☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "bronzed as earth, the second lies / hearing ticks blown gold / like pollen on bright air. Lulled / near a bed of poppies,"
In the entryway, the music swells and falls like the dunes in the Mors, or like the sea. Unlike my siblings, I am sea-stone, not sand; I have never been sure which comparison is more apt.
Whatever can be said of my brother (and many, many things can be said of my brother), Pilate does know how to throw a party. I navigate the halls of our home slowly, my eyes lingering a moment on each passing detail – each gilded thing that was not present yesterday, each string of bright lights, each servant-in-black with a tray full of wine glasses and appetizers. It would probably be wrong to attribute too much of this to Pilate. Ishak, I am sure, would scold me for my inattentiveness. He might have conducted the efforts, but the work, ultimately, fell to the hired help, and I saw them as they scrambled to adhere to his – high – standards.
I don’t pity them, because I do not pity anyone; I don’t think that I can. (Ishak says that pity is as likely to make things worse as it is to make them better, anyways.) Still, at the sight of their uniformed bodies, I can’t help but occasionally feel a certain stir of wrongness.
Maybe it is just because I spend most of my days in the hospital. Things are different, there.
I drift through each open section of the manor aimlessly – look at the gathered artists painting designs on Corradh. who seems more than happy to bask in their attentions, at Hagar cornering a pair of hapless partygoers, at Adonai lingering statuesque among statues, looking as much a moving corpse as a man (certainly, I could not mistake him for a statue – he appears too sickly for anything that we would purchase), at Pilate serving drinks and greeting each guest with a kind of indulgent enthusiasm. I wonder, idly, where Miriam is. She has barely been out of her room, but surely she did not miss the uproar of the party preparations; I am outside of the manor most of the day, and I was still aware of Pilate’s plans.
Still – no matter how I look for her, I cannot find my other sister. It’s a pity, somewhat. Ishak is preoccupied, and I think that there is something pitiful about the look of a hostess – however mild – walking alone at her family’s own party. (It is the consequence, I suppose, of being the least sociable (and beloved) sibling.) I try not to pay too much mind to the aesthetics; so long as I keep walking, it will look like I have somewhere to be. Somewhere important.
Idly, I twine my hair around the pink flowers braided into my mane. Almost all of them have fallen out; the few that remain are wilted. Still, their sweet scent remains, disguising the air of gore that lingers on my heels almost perpetually.
I have looped around the manor three times when I come to a slow halt in the entryway and pluck a wine glass from one of the trays that the servants are carrying. The waiter catches my eye, for just a moment, and I nod my head to him once. I don’t drink. Still – it looks better to have a glass.
Across the room, musicians are playing on gilded instruments. (Wherever I look, the world seems gilded.) The invitation was correct; the music is good, particularly compared for the accompaniment to the last few I attended, and I am someone who cares very little for the arts. (It is not as though my brother would settle for anything less.)
I lift my glass to my lips and smell the wine, but I do not drink.
@Maret || tbh this thread should be probably titled "ways to Not convince Maret to join Day," but, uhh world's worst welcome committee || "Two Sisters of Persephone," Plath
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
S
tepping into the party felt like stepping into a ray of sunshine.
Everywhere she looks she sees light, and laughter, and bodies dancing like gold-spun dust motes floating across the floor. It was as if the sun had grown three times bigger overnight, or had perhaps wandered too close to Novus; and oh, the thought alone is enough to make the blood running through her veins feel almost-warm.
There is a moment in which she just stands there, frozen, near a fountain — while the rest of the party guests part around her like water, and if they notice her at all it is only to laugh at the look in her eyes, so very much like a foal, seeing something for the first time. Has she never been to a party before? she hears someone whisper, skin brushing too close to her’s. But she only smiles, and tilts her head back to the sky, to the sun, closing her eyes against the warmth that spreads across her face,
The desert mansion was shining all around her, everything gold and bright and new and all of it calling out to her, demanding her attention, ordering her to look this way but also this way and that way too. And she wants to listen, she does - but all she can do is stand there and bask in the glow of it all. In a court of Solterrans — it’s still hard sometimes to think of herself as one of them — a court full of people who worship the midday sun, she imagines that she alone is the only one who truly understands it.
Because in that moment, it feel as though the sun is shining for her and for her alone, welcoming her home. Ice glitters like diamond dust against her skin, fracturing the sunlight into a thousand pieces that she wears like a cloak. She lets herself imagine — if only for a moment — that this party was thrown for her, all of its grandeur and light and romanticism on display for her enjoyment. It’s easier to think of it that way — to think of herself not as a stranger in a strange land, an outsider, an émigré.
