name that engenders respect." He stood, long, wing-back white coat pleating hidden panels of gold as he folded his arms over his chest. She didn't mean to flinch back as he took a few steps closer--this was an illusion, after all--but she did anyway, until the invisible back of her couch blocked her.
The Duke stopped and looked through her. "I suppose I could tell you this in person, but you should know now. You will want to prepare. When our daughter reaches the correct age, she will be coming home with me to learn what she needs to know to prepare for her eventual succession. You are, of course, invited to return at present... but I have made it clear that your experiment is ongoing, so you are not expected. When the girl is fourteen, though, Brandili. Not a moon longer." He'd been smiling; now he wasn't.
"Prepare for my visit at high summer to finalize the paperwork, and have her ready to meet her father."
The illusion unraveled. Brandili did, too. Grateful for the back of the couch to lean on, she tasted salt of tears through a pounding headache. She was grateful for the empty house, now, too. She kicked the tube that had rolled to a stop by her feet. She yelled. She surged for the sword on the mantle and slid the sheathe rough-shod through her belt before slamming open the door again.
Thugs, gone. Aides, vanished. Muddy hoof prints by the tie-bar, road-apples telling where their horses had been waiting. She flicked the hasp of the blade up an inch with a white-knuckled grip and heaved in silent fury. Too late to send a message back.
He'd be coming, then.
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When: Just after Crosstrack
Wordcount: 1017
Summary: Brandili receives a note from a much hated man.
Notes: Crossposted to
rainbowfic"You've delivered it. Now get out."
Brandili held the ivory tube in white-knuckled fists. She stood straight, mouth set, jaw tight. In this moment, she put on a regal air more than any women should in homespun, in her rough-hewn cabin built on the very edge of an empire. The only sound between her and the Duke's aides was the uncomfortable shifting of the shorter of them in her ornate uniform as the pair considered whether they should heed her words.
Brandili thought of Knick, propped over the fireplace some ten paces behind her. If the sword had been any closer, she might be telling her wife a different story tonight. As it stood, she'd grown up shouting up full-fledged centaurs and shouting down sea-going scallywags. These two had the spirit of wet paper, and she waited, withering them both, taking only minor satisfaction in watching them crumple and evacuate her home.
She felt sullied. She closed the door very quietly and willed Akadine not to bring her girls home--not to bring her blood-daughter home--until after the lot of the messengers had gone. The ivory tube in her hands was capped in gold, and she knew it to be her ex-husband's get-off sort of message before she'd even taken it. Him and his white and his gold and his symbols of purity. He farted sunshine and belched rainbows. Too perfect by half, the way he put it.
She didn't want to read the message.
So far as Brandili knew it, this man who had taken her life and put himself in it and ruined it... and maybe her, she sometimes doubted, he'd had no clue of where she and the daughter he'd set on her had got to. The way Owen said it, the man thought she was long gone, over the hills and far away. The way she thought it, he lived on in her memories as a bugbear, lean and pretty as a snake, to bite her thoughts when she wasn't careful. But she was living under his nose, and so was Anahi, and of course it wasn't far enough. She'd shorn her hair to fool the eyes he kept in his service, had trusted that being in the last place he'd look would give her enough time to raise Anahi to the point where they could both (all of them, her whole family) make for somewhere better. Yet here his message was.
She cracked the seal, the golden cap screwed on to one end of the tube. It crackled with magic, stung her, bright and blinding, leaving the cabin a shadow for a moment as it swept her up. Expensive, opulent, ugly, the spell traced around her and deposited her in the illusion of a study. Brandili didn't yell, but she dropped the tube and listened to it roll away, more muffled by the moment as it fell out of the complete illusion. More muffled by her, whose focus snapped sudden-like, on the man in the high-backed chair.
Duke Seldo Mayana, his face more sharp than she remembered, his inbred gaunt face and golden eyes more elegant. He'd brushed this illusion up, she figured, had it recorded and then demanded his magician make him up the way a court damsel might brush up her dowry solicitations. She hated him the most for his ego and his hideous narcissism. At least, until he opened his mouth and began to speak; she hated his voice, the burr, the over-careful enunciation.
He made as though to speak for a moment, and then sighed. "Brandili, you are a simple woman, with simple tastes and a rough-hewn life. I understand. I understand that you want our daughter to spend her first years close to the land, to learn what it means to live like a commoner. I even agree with you. I have been giving you a long leash because I am intrigued to see what comes of it She will need that kind of involvement to truly understand what the Everwood needs if she is to take my place one day.
"It will not go on forever. I wish to meet her and give her a proper name. Anahi, really? This isn't some barbarous hoard and she deserves a better moniker; she is of a very powerful line and when she is called to sit in court she will need a traditional name that engenders respect." He stood, long, wing-back white coat pleating hidden panels of gold as he folded his arms over his chest. She didn't mean to flinch back as he took a few steps closer--this was an illusion, after all--but she did anyway, until the invisible back of her couch blocked her.
The Duke stopped and looked through her. "I suppose I could tell you this in person, but you should know now. You will want to prepare. When our daughter reaches the correct age, she will be coming home with me to learn what she needs to know to prepare for her eventual succession. You are, of course, invited to return at present... but I have made it clear that your experiment is ongoing, so you are not expected. When the girl is fourteen, though, Brandili. Not a moon longer." He'd been smiling; now he wasn't.
"Prepare for my visit at high summer to finalize the paperwork, and have her ready to meet her father."
The illusion unraveled. Brandili did, too. Grateful for the back of the couch to lean on, she tasted salt of tears through a pounding headache. She was grateful for the empty house, now, too. She kicked the tube that had rolled to a stop by her feet. She yelled. She surged for the sword on the mantle and slid the sheathe rough-shod through her belt before slamming open the door again.
Thugs, gone. Aides, vanished. Muddy hoof prints by the tie-bar, road-apples telling where their horses had been waiting. She flicked the hasp of the blade up an inch with a white-knuckled grip and heaved in silent fury. Too late to send a message back.
He'd be coming, then.
