GIRL WITH AN ACCENT OF BLOOD
It burns in a way that physical wounds cannot when she hears her name without Commander before it. She had thought, once, that she would die with the title, on a battlefield where she belonged -- that she would not see the day it would transfer to another being, because a good commander did not retire to see such a day, they died the same as they had lived; sacrificing their body for their unit, their nation, their goddess.
It was something else that had been stolen from her, added to the list of indignities she had suffered -- but it is not the bay mare with the spotted wings who had stolen her title from her, who had stolen her hero’s death, and so she inclines her head just the slightest bit, just enough to acknowledge the absence of her title.
And it is not entirely closure -- it is still far too new for that, still far too aching of a wound -- but it is something close to it, he beginning of the idea that there is a life without her rank attached to it.
“Indeed,” She acknowledges softly at the Commander’s next words. “My first is, perhaps, of a strange priority to me, but -- would you happen to know what Ilati records still exist of grave sites established after my disappearance? My mother -- I must attend to her grave. I’m sure it has been neglected, by now.” Her mother, who would have died without ever knowing what became of her daughter, her mother, who had made her into what she was and had been deemed a savage by the courts -- her mother, whose death would not have been recorded by any historian of the court proper, and so she would have to rely on what little Ilati records still existed.
Oh Vespera, these strange people of the court, who destroy what they do not know -- let this have survived, at least.
It was something else that had been stolen from her, added to the list of indignities she had suffered -- but it is not the bay mare with the spotted wings who had stolen her title from her, who had stolen her hero’s death, and so she inclines her head just the slightest bit, just enough to acknowledge the absence of her title.
And it is not entirely closure -- it is still far too new for that, still far too aching of a wound -- but it is something close to it, he beginning of the idea that there is a life without her rank attached to it.
“Indeed,” She acknowledges softly at the Commander’s next words. “My first is, perhaps, of a strange priority to me, but -- would you happen to know what Ilati records still exist of grave sites established after my disappearance? My mother -- I must attend to her grave. I’m sure it has been neglected, by now.” Her mother, who would have died without ever knowing what became of her daughter, her mother, who had made her into what she was and had been deemed a savage by the courts -- her mother, whose death would not have been recorded by any historian of the court proper, and so she would have to rely on what little Ilati records still existed.
Oh Vespera, these strange people of the court, who destroy what they do not know -- let this have survived, at least.
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