Suikoden III: No One's Property
Apr. 7th, 2007 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreInspired by an old "What does your character do on a regular day?" meme. I... think there might be some angst in here, near the end. Who knew?
Mostly Sarah; Luc is a big-but-nebulous presence, Albert makes a token showing.
...........................................
It was ironing day - or that's what Sarah decided when she realized what a terrible job the inn's washing girl had done. She'd been surprised to hear the place offered a laundry service at all, and now she knew better. They had two changes of clothes, each of them, horribly inadequate for the climate and dirt this far west; Sarah held up one of Luc's shirts and sighed.
Uniform. Uniforms had to be cleanly pressed. This was a military outpost, didn't they know that?
She cleared the counter, wiping the slate tiles clean, and found the iron they'd brought with them in one of Luc's packs. It waited in the basin while she gathered everything she thought needed to be redone and brought it into the common room. A simple spell heated the iron. They were housed in a smaller building in the back, away from the noise of the outpost, and the proprietor had given it the grandiose title of 'executive suite,' though she had seen tents with better accomodations. It had enough room for four people, perhaps even more, which she regretted only a little. Albert was quiet, when he was present at all, and Yuber kept other haunts that she didn't want to think about.
It would have been nice if they'd been housed elsewhere. Now there would always be the risk of someone walking in at a bad time.
Luc's clothes were first, since he needed to keep up appearances more than she did. He was wearing the other set today, away in Harmonia for some indeterminate time. He'd left early, before she woke up, and had to be wearing a sloppily-ironed uniform. No doubt he was annoyed, but perhaps not for that.
The room was almost too quiet. A distant hum through the earth was the only company she had, something she felt through her feet and in the air, but couldn't hear. She'd lost track of Albert once he left the inn and let himself blend into the crowd - it was his fault for asking if there was anything he could do to help. The list she'd given him would take quite a while to get through, if he bothered trying at all. He might pay someone to do it, which would be like him, but as long as he kept his distance for a while it didn't matter. Silence was better than listening to him write and turn pages in his books. He reminded her too much of someone else when he did that.
At home she would have been doing this same chore, maybe three times over. Leknaat's thin, flowing robes were prone to wrinkles, and always gathered dust at the hems where they dragged along the floor. They could scrub that floor every day, and there would still be dust left to cling to the silk, and pine needles, blown in through the open windows, stuck through the fabric.
Sarah loved combing the seeress's sleek back hair when she was a child. It was finer than silk, thick as a blanket. Her own wasn't as nice, though she'd grown it to a passable girlish length and tried to take care of it. It just wasn't as thick, and it was pale and thin at the ends, always tangling. She'd told herself it was a relief to cut it when preparing to accompany Luc, but the short bob she had now was plain and flat, and impossible to keep out of her eyes.
Sometimes she felt the phantom weight of her old hair against her back. It would be the wind through the window, or even Luc's hand at times, trying to get her attention. In dreams it was still there. The person who stared back at her from the mirror now wasn't her - not who she thought she was.
Sarah didn't cook for Silverbergs. Sarah didn't iron Harmonian uniforms, and certainly didn't wear them or answer to a Harmonian rank. Sarah certainly didn't spend her power on manipulation or aggression.
Sarah was no one's tool. Not even Luc's.
She should have been at home in the study, plotting star charts. It was a precise art, one others thought tedious and unnecessary when their clients weren't educated in how to read them, but she had the night sky memorized. Each season, from the north or the south, Sarah could plot almost without thought. If Luc's shirt were a roll of parchment and that button the center, the Shield would be four degrees above the horizon, and the Eastern Cross thirty degrees clockwise from that, high in the sky for the summer. In six hours, she'd turn around and see Yin out the window, just above the rooftops.
How could she say this? Would he notice, would he listen? She fought so hard to convince him to let her come along, because leaving her star charts behind was better than letting him fight for the runes by himself. It was wrong, faithless, to take that back now.
But those six Grasslanders in Kuput Forest. The band of Lizards near the temple ruin she had neglected to tell Luc about. The herder from Le Buque who stumbled across her survey site before she was ready for him. What of them, if she hadn't been here to cut their lives short?