It’s easier to pretend she belongs.
So she wanders through the rooms and hallways and courtyards, determined to remember the feel of the place long after she forgets the statues and the people. It is while she loops back around that she sees the other girl standing alone (like her — a rarity, when so many are in pairs or groups). It is, perhaps, the only thing noticeable about her, the one thing that keeps her from blending into the backdrop of the party. She is something dark against which all the gold is allowed to shine brighter, and after jotting a brief line down into her notebook, Maret makes her way towards her.
She plucks a wine glass from the same tray as she when the waiter passes her — a pale gold drink that she lifts to her lips but lowers abruptly, without sipping, when the smell catches her off guard. She fiddles the drink almost-nervously, as she stops next to the dark-haired girl.
A smile, just as nervous, and already she is feeling like an outsider again. And even when she has a notebook full of words pressed close to her skin, none of them come to mind when the girl turns her odd-colored eyes upon her and with only a look, has her heart turning back to ice. The frost creeps higher up her legs.
And the seconds tick by.
“Lovely party, isn’t it?” the first words that come to mind, while she shifts and lifts the drink to her lips again. She had never been one for spice. “Do they do this often?”
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "bronzed as earth, the second lies / hearing ticks blown gold / like pollen on bright air. Lulled / near a bed of poppies,"
I see the girl first for the yellow – the golden nose ring, or the gold in her hair, or the gold rings around her neck, or her golden hooves, or, most of all, the way that the white of her tail falls way to yellow, like the way rays fall away from the sun. She is a wandering speck of light, and, in the glow and the buzz of the party, she is an anomaly. (She does not belong here at all.)
She approaches me, one lonely stranger to another. I don’t move.
The girl is bright, certainly, but she is bright without being ostentatious. Compared to the dull sandstone of the capitol and the perpetually-bloodied sands of the Mors, I am certain that our manor seems dazzling and wonderful, a small oasis of brilliance among the grit. I know better, of course. It is an overused comparison, but poisonous things are often brightly-colored as a warning sign. Our household is decaying from the inside out, and my brother is throwing a party. Adonai is dying, and Pilate is throwing a party. Adonai is dying, and Hagar is playing games in the courtyard, and Corradh is trying to tempt every girl that he can find into his bed at night, and Pilate is serving drinks at the bar, and Miriam is creeping the halls like a shadow, stirred from her near-perpetual rest for the first time in days, and our two youngest sisters are nowhere to be found.. Our dedication to keeping up appearances is either impressive or sickening, and I don’t know which.
Of course – it would be worse by magnitudes to let the world know that the Ieshans are eating themselves alive. I put on a smile for the girl, because I have been to enough parties to know that it is what you are supposed to do when you meet people at parties, but I’m sure that it doesn’t reach my eyes. It is more reflexive than anything. More veil.
She looks rather young to be here all on her own, but I don’t care enough to comment on it. I note the drink that she is carrying, and I hope that she isn’t the kind of child who, fresh out of the house, will be apt to drink and party too vicariously; there are a few such youths at most every celebration I attend, and, as one of Solterra’s few doctors (and, most of the time, as the only one in attendance), I usually end up dealing with the aftermath, either in the venue or in the hospital the next day.
I don’t say a word. She doesn’t, either, until, Lovely party, isn’t it? She lifts the glass to her lips to drink.
It is small talk – the universal language of people who don’t know what to talk about at parties. I’m rather grateful for it. “It is,” I agree, with a nod of my head, though privately I find it no more lovely than usual. “Pilate would claim to throw the best parties in Solterra, I imagine.“ More likely he’d claim to throw the best parties in Novus, but I don’t say that aloud. I can’t speak to his skills over the denizens of other courts – it is always difficult to outdo the celebrations they throw in Denocte, which has always had a reputation for revelry -, but he certainly has a better taste in music than most other Solterran nobles. (He knows it, too, and takes particular pride in it; I’ve seen the invitations he sent out for this one.) Do they do this often? A perfectly innocent question. “Very often,” I confirm. “Is this your first time attending one?” I can already guess that it is, but I don’t bother say it; it would hardly be polite.
@Maret || hello I love Maret || "Two Sisters of Persephone," Plath
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
you think you are possessing me but I've got my teeth in you.
I
see everything.
I don’t know everything—as good a job I do convincing everyone otherwise. But I do see everything. It’s my party, after all, and if anything goes wrong I’ll be holding myself responsible for it. Any embarrassment will follow me into my nightmares; there is nothing I hate more than being made a fool of.
