[January 9] [Fire Emblem 6] Outlander
Jan. 9th, 2010 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreOutlander
Author: Amber Michelle
Day/Theme: January 09 - a pleasant air, but a barren soil
Gauntlet Theme: 18 - We all are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars
Series: Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals
Characters: Sue
Rating: K
Words: 2352
Notes: will be edited, yadda yadda.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
31_days runs on a tight schedule, and I started late.
................................................................
Sue rode to Lycia because it was a land her parents had known - because it was not Bern, nor Etruria, which no man or woman of Sacae would seek willingly, even if death followed closely on their heels, as it did hers. The land was dead there; grains and rice still grew, and corn, and orchards, but the people dragged their feet, without pride, and their masters took it all - she knew how their system worked. Her homeland had a legend about a plague of locusts that descended upon the plain and ate up all the grass, the trees, every grain and fruit, so the animals starved and the clans nearly died out; it was like that, Sue thought, in the other lands of Elibe. The commoners worked, and the nobles fed on their labor. Eventually everyone would die.
The Lycian territory of Toria greeted her with budding peach orchards and children running down the canals between the trees, splashing in the water, lifting their hands to catch the rain of flower petals when the wind swept through the branches and set them free. They stopped to stare at her and whisper outlander and nomad, their eyes and mouths little circles, like she was a fairy tale or a spectre they hadn't thought was real. She breathed deeply of the scented air and tried to ignore them. Yu plodded along the road without her guidance; his tail flicked, his head drooped, and Sue saw the glitter of water in her peripheral vision, no matter how far she turned her head. She nudged him to the side when her lips tried to crack, her throat suddenly dry as a grass mat and aching with every swallow. Her knees gave out when she slid from the saddle, left her sprawled in the dirt, and she felt three pairs of little eyes as she leaned down, cupped her hands beneath the water - she imagined them widening so far they'd pop out of those little blonde heads when she lifted the muddy water to her mouth and drank. At her side, Yu slurped and splashed. His harness jingled.
The patter of approaching footsteps should have alarmed her, but they were only children. Little hands pressed against her shoulder to stop her from leaning down to drink again, and she looked up into a round face framed by pale hair in pigtails. "Don't drink here. We have a well."
Yes, but would the owner of the well want Sue to drink from it? Probably not. They'll be glad for the use of your arrows, Kutolah mercenaries always said, but the minute you ask for a comfortable bed they say, 'Don't you Sacaeans prefer to be outside? That field over there should be good enough!'
"Mother will be upset--"
Yes, Mother would be upset. Don't let them tell you you're worthless because of your blood, she would say. Lycia is like any other place on Elibe - they'll respect you if you respect yourself.
They were all dead; Mother went with the warriors because she could still fight, but the grasslands were burning when Sue fled, lighting up the night like a second sunset while she chased a wyvern - but when she took it down, she kept running, and running, and running.
Hey, lady, what's wrong? Can't you hear me?
She wanted to lie down. The earth here was soft, moist, dark and fertile, and it was cool against her cheek. The dirt sifted beneath her ear, or maybe it was her imagination; maybe it was whispering to her, and she was too tired to hear it. The Lycian girl shook her shoulder; Yu blew hot air on her face, and his moist lips brushed her temple, mouthed her hair. Lady! Hey, are you sick? Go get mom-- shut up, Elliot, just go get her! Yu nudged her with his nose, harder, harder, and Sue closed her eyes.
It would only be for a little while.
*
Two days had passed since they forded the river that separated Sacae from Lycia and drank their fill of water; Sue had refilled her water skins and the bags Yu carried, but the smoke of Bern's invasion had followed them all the way west, and the swarm of their wyverns littered the sky so they looked like bits of ash against the red, rising sun. They ran all night, and all day after that, until Yu could run no more and their water ran out. They were stoned away from the first well they found, and allowed only one bucket-full at the next, and then there was nothing. Grasses, then a forest, and a little rain. She dreamed about that second night in Lycia, when she'd rigged a bucket with leather and sticks stuck into the ground to catch rainwater, but no matter how she checked the bowl or angled the sticks, it found some way to leak and empty before enough gathered for Yu to drink. Eventually he disappeared - his warmth, his scent - and she heard only the snapping of the fire, and voices in the darkness.