Sarah finished the shirt and laid it over a chair. Her face was wet; she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and started on his coat, unclasping the chains and pins and setting them aside. Real gold - they had that chime to them when she deposited them on the countertop. She shook her head, bending over the sleeve to wedge the iron into a difficult place at the shoulder. Wrinkles and tear splotches evaporated.
Sarah was not faithless, either. She didn't want to leave him behind, or ever leave him at all, either by death, or old age, or running back to her studies. Her mortality crept up her limbs and paralyzed her, some nights.
Perhaps she would take an arrow in a bad place, through the heart, or be a second too slow to shield herself from a runic attack. Or she would fail to find the reserve of power she drew from, and one night her slumber would become death. It wasn't such a bad thought. If she didn't die before the end, it would kill them both.
If she died, leaving wouldn't be her fault. Would he notice? Yuber had a way of sniffing out ruins, always finding what she tried to hide.
She set the iron aside for a moment and wiped at her eyes again. Maybe she should have done her own shopping - it might have kept her on her toes, and certainly would have kept her mind occupied.
The door opened, admitting a swath of sunlight and a tall shadow. It appeared not to be carrying anything, and Sarah sighed, mustering as normal a voice as she could manage. She'd learned the art of concealing her tears early - Luc was at a loss when confronted with them. "Paid someone else to run your errands?"
"Yours, you mean," Albert returned, the door closing a moment later. "I sent someone from our escort." He paused, and she felt his eyes on her back. "Perhaps he will do a more satisfying job than the maid."
He couldn't stay away for even one hour? It seemed he'd made it his duty to keep an eye on her. "As long as it's done," she said, keeping her back to the room. "Dinner should be ready when he gets back."
At first he'd protested that she didn't need to cook - it wasn't her job, the time could be spent on more pressing matters like proving she could devise the spells she promised. Cooking is what the hired help does; is Luc unable to fend for himself?
"As you wish," he said after a breath of a pause.
When his footsteps faded into another room, Sarah pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her face as much as she dared before stuffing it back into its hiding place. Then she laid the coat carefully aside and started on the next piece. There musn't be anything in the way when Luc got back; he'd be unhappy as it was. She didn't want to be part of the problem.
Mostly Sarah; Luc is a big-but-nebulous presence, Albert makes a token showing.
...........................................
It was ironing day - or that's what Sarah decided when she realized what a terrible job the inn's washing girl had done. She'd been surprised to hear the place offered a laundry service at all, and now she knew better. They had two changes of clothes, each of them, horribly inadequate for the climate and dirt this far west; Sarah held up one of Luc's shirts and sighed.
Uniform. Uniforms had to be cleanly pressed. This was a military outpost, didn't they know that?
She cleared the counter, wiping the slate tiles clean, and found the iron they'd brought with them in one of Luc's packs. It waited in the basin while she gathered everything she thought needed to be redone and brought it into the common room. A simple spell heated the iron. They were housed in a smaller building in the back, away from the noise of the outpost, and the proprietor had given it the grandiose title of 'executive suite,' though she had seen tents with better accomodations. It had enough room for four people, perhaps even more, which she regretted only a little. Albert was quiet, when he was present at all, and Yuber kept other haunts that she didn't want to think about.
It would have been nice if they'd been housed elsewhere. Now there would always be the risk of someone walking in at a bad time.
Luc's clothes were first, since he needed to keep up appearances more than she did. He was wearing the other set today, away in Harmonia for some indeterminate time. He'd left early, before she woke up, and had to be wearing a sloppily-ironed uniform. No doubt he was annoyed, but perhaps not for that.
The room was almost too quiet. A distant hum through the earth was the only company she had, something she felt through her feet and in the air, but couldn't hear. She'd lost track of Albert once he left the inn and let himself blend into the crowd - it was his fault for asking if there was anything he could do to help. The list she'd given him would take quite a while to get through, if he bothered trying at all. He might pay someone to do it, which would be like him, but as long as he kept his distance for a while it didn't matter. Silence was better than listening to him write and turn pages in his books. He reminded her too much of someone else when he did that.
