The blossoms in my hair have only been braided in for a day, but they are already wilting. As I stride across the threshold that separates the hall from the courtyard – out into the night air -, they shed petals in a trail of soft pink behind my hooves. The image is far too delicate to suit me, and soon – quickly – the petals are crushed beneath the hooves of partygoers, as unnoticed, I think, as a fly on the wall.

The evening has only barely begun, and the crowds are still small, quiet, and mostly-sober; the sun hasn’t even slipped entirely over the edge of the horizon, and the – faint – breeze hasn’t grown cold just yet. That is to say: the party is still utterly palatable. No chaos from my siblings, no sordid whispers, no drunken partygoers to pull aside and care for after they’ve drunk too much, because Solis knows, someone dying of alcohol poisoning at one of our parties is the last thing that our household needs right now. It is still, in a certain way, serene.

I am not sure where Ishak is. I know that he is nearby; chatting with one of the maids, I suspect. (Much as he has complained about hearing too much about this party, how he only, desperately wants to get it over with, how the servants can’t seem to come up with anything more interesting to discuss – he is still collecting more information about the specifics. Ishak is particular like that. He is never quite satisfied that enough as enough; no knowledge is too much knowledge.

I am, I’m sure, the opposite. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to know. I think that is why I keep him in my company, or- that was the intent. Sometimes, now, I’m not so sure, but that is another thing I don’t want to look at too deeply.)

Corradh and Hagar are in the courtyard, each preoccupied with their separate poisons. I glance, for a moment, at the finished result of Hagar’s work, and then at Corradh, among a flock of artists. I consider, for a brief moment, participating – and then, almost immediately, I think better of it. (Or maybe I run from it.) I love them both, of course, in very different ways, but I am sure that I would have no patience for their games – they do not ignite the barest flare of interest in my chest. (That is hardly unusual.)

I am not interested – and obligation can only carry me so far on its own.

Still. I stride through the courtyard, towards the center, where I can see the sky – and I try to make sure that I am carrying myself like a proper Ieshan, even with wilting, dripping blooms in my hair, even without anything interesting to do (like my siblings). I am not sure if I am praying to go unnoticed (because it would be troublesome to speak with anyone) or praying to be somehow eye-catching (because I am so hungry and so envious, so desperate for something I can’t put a name to), though I know better.

I need only look in a mirror to know better.

Over the haze of light, I can make out the soft blush of sunset, interrupted here and there by branches and building and string of decorations. I wonder – and the crowd swims around me, as I do – how long it will take for the sun to disappear entirely, how many precious moments of peace I have before trouble, inevitably, sinks its dark and jagged teeth into the lovely atmosphere my brother has seen fit to manufacture.

(It will crumble, certainly – this sort of thing always does.)

---

@Dalmatia || aaaa, a thread with you again <3 ||  Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Rapunzel: I like the Quiet"

I see the woman even before she strays close. I think that it is something in the way that she carries herself; the way she threatens to make my hairs stand straight up, like a press of a knife to the throat.

(Of course – I do not feel afraid, not properly, and I can’t imagine anyone causing trouble to me at my family’s own party, regardless of Ishak’s insisting. Besides. She feels like a snake in the sand, cagey and nearly erratic; but she does not feel hostile.)

For the dark kohl drawn around her eyes and the golden swirls snaking like leaf and vines in her coat, there is nothing soft to this woman. Her eyes are hard, and they are searching; for what, I have no idea. She’s lovely, technically, but she isn’t beautiful. She looks almost like she is made of stone, like I do, but a different type, a different composition – cool grey and mottled white where I am brown and sickly gold, with turquoise eyes as sharp as chips of steel. She moves through the crowd with restless purpose, and the crowd in the courtyard parts to let her pass.

The woman approaches me. I can’t say why.

You’re bored? she asks of me, and my response comes almost immediately. I might be Ruth Ieshan, least important daughter of my house, but I am still an Ieshan, and I am under some degree of obligation to present myself accordingly. It will not do to act bored at my beloved, prestigious brother’s party, even if I find it utterly unextraordinary, and, perhaps, depressing.

“Bored?” I incline my head at her – do we know each other? No, I don’t think so (then why is she here?) -, utterly apathetic. “My brother never throws boring parties.” That isn’t an answer, so it isn’t technically a lie. (It is what Ishak does to me all the time. It is, I think, what I do when I don’t want to be honest, when I can’t open my eyes and stare the truth in the face – much less admit to it.)

Bored. Am I bored? I feel much the same as I always do. (I am – lukewarm. Apathetic. There are terrible things beneath my surface, terrible things creeping at the corner of my vision like peripheral shadows wherever I look, but I pretend not to notice them; or maybe it is that I cannot care enough about them to strive against them, so I take the easy way out.) At any rate, parties are a novelty that I have been attending since childhood. I suppose I should consider them a luxury, a consequence of my privileged background – the servants scurrying about the party are not so idle or so lucky as I.