Sue woke in a dark room with a pillow muffling her ears and a heavy quilt tucked under her chin. The robe wrapped around her body was not hers. Firelight danced with shadows between the dark ceiling beams. Somewhere else, in another room, came the tap of a knife on a cutting board and someone gathering bits of something, dropping them into a wooden bowl. The little girl's voice drifted in: do you think they even like carrots in Sacae? Elliot says he only found meat in her saddlebags, dried meat, and a woman's voice, perhaps her mother, replying, good guests are not picky, Emily.
No, indeed. And good hosts did not pick through one's belongings, but this was Lycia, not Sacae. Perhaps their rules of hospitality were different.
The quilt was thick and heavy, full of feathers that rustled when she pushed it away at sat up, the commotion just loud enough that the girl named Emily looked over and shouted that 'the nomad girl' was awake before she slammed her bowl onto the table and ran in. Are you hungry? Did you sleep well? Are you thirsty? She babbled on and on, and ran to draw water from a barrel in the other room when Sue said yes, she was thirsty. Water would be enough for her - they didn't have to feed her, or Yu. The land would be more than enough. She could feather a rabbit even in the dark if the moon was bright enough. There was enough soft, green grass in Lycia to feed a herd of horses.
No, no, she had to stay. She just had to. "Lord Orun sent messengers saying tribesmen would pass through," the mother said when Sue came out with the hem of the robe dragging. Emily hurried over to help, scooping handfuls of carrots into a pot, then picking the eyes from round, new potatoes. "My husband oversees this orchard for him. We were asked to offer hospitality on behalf of the marquess." Her mother watched Sue for a moment, waiting. The silence asked, where are the others?
Sue wanted to leave, if only to avoid answering. Lord Orun would be disappointed - or, perhaps he would be secretly relieved, even as he gave her his polite, politically correct sympathies.
Dinner was a rich meat stew that would have reminded her of home if it had fewer vegetables. She sat on the edge of her chair, afraid to lean back, and Emily asked if she wasn't used to them - "I've heard savages sit on the ground outside to eat. Is it hard?"
Sue blinked down at her stew. Savages-- as in, violent? "We have stools. We eat at tables inside, like you do." She described the low tables, and the blocks of cushions they would sit on to eat, which her mother had spent most of Sue's life making, embellishing, mending, rebuilding. Theirs were deep red like roses, trimmed with yellow woolen yarn threaded with beads of all colors. "Among the Kutolah, we only dine outside when there is a festival or meeting of some kind. Dirt will get into the food otherwise, and then nobody would have teeth when they got older."
Emily laughed and kicked her chair with her feet, scooping big mouthfuls of broth. Elliot, who had joined them for dinner, stayed silent and stared at his bowl. Their mother had mentioned a husband, and an older son, but they were not in evidence, and Sue thought it was better that way - fewer stares, more room. It was a small house; the children stayed in the loft, there was the bedroom she woke up in, and this common area, which was less than ten paces across. Her ger was larger, even with all of the furniture arranged. She had to assure the girl that plainsmen ate carrots too - when they could be bothered to dig them up - and yes, girls were allowed to fight.
The girl went to bed positive she wanted to join the Kutolah. Sue shook her head. The mother sighed.
"The only Sacaeans we see here are mercenaries," the woman, who introduced herself as Lillie, said as she cleared the table. "They won't even speak to the children - and I'm sorry to say, even the women we've met are not forthcoming. All they hear of your homeland are the rumors that pass among the men."
