[Fire Emblem 7] Six Lunar Cycles
Aug. 4th, 2009 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreSix Lunar Cycles
By: Amber Michelle
Gauntlet theme: 2 - I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword
Characters: Lyn, Florina
Words: 1641
Warnings: n/a
Notes: for this challenge with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
measuringlife.
ETA 08.06.09: this will be rewritten.
..........................................................
The sound of wind greeted Lyn when she woke on the morning of the summer equinox and stared across the hut to the empty bed her parents slept in, still unmade, the folds of their blankets slightly discolored with dust and bits of grass that flew in beneath the heavy curtain over the door. During storms a stiff gust of wind could shake the entire ger, and the dust would fly, set her sneezing and coughing, and coat her mouth like she was gulping down clots of earth or dried blood. It was on a real bed frame, cut and sanded and pegged together by her father's own hands, and she couldn't bring herself to use it. Her cushion was fine. Without a screen to close her off from the rest of the room it didn't even feel claustrophobic.
Her back twinged when she sat up, and her calves, pulling tight, and the door snapped in the breeze, roiling in and out, making the sunlight dance on the floor in front of the door. Long sheets of curtain were suspended from the apex of the ceiling and pulled down to drape over the walls, some cream-colored, some brown, some maroon. She listened to the beaded trim of the curtains around her parents' bed click and rattle while she got dressed and ate a round of flatbread left over from the night before, a strip of jerky, and drank warm water from the jug by the door. Her skin felt tight and drawn, like it would tear of she stretched her arms or twisted her wrists to hear her joints crack. Sweat was trickling down her spine by the time she walked outside, and the wind on her face was no relief.
Sacaen summers were supposed to be brutal, but Lyn didn't know any other kind - only that Florina hadn't believed her when she said her mother could bake flatbreads on a rock slab with just the sun for heat, and that mercenaries returned to Ilia at the end of the season with horror stories about the south of Bern and its tropical climate. As Lyn still didn't believe snow could pack deep enough to bury grown men, she called it even, and told her friend that come summer, she would cook an entire meal outside when she visited again, without the aid of a fire.
She'd wanted summer to come. She'd wanted it to hurry, because Florina would be a knight by then, and done with whatever trials and training that entailed. Lyn listened for the sound of wing beats every day, but they never came. She heard birds - hawks, and sometimes eagles coasting so high they were only dots against the clear blue sky, sometimes keening, sometimes diving to snatch a prairie dog or a rodent, but her eye did not pegusi.
The wind was laden with the scent of baking grass and dirt. She hauled her mother's baking stone from its resting place below the stairs and had to drag it across the grass to a pebbly patch of ground where another ger had once stood, and let it fall flat with a sharp, loud clatter and a whoosh of dust, covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve until the dirt settled and she could brush it off. Bird shadows swept across the ground as she walked back to the hut for the rest of her equipment: a clay bowl, the jug of water, cups, salt, a tall jar of flour. The others left enough for Lyn to feed herself until harvest filled Bulgar's storehouses with wheat and millet; they owed that much to her, the chieftain's daughter, or so they thought. She would have preferred their loyalty, but Lyn was only a girl - not a woman, not a boy, not a chieftain.
Why did they look at us like that? Aren't there any women in your hunting parties? she remembered Florina asking on her last visit, when they walked to the river to hunt and supplement the family stores. She felt guilty for staying, being a burden; I brought rations, Florina would say, biting her lip, watching Lyn's mother pull more meat from the cupboard, more more flour for bread, and Hassar had laughed the first time she stayed and told her she put more food away than his wife and daughter together. Lyn's mother scolded him, and Florina blushed dark red.
Sometimes, Lyn had said to her question. My mother joins once in a while. There's a girl across the river who leads a party with her sister, but-- and she shrugged.
Men's business? Florina's pale skin was suited to the gray and white backdrop of Sacae's winter, her lavender hair a splash of color over the snow-dusted plain, like a flower. We do everything in Ilia - fighting or farming, it doesn't matter. You can't waste talent.
Sacaens did not farm. They didn't store much food either - grain and rice mostly, salt, herbs. They kept goats, cured cheese, dried meat. What else did a family need? When Lyn wanted sweets she ate fruit from the trees by the river, or drizzled honey on her bread. I'm not good at anything else, she said.
