[Fire Emblem 8] [Drabble 15] Gatekeeper
Mar. 22nd, 2009 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreGatekeeper
Author: Amber Michelle
Challenge: 15 – noble
Word Count: 500
Game: Sacred Stones
Warnings: spoilers up to chapter 15, and for the Natasha--Joshua A support, I guess.
Cross-posted at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fe_drabble.
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When Natasha left Jehanna Hall that first time, the palace was in flames. Rugs woven of silk thread, hand-dyed, burned and curled over the stone floors; curtains dropped in ashes from their fixtures, glass crinkled and shattered outward. The stones were burned black when she returned with Joshua after the war: long streaks of sooty darkness scarred the walls, the tiles, and the tiered garden on the rooftops was half dead, charred, crumbled. A small oasis of rooms had been cleaned and prepared for their arrival, their expanse no larger than a common house.
Many died inhaling smoke; a few survived the flames. She spent each day treating burns - old ones, scars undeserved. A chambermaid had given half her face to save her child, and now wore a veil. Natasha told her what they taught at the temple - beauty was a life saved. Beauty was love for one's child, parents, husband, friends. It was the old man who used to catalog and store seeds for the garden, who tried to pull his queen's remains from the blaze and joined her in death.
Ismaire's grave was a facade, but the spirit which drew these people to pay tribute in the form of blossoms and cakes - that was real. Joshua left his work to gamble with his men-at-arms on slow afternoons, and his winnings collected on the altar before her empty mausoleum: a necklace with three rubies, three gold rings. Most recently, a belt of gold links that might have fit his mother, were she alive.
The gesture made Natasha's chest ache. He offered her silks, and she wore them beneath her more serviceable robes. He offered jewelry, and she wore it to their wedding and to special functions, and forgot about it inbetween. What made a queen? She wasn't especially noble, even in Grado. In Jehanna she hid from the heat in the farthest corner of the gardens. She wilted, a lily held to a flame. Ismaire's face was smooth in her memory, cold and gray like her altar.
The gardeners saved Jehanna, Joshua said. The servants, the commoners - they used the pumps in the garden to pull water from the lake and douse the flames. Were they any less noble for their red blood and low birth? His mother was dead, but thousands still populated the city; hundreds supported them in the palace. Jehanna was not a monarch, but a people - and they, king and queen, were gatekeepers. They were easily replaced.
Her teacher once said something similar of earthly power. Natasha thought she might be qualified for that task. Jehanna needed a healer, and that was all she knew how to do: heal. Her prayers peeled the scar tissue away layer by layer to reveal the beauty beneath.
A live saved, a country saved; a husband loved. She could manage that.
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Challenge: 15 – noble
Word Count: 500
Game: Sacred Stones
Warnings: spoilers up to chapter 15, and for the Natasha--Joshua A support, I guess.
Cross-posted at
fe_drabble..................................................
When Natasha left Jehanna Hall that first time, the palace was in flames. Rugs woven of silk thread, hand-dyed, burned and curled over the stone floors; curtains dropped in ashes from their fixtures, glass crinkled and shattered outward. The stones were burned black when she returned with Joshua after the war: long streaks of sooty darkness scarred the walls, the tiles, and the tiered garden on the rooftops was half dead, charred, crumbled. A small oasis of rooms had been cleaned and prepared for their arrival, their expanse no larger than a common house.
Many died inhaling smoke; a few survived the flames. She spent each day treating burns - old ones, scars undeserved. A chambermaid had given half her face to save her child, and now wore a veil. Natasha told her what they taught at the temple - beauty was a life saved. Beauty was love for one's child, parents, husband, friends. It was the old man who used to catalog and store seeds for the garden, who tried to pull his queen's remains from the blaze and joined her in death.
Ismaire's grave was a facade, but the spirit which drew these people to pay tribute in the form of blossoms and cakes - that was real. Joshua left his work to gamble with his men-at-arms on slow afternoons, and his winnings collected on the altar before her empty mausoleum: a necklace with three rubies, three gold rings. Most recently, a belt of gold links that might have fit his mother, were she alive.
The gesture made Natasha's chest ache. He offered her silks, and she wore them beneath her more serviceable robes. He offered jewelry, and she wore it to their wedding and to special functions, and forgot about it inbetween. What made a queen? She wasn't especially noble, even in Grado. In Jehanna she hid from the heat in the farthest corner of the gardens. She wilted, a lily held to a flame. Ismaire's face was smooth in her memory, cold and gray like her altar.
The gardeners saved Jehanna, Joshua said. The servants, the commoners - they used the pumps in the garden to pull water from the lake and douse the flames. Were they any less noble for their red blood and low birth? His mother was dead, but thousands still populated the city; hundreds supported them in the palace. Jehanna was not a monarch, but a people - and they, king and queen, were gatekeepers. They were easily replaced.
Her teacher once said something similar of earthly power. Natasha thought she might be qualified for that task. Jehanna needed a healer, and that was all she knew how to do: heal. Her prayers peeled the scar tissue away layer by layer to reveal the beauty beneath.
A live saved, a country saved; a husband loved. She could manage that.
.