Sue stared down at her cup of water. It was made of golden wood instead of clay, and weighed almost nothing. Her own knowledge of Lycia came from similar sources, under similar circumstances, so there was no use blaming the little girl for believing such silly stories. She'd asked - that was already more than Sue expected. "It's true," she said when the silence lasted several heartbeats. "Normally we do not speak of clan business with outsiders." Her reflection looked dark in the cup; her hands looked brown and dirty next to Lillie's white, callused ones when she held her cup up for more water.
"It's too late to haul water," the woman said, straightening, "but we have a tub in the other room. You can bathe if you want to. Your clothes are drying outside."
Sue drained her cup, because she didn't know when she would have so much water next, when it would taste so cool and clean; the chair scraped on the wooden floor when she stood up to take the bucket Lillie offered. She could say no, and prove herself a dirty savage. What felt good to drink would be uncomfortable to wash in, and the soap she found on the shelf above the tub smelled so strongly of flowers it gave her a headache. But her hostess went upstairs to sleep, left the bed to her, and where Sue came from, one did not spurn hospitality in a fit of pride. She found a cloth to scrub with, tried to close her nose to the smell, and went to bed smelling like a riot of roses and lily.
*
The question still remained when Sue woke up the next morning, dressed, and presented herself to the family in her own clothes - where were the others? Was she a forerunner? A scout? They stared at her when she came out of the bedroom. Her red coat glared beside the subdued blue and green the children were dressed in, and their mother wore gray, brown, and white, her sleeves rolled up, the hems plain and unadorned. Meat sizzled on the stove, and something yellow peeked at her above the lip of the cast iron pan that she couldn't identify. She bowed into the silence, for lack of something better to do. Sitting would do no good; she had no intention of staying, despite the placement of plate, cup, and utensils at the seat she occupied the night before.
"If anyone follows me," Sue said, her arrows rattling in the quiver across her back, "it will not be the Kutolah. Bern destroyed us as we tried to flee."
The little girl chewed on her knuckle, and Lillie's face drained of color, until it resembled white rice paste. "They're so close-- already?"
Sue shrugged. It had been two days since she last saw them, and then only their wyverns, who were too afraid to fly within her bow's range. If there had been a few more warriors with her when she led the clan, just two or three-- She swallowed. "Do not fight," she said, turning toward the door. "I will warn Lord Orun of their approach, so run, and find shelter in one of your cities before they cross into Ostia."
"Were there dragon riders?" Elliot watched her with gleaming blue eyes, speaking for the first time. It was a shame she didn't want to answer him.
"We can't leave," his mother said. Her fingers curled into a dishcloth. "This is our home..."
"The decision is yours." Sue picked her bow up from where it leaned by the door next to a short-handled hatchet, looked over her shoulder. Like the people left under her care at home, they looked soft, weak, young. She'd be surprised if any of them could wield the axe to cut wood, much less to strike a man down. "Thank you for helping me. I will remember you as people of honor."
She left the house and found Yu in a pen with two other horses that looked as soft as their owners, drinking from a trough and flicking his tail at flies. He came at her call, still saddled, his water bags refilled, and Sue's chest tightened as she led him out the gate, climbed up, and looked back to see Emily standing at the door. Her blonde head shined. When she saw Sue looking, she jumped up and down and waved.
It was a beautiful day. The sun shined just above the eastern mountains, the sky a bright, empty blue. The orchard cast long green shadows on the path back to the road, where grooves had been cut into the dirt by wagon wheels. Maybe Bern would leave them alone; the homestead was tiny; their trees were flowering, but did not yet bear fruit, and their only animals were unsuitable for use in an army, unless Bern had stooped to eating horse since entering the plains. They slaughtered women and children indiscriminately - why not horses?
Why not Lycians?
Sue took a deep breath, nudged Yu onward, and raised her hand in farewell.
...............................................................................
I guess the only point to this is to illustrate culture shock, and I'm not sure how well I did on that count. I just started writing and eventually trailed off.