Florina tried to contradict her, but it was true; Lyn didn't do very much of value aside from hunting. She wasn't strong enough to build, and the loom was too heavy for her until she gained muscle from practicing with the sword. She couldn't sew, couldn't cook very well - though her mother said it was just practice she needed, that everyone ruined bread or cheese at first, including the lovely Madelyn, whose recipes had been begged for and demanded every festival day for as long as Lyn could remember.
You're a good friend, Florina said to her when they passed beneath the bare branches of the first copse of trees. Not many people can claim that.
Lyn hadn't known what to say, so she said nothing.
Her bread came out dry because she left it out too long - she always did that - and dust gritted in her teeth when she chewed. She thought she might leave the hut and walk to the river for fish or game, but it was an hour away on foot, and whenever she started the journey it felt like the winter came back and dogged her footsteps, and instead of a league of yellow grass she saw blood-stained snow and patches of mud and piercing screams. In the end it would be nothing but a bird that startled her into looking around and crouching down, or the wind whistling through a pile of rocks.
She was away hunting when it happened, because her parents were sick, and she followed the river south to stalk prey she could hear, but not see. It was a bird, and Lyn had stayed crouched behind the bushes for half an hour, watching it pick sticks from the ground and carry them to its nest. Eventually she sneezed and startled it into flight, and she couldn't shoot it down, didn't even nock an arrow. Instead she remembered Florina crying, Florina and white wings coasting on the wind, and she dragged her feet all the way home, afraid to return empty handed. As it turned out, there weren't any fires for cooking - only for burning huts down and reducing her people to manageable remains.
The winter was almost over when it happened, and Lyn was lucky her family home had survived. They'd wanted to loot. Her mother's jewelry was scattered on the dirt outside, twisted and dirty. Her father's knife was lodged in a bandit's spine.
A fitting end, the eldest survivor said. All Lyn could feel was ice on the wind. All she could smell was smoke, and flesh, people roasted like suckling pigs, and she coughed and choked until tears came to her eyes and cut the grime on her cheeks, making little, clean spots on her fists, and on her knees when she crouched down and watched the firelight glint on a long brass chain and the mirror-back of a cameo pendant.
She'd wanted summer to come so badly-- it would mean time had passed, that she could count it in lunar cycles instead of hours and days, and save her tears for days when she burned herself while trying to boil rice. It would mean pure white wings, and Florina, smiling, if only for the moment or two before she asked what happened - why there were three huts instead of twenty, and all but one empty, so Lyn's steps echoed when she walked inside.
She waited. There was still treasure to be had, if the Taliver decided to come back. There was her blade, waiting, seeking their blood. If she left the village, even to hunt, she might miss them. If she ran to Bulgar she might never come back, so she stayed. She had to say good-bye to Florina before she left, just in case. Lyn didn't seek death, but wanted to warn the last person still precious to her, so there would be no questions as to her fate, no panic when her home appeared mysteriously empty: she would annihilate the Taliver and dedicate their ashes to the spirits of her people. The surface of the mountain would burn. And when Florina came back, Lyn would tell her she was right - the crane should have lived.
Perhaps her lack of empathy brought this upon her family.
She would make up for it. All she had to do was wait.
.
By: Amber Michelle
Gauntlet theme: 2 - I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword
Characters: Lyn, Florina
Words: 1641
Warnings: n/a
Notes: for this challenge with
measuringlife. ETA 08.06.09: this will be rewritten.
..........................................................
The sound of wind greeted Lyn when she woke on the morning of the summer equinox and stared across the hut to the empty bed her parents slept in, still unmade, the folds of their blankets slightly discolored with dust and bits of grass that flew in beneath the heavy curtain over the door. During storms a stiff gust of wind could shake the entire ger, and the dust would fly, set her sneezing and coughing, and coat her mouth like she was gulping down clots of earth or dried blood. It was on a real bed frame, cut and sanded and pegged together by her father's own hands, and she couldn't bring herself to use it. Her cushion was fine. Without a screen to close her off from the rest of the room it didn't even feel claustrophobic.
