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runicloreThis Is Sacred
Author: Amber Michelle
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Pairing: Sephiran/Zelgius
30 Breathtakes Theme: 10 - hands
Gauntlet Theme: 13 - the world scorns us
Rating: K+
Word count: 2455
Notes: fic promised to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
measuringlife for entering Blind Go this month. The request was for travel fic involving Sephiran and Zelgius, or fic around when they first met. I chose the former.
.............................................................
Few temples served the people of Gallia, all of which Sephiran thought were built for the beorc populace rather than the laguz, who, in his own time, had preferred to make offerings of the forest - wild berries, rare strains of peach or apple, nearly-unblemished bucks or fowl - and did not pray, but simply left them at her feet, or at an altar if she was not present. That habit seemed to have persisted in the time he'd stayed in seclusion, as he did not see any cats or tigers on the road to the chapel they chose for their first night past the Crimean border, and Zelgius said, short, we won't find any. When pressed, he said: no, this is my first time out of Daein. Sephiran heard them in the forest (the crack of a branch, just slightly too loud to be natural; the shifting of grass, the way it sank a finger's breadth into the loam beneath a tiger's weight), but Zelgius hadn't demonstrated any heightened abilities aside from his strength. He kept his arm bent back even so, his hand on the hilt of his sword while they walked, unwilling to let go. Paranoia was in the way his eyes flicked side to side, the way his head snapped to turn, just slightly, when a sound close enough or loud enough to reach his beorc ears presented itself.
Perhaps they were being pursued, but Daein's agents wouldn't follow them into laguz territory. They'd proven their unwillingness to do so before, and Zelgius assured him they wouldn't enter Gallia without a direct order from the king.
Sephiran's name and staff of office secured them the abbot's quarters and servants to fill the copper bath with hot water. They were served fresh white bread of a sour variety with a crispy golden crust, slices of butter and rhubarb jam laced with ginger, hard orange cheese, and a fragrant, bright red tea an apprentice told him was made from hibiscus blossoms gathered in the south, which they blended with orange and lemon peel. It smelled like fruit, tasted sweet and slightly syrupy. The spice of the jam lingered on his tongue, and he watched Zelgius stare at his reflection in the garnet depth of his tea while he matched slices of cheese to square pieces of bread with one hand.
A female acolyte came in with a straw basket of soap, powder, and vials of oil, two ivory robes folded under her arm. She disappeared into the bathing chamber.
"Will you need a stand for your armor?" Sephiran said. He reached across the round table to tap the lip of Zelgius's teacup to draw his attention.
He looked up, blinked, returned his gaze to the tea - or his bread, which he'd yet to lift to his mouth, or perhaps the golden grain of the tabletop. "No, that will not be necessary." The exit of their maid drew his attention for a second, just a flick of his eyelashes. "I apologize, Master Sephiran."
"You've been far away," he said, pushing his chair back, rising. His own meal was crumbs on the plain porcelain plate. "But it's no cause for apology." And, because he knew there would be no objection: "I'll take the bath first."
Sephiran searched the abbot's drawers for something to anchor his hair and twisted it up and out of the way when he found two empty fountain pens with slender, laquered ends on a shelf beneath the night table. He left his coat across the foot of the bed, his boots beside it, and found the water still too hot when he went in to check; there was a porcelain bowl and pitcher on a counter beside the door, so he filled both and shed his clothes, sponged himself clean while he waited, and listened as Zelgius finally bit into his bread and cheese. It was faint beneath the splash of water, but distinct - the sound of chewing, of a swallow, of a gulp of tea. Perhaps they should have asked for something stronger to refresh the commander's senses.
Many things were still new to Sephiran on this version of Tellius. It was like a twisted, discolored finish to a painting began when he still walked these lands with Altina to lay the foundation in broad strokes of color: red here for Begnion, blue there for Serenes, yellow for Goldoa because Dheginsea loathed the color-- it was her idea, Altina's. Now they divided the world into two: black, and white.
