[AW] i want a hero: an uncommon want || ieshan party

[Adonai]

A D O N A I

S

ome of the sculptures entombed in our halls had repulsed me as a child. 

I remember one of them in particular. A De Clare original, cast in pearly alabaster—a life-sized rendition of a fair maiden gazing tearfully down at a lamb in her lap. At first glance, the lamb seems merely asleep. Yet a closer look, and the awkward angle of its neck reveals it to be broken, its head flopped lifelessly in the maiden's embrace.

Once, when I had passed it in the hall, I had tugged on Mother's hem to ask her what it all meant.

“Sacrifice,” she’d answered, without even looking at the sculpt. “The maiden is Solterra, and the lamb—well, that is you, Adonai. All of you.” Pilate had been swaddled by her breast; Hagar, on her back. Miriam had stood besides me as I'd stared hard at the maiden's remorseful face, though I do not remember if she'd been listening. 

“All of us.” And then Mother had gestured grandly to herself, to the bowing servants, to the children stacked two by two at her side, before casting her luminous gold eyes at me. Expectant.

“Because the House of Ieshan sacrifices, so that Solterra may live forever Free,” I’d finished, in a proud, yet reservedly so, recitation. She’d smiled at me before caressing my cheek. 

“Yes. That is why, my darlings, we are so loved.” 

Sometimes, I forget how desperately I had loved her.

—✧—
There is a blank, powdered face peering down at me. I blink, forgetting momentarily where I am, until I spot my own surprised, ink-blue eyes staring back in a hundred refracted copies down this room of mirrored walls.

The living statues are so uncannily accurate in both their appearance and slow, methodical portrayals that for a heart-stopping, dreamlike moment I had thought the one before me the alabaster maiden, come to life at last to claim her sacrifice.

I would have said to her: A sick lamb is never brought to slaughter. Its diseased blood would surely sully the altar.

But in the face of this statue's stare I am silent, and this seems to be conversation enough. Hello, prince, she whispers to me. I almost think that I am imagining her lips moving; they barely do. A shiver trails ghostlike down my spine, yet I nod, my head bowed as if in prayer, and watch through my lashes as she reaches out a pale, polished limb, her manner smoothly lethargic, her smile like a flower blooming. 

Father's wolf-fur cloak, knocked askew on my slippery shoulders, shudders as she slowly rights it.

A modest audience has gathered around us while she performs this. I recognize a few of the faces; others, merely blurs of color on a painter's palette. When the statue is done fixing my cloak I tease out a few harmonising chords from the gold lyre strapped to my side and they clap; the statue lowers herself into a graceful curtsy, and I echo her, sweeping by increments into a theatrical bow. 

When our impromptu act ends, she drifts back to her marble pedestal and leaves me with the guests that choose to stay.

I offer a few of them personal tours. I take care to point out the De Clare originals; that our collection features works from across the four courts; that my favorite, is the center piece of this grand gallery. 

And what piece of ours is more fitting?

Because the House of Ieshan sacrifices. I had known this as a child. All for the good of Solterra.

Yet my belief in this had died long ago with my mother.






I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space

« r » | open for anyone! come meet Adonai...

[Estelle]

estelle

Tell the wolves I'm home

C

arefully she wound up her hair. Each tendril still feels unnaturally cold, dry ice upon her neck. She shivers but Estelle has not stopped shivering since she felt herself slip toward death’s cool embrace. Her heart still feels as if it breaks off ice with every beat. Every contraction is a struggle. It does not feel warm and wet within her chest, not as she expects it to. 


Across her torso she drapes a gown. It is sheer and midnight blue, struck through with silver that gleams as stars - or, she cannot help but think, like shards of ice. Into the twine of her hair she places pink flowers, rich with a blush. It is the only bit of heat upon her skin. Until now her body had always been a thing of pride. It was the perfect example of a Tonnerre. But, oh, Estelle herself was born with a mind that did not belong anywhere near the Tonnerre house. She tried to fit, she let herself be molded by the Matron’s demands. But Estelle Tonnerre was not the silver of stone, ready to be sculpted. She was the silver of diamonds, hard, unyielding. 


She stands amidst the statues, frost-bitten and still feeling the frigid cold of her strange dreamscape. If Dune had not come, would she still be wandering there, rather than stood here, amidst this lavish party, reminding herself what it is to live a lie? She walks and feels the family’s wealth gaze out at her from the eyes of every statue. They watch her and she feels their eyes upon her spine, mocking the girl cast out of her own lavish family. Her chin tips up and Estelle walks as every well raised girl should, but there is a hardness to her spine. It is arrow straight and violent as a sword’s promise. 


Never had she thought that one of the statues might be anything other, until it steps off it’s plinth and towards a golden man. “Prince”, the statue (a polished actor adorned and made to move as if her body is liquid marble) calls him. Estelle turns her lightning eyes upon him. He is the mellow of a midsummer night and she the frigid cold of a winter’s morn. He is still cradled within his family and she, banished, unable to bear honouring her family’s name a moment longer.


A few of the guests moved on, their initial delight at the statue, come to apparent life, fading, But the prince remains and Estelle moves to stand beside him. “Is all this -,” She says of the statues, the party, his family, the expectations, the everything, “not stifling?” Her lashes lower, she does not know what sacrifices are expected of him only that, if she knew, she would likely whisper ’run’ into his ear. Estelle has already paid her own sacrifice to her family, her body bears the scars and her reward for it was banishment and a festering ire.



@Adonai <3