Her back twinged when she sat up, and her calves, pulling tight, and the door snapped in the breeze, roiling in and out, making the sunlight dance on the floor in front of the door. Long sheets of curtain were suspended from the apex of the ceiling and pulled down to drape over the walls, some cream-colored, some brown, some maroon. She listened to the beaded trim of the curtains around her parents' bed click and rattle while she got dressed and ate a round of flatbread left over from the night before, a strip of jerky, and drank warm water from the jug by the door. Her skin felt tight and drawn, like it would tear of she stretched her arms or twisted her wrists to hear her joints crack. Sweat was trickling down her spine by the time she walked outside, and the wind on her face was no relief.
Sacaen summers were supposed to be brutal, but Lyn didn't know any other kind - only that Florina hadn't believed her when she said her mother could bake flatbreads on a rock slab with just the sun for heat, and that mercenaries returned to Ilia at the end of the season with horror stories about the south of Bern and its tropical climate. As Lyn still didn't believe snow could pack deep enough to bury grown men, she called it even, and told her friend that come summer, she would cook an entire meal outside when she visited again, without the aid of a fire.
She'd wanted summer to come. She'd wanted it to hurry, because Florina would be a knight by then, and done with whatever trials and training that entailed. Lyn listened for the sound of wing beats every day, but they never came. She heard birds - hawks, and sometimes eagles coasting so high they were only dots against the clear blue sky, sometimes keening, sometimes diving to snatch a prairie dog or a rodent, but her eye did not pegusi.
The wind was laden with the scent of baking grass and dirt. She hauled her mother's baking stone from its resting place below the stairs and had to drag it across the grass to a pebbly patch of ground where another ger had once stood, and let it fall flat with a sharp, loud clatter and a whoosh of dust, covering her nose and mouth with her sleeve until the dirt settled and she could brush it off. Bird shadows swept across the ground as she walked back to the hut for the rest of her equipment: a clay bowl, the jug of water, cups, salt, a tall jar of flour. The others left enough for Lyn to feed herself until harvest filled Bulgar's storehouses with wheat and millet; they owed that much to her, the chieftain's daughter, or so they thought. She would have preferred their loyalty, but Lyn was only a girl - not a woman, not a boy, not a chieftain.
Why did they look at us like that? Aren't there any women in your hunting parties? she remembered Florina asking on her last visit, when they walked to the river to hunt and supplement the family stores. She felt guilty for staying, being a burden; I brought rations, Florina would say, biting her lip, watching Lyn's mother pull more meat from the cupboard, more more flour for bread, and Hassar had laughed the first time she stayed and told her she put more food away than his wife and daughter together. Lyn's mother scolded him, and Florina blushed dark red.
Sometimes, Lyn had said to her question. My mother joins once in a while. There's a girl across the river who leads a party with her sister, but-- and she shrugged.
Men's business? Florina's pale skin was suited to the gray and white backdrop of Sacae's winter, her lavender hair a splash of color over the snow-dusted plain, like a flower. We do everything in Ilia - fighting or farming, it doesn't matter. You can't waste talent.
Sacaens did not farm. They didn't store much food either - grain and rice mostly, salt, herbs. They kept goats, cured cheese, dried meat. What else did a family need? When Lyn wanted sweets she ate fruit from the trees by the river, or drizzled honey on her bread. I'm not good at anything else, she said.
Florina tried to contradict her, but it was true; Lyn didn't do very much of value aside from hunting. She wasn't strong enough to build, and the loom was too heavy for her until she gained muscle from practicing with the sword. She couldn't sew, couldn't cook very well - though her mother said it was just practice she needed, that everyone ruined bread or cheese at first, including the lovely Madelyn, whose recipes had been begged for and demanded every festival day for as long as Lyn could remember.
You're a good friend, Florina said to her when they passed beneath the bare branches of the first copse of trees. Not many people can claim that.
Lyn hadn't known what to say, so she said nothing.
Her bread came out dry because she left it out too long - she always did that - and dust gritted in her teeth when she chewed. She thought she might leave the hut and walk to the river for fish or game, but it was an hour away on foot, and whenever she started the journey it felt like the winter came back and dogged her footsteps, and instead of a league of yellow grass she saw blood-stained snow and patches of mud and piercing screams. In the end it would be nothing but a bird that startled her into looking around and crouching down, or the wind whistling through a pile of rocks.