Luck had been with them on their journey so far. If they encountered laguz, his own scent may give him away - not quite heron, but certainly not beorc, or so the dragons told him. Would they not wonder? Would they not, perhaps, divine the meaning of that ambiguity and denounce him, as the Apostle told him was the response to evidence of laguz coupling with beorc? And Zelgius-- they wouldn't know by scent he was not to be blamed on Sephiran, only that he was cursed.
What a strange world Tellius had become.
He stepped into the bathtub long enough to let the warmth sooth his muscles, loosen the tension in his calves, his neck, his lower back, and then he dried himself off and put the robe on to check on his companion.
Zelgius hadn't moved, of course - but he'd eaten all of the bread and cheese.
"If you wait too long," Sephiran said, "the water will get cold."
Zelgius snorted. "After that river on the mountainside, nothing is cold."
Sephiran hid his smile by turning around to pull the pens out of his hair, led it slide down and uncoil over his back while he bent to put them back on the narrow shelf. When he turned around again to speak, he found he was being watched and lifted an eyebrow.
"It's an odd way to..." Zelgius motioned to his own hair.
Sephiran kept his brow arched. "Feminine?"
Zelgius hesitated, his mouth half-open. "Well--"
"I didn't want it to get wet." Sephiran felt for the ends of his hair, twisting and pulling it around from the back again. The tips were damp, the rest was dry. "I'm too tired to wash it tonight, unless he has a servant for that, too." The abbot had only one bed, naturally; it was wide, the mattress soft as feathers, and altogether too luxurious for a man sworn to serve the people over his own comfort. Such was Begnion, too. He threw the quilt back to make sure it was clean. "I wouldn't be surprised."
The chair scraped and creaked, and the table with it, perhaps straining beneath the weight of man and armor, when it was meant for one or the other. Zelgius's footsteps came with a faint clank of metal on the stone floor. "I'll help you."
Silk sheets, and their ivory sheen had a certain glow in the lamplight; what was the use? Sephiran straightened. "I told you, there's no need for an a--"
"You've washed your hair at every other stop. I can swing that sword all day," Zelgius said, his hand turning in a motion to indicate the broad sword leaning in the corner behind a bookcase, with their boots. "My arms won't mind a little more work-- if it's what you want."
Sephiran left the bed, approached his traveling companion. Plain steel encased his body now, when before he'd have worn black; the polished curves glinted with yellow light, reflected it onto the far wall, the green curtains, like a mirror. Zelgius was a hair taller, maybe because his boots added height, and he was half again as wide, which Sephiran also attributed to the armor; he was frail, but not small - not built like a woman, though such an assumption was unfair to the females he'd met who dedicated their lives to war. Altina had not been small.
He tapped the shoulder guard with his nails. "In this?"
Zelgius looked down, then immediately to the side, his face reddening.
"You've slept in your armor since we met in Daein-- even during nights we've had shelter," Sephiran said. He fingered the buckle holding the arm guards in place, saw the line of the other man's shoulders tense. "I know of your mark. I will not judge you for it."
A moment passed. Zelgius's gaze appeared to be downcast, but Sephiran caught the glint of green that indicated a sidelong glance. "I know that," Zelgius said. He stepped back once, then another half-step. The buckle clinked against his armor when he released it, the leather creaked, and he tossed the guard onto Sephiran's coat, where it sank into the feather quilt, and started on the next.
Sephiran watched the armor come off, piece by piece - the other arm guard, the shoulder guards, the half-plate, leather and chain mail that moved and folded with a slithering metallic jingle. The shirt and trousers beneath were stained gray and brown in creases, where the folds rubbed on leather or metal, perhaps soaked by sweat. They'd walked over a month, and saw combat at the border of Daein, but otherwise were plagued with heat and dust. He thought Zelgius must have removed it to change his clothes some time, to bathe, or he would smell the difference, yet he couldn't remember seeing it happen.