But so far things are going swimmingly. (I tap my glass against the nearest piece of wood, part of the doorjamb, as I think this, a stupid commoner’s habit I haven’t quite shed from childhood.) So I’m in a good mood when I see her enter—a girl so young I'm almost impressed by her appearance here, cleanly spliced in black, white and gold.
She walks right up to Ruth. Ruth, who, I'm sorry to say, I'm more than a little surprised to see here. We haven't bumped into each other outside of the hallway of our bedrooms in... weeks. Ruth, who, if I did not know her, would cut one of the more imposing figures in the room. I'm impressed.
A servant passes this monochrome girl. From his tray, she plucks a wine glass that I recognize as being filled with my first drink--a bubbly, acrid, pale-gold liquid. I watch her take her first sip, and I wince.
At least she has Ruth to take care of her.
OOC: unfortunately, pilate has (accidentally or not) made drink #1 "lightly poisonous". Maret will likely feel sick the rest of the night, but it's up to you, Sid, to decide what symptoms she has, how severe they are, and how long they'll last. if you have any questions or concerns, let me know; otherwise, have fun <3
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
T
he smile does not reach her eyes.
She is not sure how she notices — it’s such a small thing, easily drowned out by the lights reflecting in her eyes or the glow spreading along her skin. Maybe if she had not been looking at just the right angle and at just the right moment, she might never have known.
As it is, it feels a bit like ice dropped down her spine. Her hooves begin to frost over again despite herself. And despite the glowing lights, and the dancers, and the sculptures, and all the other things demanding her attention — she cannot look away from Ruth.
She has to remind herself that she is an adult now, that according to the law she was legally able to take on a rank, and have a job, and vote, and drink, and hold land, and think for herself, and all the other things kids grow up looking forward to one day being able to do. It was why she was here, why she had followed Delumine tradition and left the Court to see and learn from the rest of the world (although at the time, seeing the world had felt far more exciting than learning from it.) And yet all of a sudden, it feels far less glamorous than she had been led to believe.
All of a sudden, the facade breaks like a mirror, and the truth comes rushing back in the fill the spaces between the cracks. Sometimes, parties were only a distraction from reality.
Not all smiles were happy.
She had known this, of course, in Delumine. And it seems ridiculous in retrospect to have believed it would not be just as true in other parts of Novus, but childlike faith was often blind in that way.
Maret nods slowly along to the other girl’s words, listening. If she could she would spend the rest of the evening writing about her eyes, and the way the firelight reflecting off of them only helped to hide the way there was no light shining from within them. But it is a party, and she supposes they all have their parts to play — so she tucks the thought away, a silent reminder that she’ll have all day tomorrow to relive the night. She would, after all, be writing about the event for the local paper.
“Yes,” she confirms, and it only serves to make her feel even more like an outsider. “I’m from Delumine, where —“ these things never happen, she wants to say, but instead she only smiles politely, “—where the parties are often quieter, and the topic of the night is usually the latest research, not fashion.”
She gives the glass another twirl — a nervous habit, she knows it as soon as she does it, and wills herself to be more steady — but still she does not drink, and still she forces herself to smile (and mean it when she does.)
“Any advice you have, for a newcomer? Anything I should know?” And even when her tone is light, playful even, Maret cannot help but feel like she has no idea what she has gotten herself into.
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "bronzed as earth, the second lies / hearing ticks blown gold / like pollen on bright air. Lulled / near a bed of poppies,"
I think, as I watch her, that this girl seems too good to be here. Too good for our manor. Too good, maybe, for Solterra – but if there is one thing that I have learned as a daughter of our house, it is that you can never quite trust seemings. I readjust my grasp on the stem of the wine glass, suspending it politely between us, and I still don’t drink. It is more of a party trick than anything, a method of blending into the crowd.
She tells me that she is from Delumine, where the parties are not nearly so glamorous. “They sound more interesting than the ones here,” I say, and I am not just being polite. (In fact, I mean it as genuinely I can say that anything is interesting.) “Why did you decide to come to Solterra?”
The girl twirls her glass, and then she smiles brightly, asking me if I have any advice for a newcomer. (The gesture strikes me as somehow more genuine than the works of art in the gallery in the other wing of the manor. It is almost frustrating in its innocuousness.) “I wouldn’t drink anything mixed by my brother,” I say, eyeing her glass. “Pilate has never been much good at bartending – much as he would like to be, I’m sure.” (My brother has never been able to abide being bad – or anything short of the best - at anything.) It occurs to me briefly that the girl, with her foreign roots, might not know that I am a member of the Ieshan household yet (most people do not, at a glance), but I don’t much care if she does or not. If she doesn’t, she has likely heard of my brother, the venerated head of our great house, and I will be explained by proxy.