Author: Amber Michelle
Day/Theme: January 09 - a pleasant air, but a barren soil
Gauntlet Theme: 18 - We all are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars
Series: Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals
Characters: Sue
Rating: K
Words: 2352
Notes: will be edited, yadda yadda.
31_days runs on a tight schedule, and I started late.................................................................
Sue rode to Lycia because it was a land her parents had known - because it was not Bern, nor Etruria, which no man or woman of Sacae would seek willingly, even if death followed closely on their heels, as it did hers. The land was dead there; grains and rice still grew, and corn, and orchards, but the people dragged their feet, without pride, and their masters took it all - she knew how their system worked. Her homeland had a legend about a plague of locusts that descended upon the plain and ate up all the grass, the trees, every grain and fruit, so the animals starved and the clans nearly died out; it was like that, Sue thought, in the other lands of Elibe. The commoners worked, and the nobles fed on their labor. Eventually everyone would die.
The Lycian territory of Toria greeted her with budding peach orchards and children running down the canals between the trees, splashing in the water, lifting their hands to catch the rain of flower petals when the wind swept through the branches and set them free. They stopped to stare at her and whisper outlander and nomad, their eyes and mouths little circles, like she was a fairy tale or a spectre they hadn't thought was real. She breathed deeply of the scented air and tried to ignore them. Yu plodded along the road without her guidance; his tail flicked, his head drooped, and Sue saw the glitter of water in her peripheral vision, no matter how far she turned her head. She nudged him to the side when her lips tried to crack, her throat suddenly dry as a grass mat and aching with every swallow. Her knees gave out when she slid from the saddle, left her sprawled in the dirt, and she felt three pairs of little eyes as she leaned down, cupped her hands beneath the water - she imagined them widening so far they'd pop out of those little blonde heads when she lifted the muddy water to her mouth and drank. At her side, Yu slurped and splashed. His harness jingled.
The patter of approaching footsteps should have alarmed her, but they were only children. Little hands pressed against her shoulder to stop her from leaning down to drink again, and she looked up into a round face framed by pale hair in pigtails. "Don't drink here. We have a well."
Yes, but would the owner of the well want Sue to drink from it? Probably not. They'll be glad for the use of your arrows, Kutolah mercenaries always said, but the minute you ask for a comfortable bed they say, 'Don't you Sacaeans prefer to be outside? That field over there should be good enough!'
"Mother will be upset--"
Yes, Mother would be upset. Don't let them tell you you're worthless because of your blood, she would say. Lycia is like any other place on Elibe - they'll respect you if you respect yourself.
They were all dead; Mother went with the warriors because she could still fight, but the grasslands were burning when Sue fled, lighting up the night like a second sunset while she chased a wyvern - but when she took it down, she kept running, and running, and running.
Hey, lady, what's wrong? Can't you hear me?
She wanted to lie down. The earth here was soft, moist, dark and fertile, and it was cool against her cheek. The dirt sifted beneath her ear, or maybe it was her imagination; maybe it was whispering to her, and she was too tired to hear it. The Lycian girl shook her shoulder; Yu blew hot air on her face, and his moist lips brushed her temple, mouthed her hair. Lady! Hey, are you sick? Go get mom-- shut up, Elliot, just go get her! Yu nudged her with his nose, harder, harder, and Sue closed her eyes.
It would only be for a little while.
*
Two days had passed since they forded the river that separated Sacae from Lycia and drank their fill of water; Sue had refilled her water skins and the bags Yu carried, but the smoke of Bern's invasion had followed them all the way west, and the swarm of their wyverns littered the sky so they looked like bits of ash against the red, rising sun. They ran all night, and all day after that, until Yu could run no more and their water ran out. They were stoned away from the first well they found, and allowed only one bucket-full at the next, and then there was nothing. Grasses, then a forest, and a little rain. She dreamed about that second night in Lycia, when she'd rigged a bucket with leather and sticks stuck into the ground to catch rainwater, but no matter how she checked the bowl or angled the sticks, it found some way to leak and empty before enough gathered for Yu to drink. Eventually he disappeared - his warmth, his scent - and she heard only the snapping of the fire, and voices in the darkness.