He leaned over to wrap the guards in his coat and moved them to the floor. One of them would trip on it later. "Do laguz attack you for it, as beorc would?"
A sharp sigh came with the shake of Zelgius's head. "No, they just--" He looked at his armor scattered on the floor. His shoulders curved downward. "It doesn't matter. I'm not used to being in proximity with so many of them."
"Sit down." So he'd heard them after all. Sephiran would have to reassess his sensory abilities-- though it was possible the fault in his calculation was his own. "What is it they do? I haven't actually seen a cat since our first day."
The mattress dipped beneath Zelgius's weight. He plucked at the laces to his shirt, let his hand rest on his knee when Sephiran reached for them. "We won't see one, as long as they catch my scent before we find them."
He allowed Sephiran to pull the shirt over his head and propped his elbows on his knees, rested his face in his hands. Dark hair prickled between his fingers, sliding over his knuckles where it grew longer. A smidge of black on Zelgius's shoulder blade drew Sephiran's gaze - and his hand, though the bird-in-flight shape felt no different than the rest of his skin; warmer, perhaps, but only because of where it spread its wings.
Zelgius lifted his head, but only to allow Sephiran another step closer, and he said against the robe, his breath hot, "I thought I was used to it."
Sephiran pressed his fingertips into the black paintbrush strokes, watched the color bleed slightly lighter as the skin around it paled - blue hid there, like midnight, like his hair. It could have been painted by the goddess herself, the shape was so perfect, so symmetrical, each line so precise. He curved his free hand around the back of Zelgius's head and held him there at his waist, trying to ignore the pattern of his breath heating the linen of his robe.
It wasn't fair. Zelgius breathed, and his muscles shifted, sliding under the skin where Sephiran's fingertips rested, smooth and beautiful like a sculpture. This body was more of a weapon than the sword. It was capable of so much more than carrying armor and killing.
"They smell a laguz when you are in range, yet see something they hate." Sephiran combed his fingers into the dark blue hair, felt the dampness at the roots. "Beasts especially rely on a mental catalogue of scents for identification. This incongruity is too much for them to bear."
Zelgius breathed a long sigh. He held Sephiran around the hips when he thought to back away, pulling slightly on his hair, making his scalp twinge. "You make it sound so simple."
"I told you before, but I will tell you again." Sephiran flattened his hand atop the brand. The yellow tint to the light seemed especially appropriate, reminiscent of their first meeting. "This is sacred-- not blasphemy. The goddess treasures all of her creations, in all their permutations, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. You are all descended from one race, one point in time, and she did not declare you profane when you split to become two. She will not do so when both races come together again as they have in you, and those like you." The hold on his hips tightened enough to hurt. Sephiran lowered his head, and his hair slid over his shoulders and curled onto the broad back. "You have nothing to fear."
Zelgius shook his head once, the rhythm of his breathing so perfectly measured he had to be trying. Dampness blotted Sephiran's robe to prove his guess right.
He rubbed his hand over the brand, felt Zelgius tremble under his touch and then tense and go still. Sephiran heard people walk by outside the door - a light tread that must be a maid, the heavier, metallic tread of a temple guard, the shuffling of priests and students. The clock they saw in the office they were received in made a tinny chime, like thin, plucked strings, and he thought of mentioning the time - of persuading Zelgius to use the bath before the water cooled, or simply to finish undressing to rest. But sometimes silence was best. He must know Sephiran would judge tears as fairly as the mark, if they must be shed.
There were too many tears to dry in this new Tellius. The people needed the guiding hand of their mother to leave their crying behind - Sephiran was only one man, and not a god, no matter what legend styled him when he was known by another name. These people needed their goddess, and he would return them to her, even if it mean the shedding of a thousand more tears to wake her. Just wait, he murmured to Zelgius. Just wait.