She was away hunting when it happened, because her parents were sick, and she followed the river south to stalk prey she could hear, but not see. It was a bird, and Lyn had stayed crouched behind the bushes for half an hour, watching it pick sticks from the ground and carry them to its nest. Eventually she sneezed and startled it into flight, and she couldn't shoot it down, didn't even nock an arrow. Instead she remembered Florina crying, Florina and white wings coasting on the wind, and she dragged her feet all the way home, afraid to return empty handed. As it turned out, there weren't any fires for cooking - only for burning huts down and reducing her people to manageable remains.
The winter was almost over when it happened, and Lyn was lucky her family home had survived. They'd wanted to loot. Her mother's jewelry was scattered on the dirt outside, twisted and dirty. Her father's knife was lodged in a bandit's spine.
A fitting end, the eldest survivor said. All Lyn could feel was ice on the wind. All she could smell was smoke, and flesh, people roasted like suckling pigs, and she coughed and choked until tears came to her eyes and cut the grime on her cheeks, making little, clean spots on her fists, and on her knees when she crouched down and watched the firelight glint on a long brass chain and the mirror-back of a cameo pendant.
She'd wanted summer to come so badly-- it would mean time had passed, that she could count it in lunar cycles instead of hours and days, and save her tears for days when she burned herself while trying to boil rice. It would mean pure white wings, and Florina, smiling, if only for the moment or two before she asked what happened - why there were three huts instead of twenty, and all but one empty, so Lyn's steps echoed when she walked inside.
She waited. There was still treasure to be had, if the Taliver decided to come back. There was her blade, waiting, seeking their blood. If she left the village, even to hunt, she might miss them. If she ran to Bulgar she might never come back, so she stayed. She had to say good-bye to Florina before she left, just in case. Lyn didn't seek death, but wanted to warn the last person still precious to her, so there would be no questions as to her fate, no panic when her home appeared mysteriously empty: she would annihilate the Taliver and dedicate their ashes to the spirits of her people. The surface of the mountain would burn. And when Florina came back, Lyn would tell her she was right - the crane should have lived.
Perhaps her lack of empathy brought this upon her family.
She would make up for it. All she had to do was wait.
.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 12:17 pm (UTC)And maybe about some members of the black fang
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 08:05 pm (UTC)Thanks for the comment.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 03:15 am (UTC)The characterization is really fantastic here. I like how you paint Florina -- sort of demure, but never with the Porky-Pig syndrome. The clash of cultures is really beautiful. My only crit would be that it shifted fairly fast to the end, and a little more there would make it flow better. But rewriting the whole thing when it's great already is a bit much. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 08:26 am (UTC)Do tell me about that book, definitely. Rant AT LENGTH. XD I love your book/manga rants~
Anyway, it's hilarious (not to mention revealing of certain ISSUES) that a Japanese game is painting Sacae as a magical native race or whatever - I've seen it argued Sacae is based on Mongolian tribes, and I can see that in the design. However, the "listen to the wind" thing sounds a little more like they're repeating cliches -- though I don't actually know, maybe Mongolia had such beliefs. They were a part of my various history classes because they swept Asia and the Middle East, but since they weren't the focus, their culture didn't get as much attention.
Haha, long comment, sorry.
I think you're right. I'll fiddle with the end, too, and see if it works out better. You can tell I was trying to finish as soon as possible. :D;
ETA: Thank you~! (I have no manners, look at me.)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-29 09:23 am (UTC)Haha~! This one will be work for both aspects as me ranting about it will ensure that you don't waste time reading it!
They seem a mishmash of Mongolian and stereotypical Native American traits. Fuuin seemed worse with the PAIIIIINT WITH ALL THE COOOOOLOOORS OF THE WIIIIIIIIIND! Probably because in Rekka your only Sacaeans were Lyn, Rath & Guy. Guy is too busy trying to be THE BEST SWORDSMAN AROUND!!11 to talk about Father Sky And Mother Earth And Sister Wind And Brother Pine Cone. Rath was busy not saying much at all, and Lyn was kinda on a quest.
Oh yes, you said that Rath & Rath/Lyn didn't appeal to you -- did you ever read his supports with Wil? Wil has some really cute & funny supports with Raven and Rath.
:D