Sue woke in a dark room with a pillow muffling her ears and a heavy quilt tucked under her chin. The robe wrapped around her body was not hers. Firelight danced with shadows between the dark ceiling beams. Somewhere else, in another room, came the tap of a knife on a cutting board and someone gathering bits of something, dropping them into a wooden bowl. The little girl's voice drifted in: do you think they even like carrots in Sacae? Elliot says he only found meat in her saddlebags, dried meat, and a woman's voice, perhaps her mother, replying, good guests are not picky, Emily.
No, indeed. And good hosts did not pick through one's belongings, but this was Lycia, not Sacae. Perhaps their rules of hospitality were different.
The quilt was thick and heavy, full of feathers that rustled when she pushed it away at sat up, the commotion just loud enough that the girl named Emily looked over and shouted that 'the nomad girl' was awake before she slammed her bowl onto the table and ran in. Are you hungry? Did you sleep well? Are you thirsty? She babbled on and on, and ran to draw water from a barrel in the other room when Sue said yes, she was thirsty. Water would be enough for her - they didn't have to feed her, or Yu. The land would be more than enough. She could feather a rabbit even in the dark if the moon was bright enough. There was enough soft, green grass in Lycia to feed a herd of horses.
No, no, she had to stay. She just had to. "Lord Orun sent messengers saying tribesmen would pass through," the mother said when Sue came out with the hem of the robe dragging. Emily hurried over to help, scooping handfuls of carrots into a pot, then picking the eyes from round, new potatoes. "My husband oversees this orchard for him. We were asked to offer hospitality on behalf of the marquess." Her mother watched Sue for a moment, waiting. The silence asked, where are the others?
Sue wanted to leave, if only to avoid answering. Lord Orun would be disappointed - or, perhaps he would be secretly relieved, even as he gave her his polite, politically correct sympathies.
Dinner was a rich meat stew that would have reminded her of home if it had fewer vegetables. She sat on the edge of her chair, afraid to lean back, and Emily asked if she wasn't used to them - "I've heard savages sit on the ground outside to eat. Is it hard?"
Sue blinked down at her stew. Savages-- as in, violent? "We have stools. We eat at tables inside, like you do." She described the low tables, and the blocks of cushions they would sit on to eat, which her mother had spent most of Sue's life making, embellishing, mending, rebuilding. Theirs were deep red like roses, trimmed with yellow woolen yarn threaded with beads of all colors. "Among the Kutolah, we only dine outside when there is a festival or meeting of some kind. Dirt will get into the food otherwise, and then nobody would have teeth when they got older."
Emily laughed and kicked her chair with her feet, scooping big mouthfuls of broth. Elliot, who had joined them for dinner, stayed silent and stared at his bowl. Their mother had mentioned a husband, and an older son, but they were not in evidence, and Sue thought it was better that way - fewer stares, more room. It was a small house; the children stayed in the loft, there was the bedroom she woke up in, and this common area, which was less than ten paces across. Her ger was larger, even with all of the furniture arranged. She had to assure the girl that plainsmen ate carrots too - when they could be bothered to dig them up - and yes, girls were allowed to fight.
The girl went to bed positive she wanted to join the Kutolah. Sue shook her head. The mother sighed.
"The only Sacaeans we see here are mercenaries," the woman, who introduced herself as Lillie, said as she cleared the table. "They won't even speak to the children - and I'm sorry to say, even the women we've met are not forthcoming. All they hear of your homeland are the rumors that pass among the men."
Sue stared down at her cup of water. It was made of golden wood instead of clay, and weighed almost nothing. Her own knowledge of Lycia came from similar sources, under similar circumstances, so there was no use blaming the little girl for believing such silly stories. She'd asked - that was already more than Sue expected. "It's true," she said when the silence lasted several heartbeats. "Normally we do not speak of clan business with outsiders." Her reflection looked dark in the cup; her hands looked brown and dirty next to Lillie's white, callused ones when she held her cup up for more water.