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9/10
Pairing: Sephiran/Zelgius
30 Breathtakes Theme: 10 - hands
Gauntlet Theme: 13 - the world scorns us
Rating: K+
Word count: 2455
Notes: fic promised to
measuringlife for entering Blind Go this month. The request was for travel fic involving Sephiran and Zelgius, or fic around when they first met. I chose the former..............................................................
Few temples served the people of Gallia, all of which Sephiran thought were built for the beorc populace rather than the laguz, who, in his own time, had preferred to make offerings of the forest - wild berries, rare strains of peach or apple, nearly-unblemished bucks or fowl - and did not pray, but simply left them at her feet, or at an altar if she was not present. That habit seemed to have persisted in the time he'd stayed in seclusion, as he did not see any cats or tigers on the road to the chapel they chose for their first night past the Crimean border, and Zelgius said, short, we won't find any. When pressed, he said: no, this is my first time out of Daein. Sephiran heard them in the forest (the crack of a branch, just slightly too loud to be natural; the shifting of grass, the way it sank a finger's breadth into the loam beneath a tiger's weight), but Zelgius hadn't demonstrated any heightened abilities aside from his strength. He kept his arm bent back even so, his hand on the hilt of his sword while they walked, unwilling to let go. Paranoia was in the way his eyes flicked side to side, the way his head snapped to turn, just slightly, when a sound close enough or loud enough to reach his beorc ears presented itself.
Perhaps they were being pursued, but Daein's agents wouldn't follow them into laguz territory. They'd proven their unwillingness to do so before, and Zelgius assured him they wouldn't enter Gallia without a direct order from the king.
Sephiran's name and staff of office secured them the abbot's quarters and servants to fill the copper bath with hot water. They were served fresh white bread of a sour variety with a crispy golden crust, slices of butter and rhubarb jam laced with ginger, hard orange cheese, and a fragrant, bright red tea an apprentice told him was made from hibiscus blossoms gathered in the south, which they blended with orange and lemon peel. It smelled like fruit, tasted sweet and slightly syrupy. The spice of the jam lingered on his tongue, and he watched Zelgius stare at his reflection in the garnet depth of his tea while he matched slices of cheese to square pieces of bread with one hand.
A female acolyte came in with a straw basket of soap, powder, and vials of oil, two ivory robes folded under her arm. She disappeared into the bathing chamber.
"Will you need a stand for your armor?" Sephiran said. He reached across the round table to tap the lip of Zelgius's teacup to draw his attention.
He looked up, blinked, returned his gaze to the tea - or his bread, which he'd yet to lift to his mouth, or perhaps the golden grain of the tabletop. "No, that will not be necessary." The exit of their maid drew his attention for a second, just a flick of his eyelashes. "I apologize, Master Sephiran."
"You've been far away," he said, pushing his chair back, rising. His own meal was crumbs on the plain porcelain plate. "But it's no cause for apology." And, because he knew there would be no objection: "I'll take the bath first."
Sephiran searched the abbot's drawers for something to anchor his hair and twisted it up and out of the way when he found two empty fountain pens with slender, laquered ends on a shelf beneath the night table. He left his coat across the foot of the bed, his boots beside it, and found the water still too hot when he went in to check; there was a porcelain bowl and pitcher on a counter beside the door, so he filled both and shed his clothes, sponged himself clean while he waited, and listened as Zelgius finally bit into his bread and cheese. It was faint beneath the splash of water, but distinct - the sound of chewing, of a swallow, of a gulp of tea. Perhaps they should have asked for something stronger to refresh the commander's senses.
Many things were still new to Sephiran on this version of Tellius. It was like a twisted, discolored finish to a painting began when he still walked these lands with Altina to lay the foundation in broad strokes of color: red here for Begnion, blue there for Serenes, yellow for Goldoa because Dheginsea loathed the color-- it was her idea, Altina's. Now they divided the world into two: black, and white.