(I cannot help but think that they are a burden. I have no interest in the dancing, or the socializing, or the expensive alcohol. After seeing enough of them, they all begin to blend together, regardless of Pilate’s planning skills.)

I am not usually courteous, but I bear with it. This is a public occasion, and I am a host – whether I like it or not. “I am Ruth,” I say, slowly, and dip my head, “fifth-born of House Ieshan. May I help you, guest?”

---

@Dalmatia || I <3 her ||  Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Rapunzel: I like the Quiet"

In a feat of social inadequacy that is impressive even to me, the woman says, The party may not be boring, but even a crowd would not stop me from boredom should it claim me. She says this in a flat tone that is half-familiar; it could have come just as easily from my own mouth, but I have too much training and status to be so blunt in public. I consider her briefly. It isn’t quite an answer, but it is enough of one to prevent me from inquiring after her boredom, and what I might do to ease it.

(Charitability does not much suit me, anyways.)

When I ask her if I might help her, she is silent for a long, long time. Some violence seems to come over her, a deep breath that somehow feels sharp around the edges; her eyes rise up to meet mine, and her stare is somehow a challenge. I meet it, unblinking.

I have a feeling that she is more bark than bite. She might like to be all bite (and she is something like a snake, though the kind that bares its fangs) – but, if she were, I don’t think that she would make all her sharp edges so obvious. I spend my days keeping company with a man who used to be an assassin, after all. I know that the most useful blade is the one that no one else knows you have. That is why he is all friendly smiles and witty remarks.

Ishak is stained in more blood than I would care to consider. You’d never know it, from the way that you can catch him gossiping with the maids and offering courtesy after courtesy to each passing partygoer. You’d never know it, save perhaps for the way he can move as soundlessly as a breath of desert wind, and that is precisely why he is so dangerous.

I don’t know what she is trying to get from me, or what she is searching for, and I am not sure that I care – I am not sure that I could care, even if I wanted to. But this is my brother’s party, and I am a host, and she is watching me like a viper. It would be a shame to back away now.

When her voice comes out, half-snarl, I don’t even flinch. Why would I? I have stood still and hard as stone with my own surgical blade pressed to my throat. Should you help me, Ruth? If I were Pilate, I’m sure that my response would be some sharp retort about an inability to make small talk at parties, but I simply look at her like I used to look at the corpses that I would bring in from the desert to practice dissection, and I run my tongue along my teeth. The edges of my lips curve up in a hollow, polite smile that is utterly meaningless.

“I suppose,” I say, slowly, “that depends on what you would ask of me.”

---

@Dalmatia || dal is SUCH a babe....her intensity.... ||  Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Rapunzel: I like the Quiet"

She is there, in front of me, all sharp claws and teeth – and I am looking at her, but I am also looking past her and out into the crowd, my gaze raking each and every passing face in search of anyone familiar. I’ve learned, during all of these occasions, that it is best to keep track of all the moving parts. If one of my siblings pass by, I notice it. (They do not, most often, notice me.) If a powerful noble passes through, I notice. (They do not see me.) And even if I am not looking for anyone, I have Ishak at my side, my second set of eyes; they are just as good to me as my own.

I think that I catch a glimpse of him, here and there. I am not sure if the woman sees him – but what I know is that he is watching her, all tooth and claw, and, if she makes a move, that he will be at my side before I can blink. It is why I can meet her eyes with my usual, assured neutrality, why I can raise my chin in spite of our difference in both force and stature.

When she tells me that she is looking for a man with a bleeding heart, I do not even raise an eyebrow.

“I’ve seen plenty of men with bleeding hearts,” I say, and what I mean is, more than you can imagine. I have opened up their chests to see their hearts myself, watched them bleed onto my surgical knife and gown; and I have seen other men bleed, too. I have seen my eldest brother with his perpetually-weeping heart; Pilate, with his perpetual, overblown sense of inadequacy; Corradh, with his bone-deep emptiness, the one that he is always trying to fill with love and violence. There’s Ishak, too, but he isn’t the same, because there are no holes in Ishak, and I’d only ever say that his heart is bleeding to needle him. (He is quietly empathetic, more than an assassin ever should be. More than an assassin should be at all.)

I cannot possibly know that she is speaking about anything but metaphor when she speaks of the man and his bleeding heart. I incline my head at her carefully, a gleam of something that is not quite curiosity in the dull depths of my golden eyes. “Who is he?”

I do not ask why she is trying to find him, or what she will do to him when she does. I could say that it is out of politeness, but I would be lying; the truth of the matter is that I do not care. Not about the murder in her eyes, not about the knife-blade violence in her tone.

I think that she wants to kill him. And all that I think about that is: as long as she doesn’t do it at our party, I don’t care if the man with a bleeding heart lives or dies.

---

@Dalmatia || <3 ||  Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Rapunzel: I like the Quiet"