The thought of Pilate reminds me of someone else. She is a decidedly pretty young girl, and, I think, naïve; another warning comes to mind. “And, if you run into Corradh, don’t let him charm you. He’s hard to miss – looks a bit like a leopard. He breaks hearts wherever he goes.” All my brothers are trouble in different ways. Once, I might have said that Adonai was different, although I don’t think that I’ve ever really liked him; now, he’s just as bad as the rest of them, if not worse.
I think, for a moment, that what I should really tell her is be careful. What I should say, if it weren’t for the playfulness of her tone, or if it weren’t for the way that I didn’t really care about anything, is glance over your shoulder, from time to time, because there are people at this party, I’m sure, that would happily snatch up a sun-bright slip, and make her disappear forever. What I don’t tell her are all the ways that I’ve had to learn to defend myself in a house with eyes, all the ways that I’ve learned to pretend not to see, not to hear, not to think. I do not tell her that the worst thing you can be in Solterra is ignorant, though it is probably the best thing to seem.
(Let her stay bright, until she learns to know better.)
@Maret || hello I love Maret || "Two Sisters of Persephone," Plath
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
and i must pour forth a river of words or i shall suffocate.
F
or as much as Maret had craved a different life, for as much wondering and wishing and waiting that had consumed her each day she sat in her bedroom and looked out at the other worlds hiding behind the horizon — still, she would be remiss to overlook the benefits of home. And it would be nothing short of ignorance to pretend that while she did not find Delumine to be the most exciting place in Novus, it had still been the place of her upbringing and was responsible for the young woman she had become.
And it would be further wrong to not at least acknowledge that there were undoubtedly others who would find pieces of themselves at home there.
She wonders now, as she watches the other girl swirl her glass and gaze around the room, if she has ever been to Delumine (and if so — when? and why? and which parts?) Maret wants to ask her all these questions and more, wants to know what she thought of the quieter court where scandals were more often buried and swept quietly away because they were less exciting than the latest scholarly articles — but before she has a chance, Ruth counters with another question.
There are a thousand ways Maret could answer it, not the least of which being that it was tradition for the newly-come-of-age to leave the Court and explore the world (a tradition that the new Regime was intent on reanimating.) The words are there on her lips, ready to be confessed — and then and only then does she realize it would sound like an excuse. And, worse, that the excuse was far from exciting or true.
Why does anybody leave home, if not for the excitement of rebelling, of carving out their own fate from the threads of the world?
How does that make her any different from any other young adult with a newfound sense of freedom?
She smiles tightly. “To find out who I am, I suppose, without the influence of my parents. Solterra is the closest to Delumine’s antithesis that I could think of.” And perhaps the honesty surprises even herself, because she follows the words with a quick sip of her drink (and is further surprised that it tastes far sweeter than she expected, although the spice stings her nose and the aftertaste is far more sour than she would like.)
And she is about to take another drink, to replace the sour aftertaste with the sweetness of another sip, when Ruth voices her warning.
Maret looks down at the glass, as though weighing the options with the revelations. Her smile turns sheepish as she lowers the glass, words tumbling like a waterfall through her mind. She had not recognized her as Ieshan at first — but of course she recognized the snake-haired man of the hour. And as Maret looks from brother to sister the resemblances slowly trickle in like sunlight through a hole in the ceiling.
Another warning quickly follows the first, and Maret thinks it interesting that the only advice she has to offer is voiced in the form of cautions. The thought makes the pit of nerves in her stomach grow tighter, the ice creeping ever higher up her legs. She nods along politely.
“Duly noted,” her voice sounds quieter than it did before. And even when Ruth doesn’t say it, it’s there in her eyes: a final warning, a note to be careful. A warning she has not heard before, not with such sincerity.
But she is nothing if not a curious creature. And as she studies Ruth’s eyes, and as the corners of her vision come alive with stars dancing back and forth across the room, and the sour taste at the back of her throat intensifies — she cannot stop one more question from rising unbidden to her lips.
Later she might question herself for not choosing her words more carefully, or perhaps she might blame it on the spices that seemed to go straight to her mind like smoke. But in the moment, all that comes out is this: “if Solterra is so dislikable, then why do you stay?”
And the party feels suddenly dangerous. But as her parvus magic creeps along her skin there is something else there — the reflecting of light casting rainbows across the floor; miniature prisms circling her hooves; and the sense of something more, something warmer, something unknown rising up in her veins.
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