Luck had been with them on their journey so far. If they encountered laguz, his own scent may give him away - not quite heron, but certainly not beorc, or so the dragons told him. Would they not wonder? Would they not, perhaps, divine the meaning of that ambiguity and denounce him, as the Apostle told him was the response to evidence of laguz coupling with beorc? And Zelgius-- they wouldn't know by scent he was not to be blamed on Sephiran, only that he was cursed.
What a strange world Tellius had become.
He stepped into the bathtub long enough to let the warmth sooth his muscles, loosen the tension in his calves, his neck, his lower back, and then he dried himself off and put the robe on to check on his companion.
Zelgius hadn't moved, of course - but he'd eaten all of the bread and cheese.
"If you wait too long," Sephiran said, "the water will get cold."
Zelgius snorted. "After that river on the mountainside, nothing is cold."
Sephiran hid his smile by turning around to pull the pens out of his hair, led it slide down and uncoil over his back while he bent to put them back on the narrow shelf. When he turned around again to speak, he found he was being watched and lifted an eyebrow.
"It's an odd way to..." Zelgius motioned to his own hair.
Sephiran kept his brow arched. "Feminine?"
Zelgius hesitated, his mouth half-open. "Well--"
"I didn't want it to get wet." Sephiran felt for the ends of his hair, twisting and pulling it around from the back again. The tips were damp, the rest was dry. "I'm too tired to wash it tonight, unless he has a servant for that, too." The abbot had only one bed, naturally; it was wide, the mattress soft as feathers, and altogether too luxurious for a man sworn to serve the people over his own comfort. Such was Begnion, too. He threw the quilt back to make sure it was clean. "I wouldn't be surprised."
The chair scraped and creaked, and the table with it, perhaps straining beneath the weight of man and armor, when it was meant for one or the other. Zelgius's footsteps came with a faint clank of metal on the stone floor. "I'll help you."
Silk sheets, and their ivory sheen had a certain glow in the lamplight; what was the use? Sephiran straightened. "I told you, there's no need for an a--"
"You've washed your hair at every other stop. I can swing that sword all day," Zelgius said, his hand turning in a motion to indicate the broad sword leaning in the corner behind a bookcase, with their boots. "My arms won't mind a little more work-- if it's what you want."
Sephiran left the bed, approached his traveling companion. Plain steel encased his body now, when before he'd have worn black; the polished curves glinted with yellow light, reflected it onto the far wall, the green curtains, like a mirror. Zelgius was a hair taller, maybe because his boots added height, and he was half again as wide, which Sephiran also attributed to the armor; he was frail, but not small - not built like a woman, though such an assumption was unfair to the females he'd met who dedicated their lives to war. Altina had not been small.
He tapped the shoulder guard with his nails. "In this?"
Zelgius looked down, then immediately to the side, his face reddening.
"You've slept in your armor since we met in Daein-- even during nights we've had shelter," Sephiran said. He fingered the buckle holding the arm guards in place, saw the line of the other man's shoulders tense. "I know of your mark. I will not judge you for it."
A moment passed. Zelgius's gaze appeared to be downcast, but Sephiran caught the glint of green that indicated a sidelong glance. "I know that," Zelgius said. He stepped back once, then another half-step. The buckle clinked against his armor when he released it, the leather creaked, and he tossed the guard onto Sephiran's coat, where it sank into the feather quilt, and started on the next.
Sephiran watched the armor come off, piece by piece - the other arm guard, the shoulder guards, the half-plate, leather and chain mail that moved and folded with a slithering metallic jingle. The shirt and trousers beneath were stained gray and brown in creases, where the folds rubbed on leather or metal, perhaps soaked by sweat. They'd walked over a month, and saw combat at the border of Daein, but otherwise were plagued with heat and dust. He thought Zelgius must have removed it to change his clothes some time, to bathe, or he would smell the difference, yet he couldn't remember seeing it happen.
He leaned over to wrap the guards in his coat and moved them to the floor. One of them would trip on it later. "Do laguz attack you for it, as beorc would?"