"It's too late to haul water," the woman said, straightening, "but we have a tub in the other room. You can bathe if you want to. Your clothes are drying outside."
Sue drained her cup, because she didn't know when she would have so much water next, when it would taste so cool and clean; the chair scraped on the wooden floor when she stood up to take the bucket Lillie offered. She could say no, and prove herself a dirty savage. What felt good to drink would be uncomfortable to wash in, and the soap she found on the shelf above the tub smelled so strongly of flowers it gave her a headache. But her hostess went upstairs to sleep, left the bed to her, and where Sue came from, one did not spurn hospitality in a fit of pride. She found a cloth to scrub with, tried to close her nose to the smell, and went to bed smelling like a riot of roses and lily.
*
The question still remained when Sue woke up the next morning, dressed, and presented herself to the family in her own clothes - where were the others? Was she a forerunner? A scout? They stared at her when she came out of the bedroom. Her red coat glared beside the subdued blue and green the children were dressed in, and their mother wore gray, brown, and white, her sleeves rolled up, the hems plain and unadorned. Meat sizzled on the stove, and something yellow peeked at her above the lip of the cast iron pan that she couldn't identify. She bowed into the silence, for lack of something better to do. Sitting would do no good; she had no intention of staying, despite the placement of plate, cup, and utensils at the seat she occupied the night before.
"If anyone follows me," Sue said, her arrows rattling in the quiver across her back, "it will not be the Kutolah. Bern destroyed us as we tried to flee."
The little girl chewed on her knuckle, and Lillie's face drained of color, until it resembled white rice paste. "They're so close-- already?"
Sue shrugged. It had been two days since she last saw them, and then only their wyverns, who were too afraid to fly within her bow's range. If there had been a few more warriors with her when she led the clan, just two or three-- She swallowed. "Do not fight," she said, turning toward the door. "I will warn Lord Orun of their approach, so run, and find shelter in one of your cities before they cross into Ostia."
"Were there dragon riders?" Elliot watched her with gleaming blue eyes, speaking for the first time. It was a shame she didn't want to answer him.
"We can't leave," his mother said. Her fingers curled into a dishcloth. "This is our home..."
"The decision is yours." Sue picked her bow up from where it leaned by the door next to a short-handled hatchet, looked over her shoulder. Like the people left under her care at home, they looked soft, weak, young. She'd be surprised if any of them could wield the axe to cut wood, much less to strike a man down. "Thank you for helping me. I will remember you as people of honor."
She left the house and found Yu in a pen with two other horses that looked as soft as their owners, drinking from a trough and flicking his tail at flies. He came at her call, still saddled, his water bags refilled, and Sue's chest tightened as she led him out the gate, climbed up, and looked back to see Emily standing at the door. Her blonde head shined. When she saw Sue looking, she jumped up and down and waved.
It was a beautiful day. The sun shined just above the eastern mountains, the sky a bright, empty blue. The orchard cast long green shadows on the path back to the road, where grooves had been cut into the dirt by wagon wheels. Maybe Bern would leave them alone; the homestead was tiny; their trees were flowering, but did not yet bear fruit, and their only animals were unsuitable for use in an army, unless Bern had stooped to eating horse since entering the plains. They slaughtered women and children indiscriminately - why not horses?
Why not Lycians?
Sue took a deep breath, nudged Yu onward, and raised her hand in farewell.
...............................................................................
I guess the only point to this is to illustrate culture shock, and I'm not sure how well I did on that count. I just started writing and eventually trailed off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 07:33 pm (UTC)Bah, you have gotten ahead of me, but I shall prevaiiiil!
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Date: 2010-01-26 03:25 am (UTC)I WILL GO FOR THE WIN.