At home she would have been doing this same chore, maybe three times over. Leknaat's thin, flowing robes were prone to wrinkles, and always gathered dust at the hems where they dragged along the floor. They could scrub that floor every day, and there would still be dust left to cling to the silk, and pine needles, blown in through the open windows, stuck through the fabric.
Sarah loved combing the seeress's sleek back hair when she was a child. It was finer than silk, thick as a blanket. Her own wasn't as nice, though she'd grown it to a passable girlish length and tried to take care of it. It just wasn't as thick, and it was pale and thin at the ends, always tangling. She'd told herself it was a relief to cut it when preparing to accompany Luc, but the short bob she had now was plain and flat, and impossible to keep out of her eyes.
Sometimes she felt the phantom weight of her old hair against her back. It would be the wind through the window, or even Luc's hand at times, trying to get her attention. In dreams it was still there. The person who stared back at her from the mirror now wasn't her - not who she thought she was.
Sarah didn't cook for Silverbergs. Sarah didn't iron Harmonian uniforms, and certainly didn't wear them or answer to a Harmonian rank. Sarah certainly didn't spend her power on manipulation or aggression.
Sarah was no one's tool. Not even Luc's.
She should have been at home in the study, plotting star charts. It was a precise art, one others thought tedious and unnecessary when their clients weren't educated in how to read them, but she had the night sky memorized. Each season, from the north or the south, Sarah could plot almost without thought. If Luc's shirt were a roll of parchment and that button the center, the Shield would be four degrees above the horizon, and the Eastern Cross thirty degrees clockwise from that, high in the sky for the summer. In six hours, she'd turn around and see Yin out the window, just above the rooftops.
How could she say this? Would he notice, would he listen? She fought so hard to convince him to let her come along, because leaving her star charts behind was better than letting him fight for the runes by himself. It was wrong, faithless, to take that back now.
But those six Grasslanders in Kuput Forest. The band of Lizards near the temple ruin she had neglected to tell Luc about. The herder from Le Buque who stumbled across her survey site before she was ready for him. What of them, if she hadn't been here to cut their lives short?
Sarah finished the shirt and laid it over a chair. Her face was wet; she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and started on his coat, unclasping the chains and pins and setting them aside. Real gold - they had that chime to them when she deposited them on the countertop. She shook her head, bending over the sleeve to wedge the iron into a difficult place at the shoulder. Wrinkles and tear splotches evaporated.
Sarah was not faithless, either. She didn't want to leave him behind, or ever leave him at all, either by death, or old age, or running back to her studies. Her mortality crept up her limbs and paralyzed her, some nights.
Perhaps she would take an arrow in a bad place, through the heart, or be a second too slow to shield herself from a runic attack. Or she would fail to find the reserve of power she drew from, and one night her slumber would become death. It wasn't such a bad thought. If she didn't die before the end, it would kill them both.
If she died, leaving wouldn't be her fault. Would he notice? Yuber had a way of sniffing out ruins, always finding what she tried to hide.
She set the iron aside for a moment and wiped at her eyes again. Maybe she should have done her own shopping - it might have kept her on her toes, and certainly would have kept her mind occupied.
The door opened, admitting a swath of sunlight and a tall shadow. It appeared not to be carrying anything, and Sarah sighed, mustering as normal a voice as she could manage. She'd learned the art of concealing her tears early - Luc was at a loss when confronted with them. "Paid someone else to run your errands?"
"Yours, you mean," Albert returned, the door closing a moment later. "I sent someone from our escort." He paused, and she felt his eyes on her back. "Perhaps he will do a more satisfying job than the maid."
He couldn't stay away for even one hour? It seemed he'd made it his duty to keep an eye on her. "As long as it's done," she said, keeping her back to the room. "Dinner should be ready when he gets back."
At first he'd protested that she didn't need to cook - it wasn't her job, the time could be spent on more pressing matters like proving she could devise the spells she promised. Cooking is what the hired help does; is Luc unable to fend for himself?
"As you wish," he said after a breath of a pause.
When his footsteps faded into another room, Sarah pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her face as much as she dared before stuffing it back into its hiding place. Then she laid the coat carefully aside and started on the next piece. There musn't be anything in the way when Luc got back; he'd be unhappy as it was. She didn't want to be part of the problem.
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Date: 2007-04-13 07:13 am (UTC)