A sharp sigh came with the shake of Zelgius's head. "No, they just--" He looked at his armor scattered on the floor. His shoulders curved downward. "It doesn't matter. I'm not used to being in proximity with so many of them."
"Sit down." So he'd heard them after all. Sephiran would have to reassess his sensory abilities-- though it was possible the fault in his calculation was his own. "What is it they do? I haven't actually seen a cat since our first day."
The mattress dipped beneath Zelgius's weight. He plucked at the laces to his shirt, let his hand rest on his knee when Sephiran reached for them. "We won't see one, as long as they catch my scent before we find them."
He allowed Sephiran to pull the shirt over his head and propped his elbows on his knees, rested his face in his hands. Dark hair prickled between his fingers, sliding over his knuckles where it grew longer. A smidge of black on Zelgius's shoulder blade drew Sephiran's gaze - and his hand, though the bird-in-flight shape felt no different than the rest of his skin; warmer, perhaps, but only because of where it spread its wings.
Zelgius lifted his head, but only to allow Sephiran another step closer, and he said against the robe, his breath hot, "I thought I was used to it."
Sephiran pressed his fingertips into the black paintbrush strokes, watched the color bleed slightly lighter as the skin around it paled - blue hid there, like midnight, like his hair. It could have been painted by the goddess herself, the shape was so perfect, so symmetrical, each line so precise. He curved his free hand around the back of Zelgius's head and held him there at his waist, trying to ignore the pattern of his breath heating the linen of his robe.
It wasn't fair. Zelgius breathed, and his muscles shifted, sliding under the skin where Sephiran's fingertips rested, smooth and beautiful like a sculpture. This body was more of a weapon than the sword. It was capable of so much more than carrying armor and killing.
"They smell a laguz when you are in range, yet see something they hate." Sephiran combed his fingers into the dark blue hair, felt the dampness at the roots. "Beasts especially rely on a mental catalogue of scents for identification. This incongruity is too much for them to bear."
Zelgius breathed a long sigh. He held Sephiran around the hips when he thought to back away, pulling slightly on his hair, making his scalp twinge. "You make it sound so simple."
"I told you before, but I will tell you again." Sephiran flattened his hand atop the brand. The yellow tint to the light seemed especially appropriate, reminiscent of their first meeting. "This is sacred-- not blasphemy. The goddess treasures all of her creations, in all their permutations, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. You are all descended from one race, one point in time, and she did not declare you profane when you split to become two. She will not do so when both races come together again as they have in you, and those like you." The hold on his hips tightened enough to hurt. Sephiran lowered his head, and his hair slid over his shoulders and curled onto the broad back. "You have nothing to fear."
Zelgius shook his head once, the rhythm of his breathing so perfectly measured he had to be trying. Dampness blotted Sephiran's robe to prove his guess right.
He rubbed his hand over the brand, felt Zelgius tremble under his touch and then tense and go still. Sephiran heard people walk by outside the door - a light tread that must be a maid, the heavier, metallic tread of a temple guard, the shuffling of priests and students. The clock they saw in the office they were received in made a tinny chime, like thin, plucked strings, and he thought of mentioning the time - of persuading Zelgius to use the bath before the water cooled, or simply to finish undressing to rest. But sometimes silence was best. He must know Sephiran would judge tears as fairly as the mark, if they must be shed.
There were too many tears to dry in this new Tellius. The people needed the guiding hand of their mother to leave their crying behind - Sephiran was only one man, and not a god, no matter what legend styled him when he was known by another name. These people needed their goddess, and he would return them to her, even if it mean the shedding of a thousand more tears to wake her. Just wait, he murmured to Zelgius. Just wait.
.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 05:59 pm (UTC)you definitely need to write more of this
Very very profound
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 04:31 am (UTC)Once 30 Kisses is done I probably will focus a little more on the challenge about these two, so there should be more eventually.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 04:30 am (UTC)Actually, they ARE always doing nothing but talking in my fic, aren't they? >_>
Glad you liked it. XD