I sometimes wonder if I am alive, or if you are alive, or if any of us are truly ourselves. Adonai would tell me not to worry (or, he might have before he fell so impossibly ill) but still I wonder, sometimes enough to make me sweat.

The Ieshan children are all built quite the same but with different varnish, or a flourish, here and there. I am comforted somewhat when I see the straight line of my face in Pilate's, or the sharp cut of our eyes. I am most like him, I think, though he would not admit it. He is rather proud of his scales, of his snakes, and he is not wrong in thinking that to look at him is to recall our mother. He forgets, unsurprisingly, my forked tongue, and that his eyes are like mine only brighter: thin slits set in the yellow-orange of a newly setting sun.

I do not say so, but I know. If he saw himself in me he would have to see himself in Corradh, and even Adonai, and I do not know if he could stand it.

I think of myself as a thing sculpted lovingly and with great care, though it was not made alone. I imagine Lady Katurah made me red like crushed rose petals and gold like the sand whence I came before painting each white marking exactly where it is expected. She would dab her brush on my nose, my knees, my ankles, the stray spot on my hip, and then stare at it for hours to see if it is good, and right, and beautiful.

(I imagine her making my tongue, a snake's tongue, black and forked and smooth, and tucking it in the wrong mouth. I do not say so, but I know.)

selfish
out of touch with reality
stubborn
controlling

friendly
surprisingly self-aware
empathetic
genuinely tries to be better than she is
does not draw unnecessary attention to herself
creative & artistic

"I was small when the world first bent to my will. I did not realize it then, but I realize it now: it is easy to be kind, and bright, and beautiful and strong and loving when you are like a minor god. I this, this one, single, tiny thought, Pilate and I are alike.

The Ieshan girls do not fight, tooth and nail, mouth and mind, like the boys do-- of this, at least, I am thankful. I think we are too busy searching the rubble for meaning and brief glimpses of the boys they once were to care about the men they became. I want to like my sisters like I love my brothers. I want to talk to them and I want them to talk to me.

But I will not be the one to start. Because if I say so it will happen, they will crawl against their will and their better judgment out of their holes, and if I scream "love me," they will bend to kiss my proverbial hand. Anyone would. It is easy.

But it would not be the same.

Miriam can sit in her room, wracked with endless and numbing grief and rage and whatever else she has stuffed in her heart. Ruth can be angry, Adonai and Pilate can fight each other, Corradh can fight everyone else, and I will be here, in the palm fronds and the tangled branches of orange trees, painting."

- excerpt from the diary of Hagar Ieshan

Pilate thinks he is the most like our mother out of all the Ieshan children. He treats that idea like it’s something to be proud of, like he did anything of note to be blessed (or burdened) with it. He wears it like a badge of honor: See the snakes? See my lovely scales? What eyes she gave me—amber she dug up a thousand years ago. I am the last living piece of Lady Keturah. I can only guess that he thinks he is her heir because they looked the most alike. He’s always been a little too concerned with appearances.

I love him. Always. But in this, he is wrong.

I am a child when it happens first, in love with the gardener’s son, who lives with his father in a small stone cottage. He is afraid of me. This is as it should be, Adonai says, but I think that is abhorrent. Why not make friends of the people who serve us? Sometimes I think I am the only one in this house with a heart.

Anyway: the gardener’s son is named Abraham, and I find him quite charming. On a day I remember for being unusually cloudy, I insist he come picnic with me at lunch, an invitation he accepts with (at first) enough shyness to be tiresome.

But I have always been a patient girl. It was little trouble.

The second time I notice is during a family dinner, in the cold, dark part of summer. My parents are still with us. Everyone, even baby Miriam (the younger), is in attendance. It should be a lovely night—bonfires burning in the courtyard, fresh-picked fruit on silver platters.

But the boys are ruining it. Like they ruin everything. I love them so much it pains me—so much I would take out my heart as a gift, if they asked. But I cannot for the life of me understand how Miriam (the elder) deals with them for so long each day, and manages to do it with (mostly) a smile, and has not yet lost her mind. Often I wonder if she is a saint. I wonder if she is the best of us.

She is sitting with her usual steely composure as this all unfolds. Pilate and Adonai, on opposite sides of the same end of the table, are arguing with savage tact about something I don’t quite understand—the breadth of the universe, or something equally useless. With every passing second their voices grow louder, sharper, more abrasive. With every passing second I can see their anger bubbling closer and closer to the surface, and my sisters are quiet, and my parents will not discipline them, and—

“Pilate,” I snarl, “Be quiet.”

He falls silent instantly. Adonai begins to grin, and then I turn on him, too: “And you, stop smirking. You have won nothing but my disrespect.”

And just like that, he stops.

I don’t do it on purpose. I don’t really do anything on purpose. My responsibilities pale in comparison to those of my siblings, and most of my days I spend painting with oils in the courtyard—the lacy leaves of monsteras, the dusty clay of a terracotta pot. It is a boring existence, but I don’t particularly mind. When it comes down to it, I think I would rather be here—talking to the angels in my head (the ones that no one but my mother thinks are real), and painting plants in colors that don’t exist, and listening to music that hasn’t been written yet—than acting in any royal capacity.

Pilate thinks he is the most like our mother out of all the Ieshan children. I cannot, will not, hold it against him: I love him as I love all my siblings, and as I love every one of Solis’ children.

But he is wrong. He might have her same scales. He might have a head of serpents. He might have the bright fossil-eyes.

But I have the tongue of a snake, just as she did. The tongue no other Ieshan does.

compulsion - an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, especially against one's conscious wishes.

"When I was born, or made, I was given a gift: something none of my siblings were given. It must have been intentional. It had to have been, if it matches my snake's tongue so well. I think it is fitting, that I should be born as I am and so incredibly in control of my own fate-- and the things that lead in its direction."


tier i - discipuli:
Hagar is lucky she's charming, and pretty, and persuasive even without her magic. At all levels her compulsion only lasts as long as it takes to do the one action, but at this stage more complex acts require several demands in a row to complete. Worse still, is that she can't command anyone to to anything that they would not already have done, for her in specific, though they might not have done it under extreme duress or on special occasions.


tier ii - vexillum:
With a little more push behind her power, Hagar can influence someone against their will. it is, however, incredibly obvious to the, for lack of a better word, victim that it's happening, as the mind shifts to accommodate the new compulsion. It can make some people sick, or temporarily, extremely paranoid. It also does not hold up under pressure, and anyone that tries to resist her can do if they try.


tier iii - periti:
Hagar now takes some real fight to defy: her wish is the world's command, to a point. Her control can still be broken but it takes a struggle to do so, and now only that struggle makes people sick, as she's fighting them for control. Otherwise, it just causes a feeling of "of course I was going to do that." Her magic now listens to her intent just as much as her words, so she does not have to specifically say every little thing-- but she does still have to speak.


tier iv - dominus:
She is not your queen, she's your dictator. Hagar no longer needs to say anything to compel, only think it, and aside from the other party doing something against their will, there is no way to tell that it's happening. Because of this she is particularly dangerous to individuals who do not know themselves, what they are capable of, and what they want. Even at peak power, it has not gotten much sturdier than the last level, however, so Hagar can be defied with enough willpower... as long as you figure out there is anything going on to be defied.


parvus magic
She is surrounded by an aura of comfort and safety, like a warm blanket. This may be because Hagar somehow wished it into being--this is how she would like to be, after all--but more likely it is her magic's way of protecting itself against its incredibly obvious shortcomings. If the people are comfortable, if the people think they are safe, the people do not ask hard questions.