Rising in the East
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Fantasy
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] What Jasmine is looking for
[X] Both Sigh and Pause arriving at once
[X] Both Sigh and Pause arriving at once
[X] What Jasmine is looking for
Even if we know exactly where she is I don't think a second confrontation would go well. If I remember correctly we barely survived the last one with a lot of help, at least some of which won't be available again.
[X] Both Sigh and Pause arriving at once
Maximum exasperation.
Even if we know exactly where she is I don't think a second confrontation would go well. If I remember correctly we barely survived the last one with a lot of help, at least some of which won't be available again.
[X] Both Sigh and Pause arriving at once
Maximum exasperation.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sorry, I'm somewhat confused, but why are we even entertaining the notion of talking to this kid? Aster knows she's connected so some big bad in the local area or whatever, and 'deathknight' with a messed up Solar mark doesn't exactly engender positive feelings.
- Location
- United States
We
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Aster is pretty blindsided by this whole thing, and is finding it very difficult to like, initiate violence with a twelve year old who is being superficially friendly, and is aware that this will lead to a very conspicuous fight if she does. She does not want to just walk away, because she's worried the Shoat will just do something terrible if left to her own devices, and at least she's saying she won't hurt anyone else if Aster plays along with this.
It's kind of a surreal situation for her.
Vote closed
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They were definitely assholes reacting out of all proportion to the theft of a pastry, but she did it deliberately knowing they would and egged them on at every turn. She also struck first when he was still just trying to catch her. Nobody is innocent here.
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The really unfortunate thing is that they were out patrolling for anathema, a street urchin floored a trained guard, and none of them thought "perhaps we should be a bit more cautious about fighting people who demonstrate exceptional performances" while immersed in the moment. That said, their laws and standards are different from our own. That doesn't make them right, but it is far more socially acceptable than would appear for them to beat up a little kid to the point of incapacitation, with little regard to whether the subject survives, in response to witnessing a theft. Street urchins don't have advocates... . It isn't kind, and I don't feel that it is good, but it is likely going to keep happening, and there are much larger social welfare issues that would likely need to be resolved in order to have a practical benefit over the current arrangement.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If you go report a suspected Anathema, nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand your superior officer gives you an exasperated look and says "you got knocked down by a kid, and so you think she's a completely different and scary Anathema, instead of just getting yourself a new lunch?" and you're just humiliated in the ranks and outside them, both, since you lose face if you get pushed around. Getting knocked down, by itself, is not a reasonable or even unreasonable suspicion of Anathema.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
These three were absolutely dicking around, honestly. They are supposed to be on alert here, and they know that Lunars are in the area and can look however they want (although one would hope that they're not wandering around, trolling random legionnaires). Knife Dancer does his best, but House Cynis has not exactly been providing the cream of the crop since the Imperial Legions were divvied up between the Houses.
A Jewel in Tall Grass I
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Kovental, protectorate of the Lap,
Decades ago,
A fond farewell
Lucky Stone's mother had told her not to dawdle after her errands in town — she isn't even a little sorry not to have listened, considering what she found there. "You're really going to leave today?" she asks, narrow shoulders slumping.
"I am. Sorry, Farm Girl! You knew this was just until father's business dealings were all finished." Wending Stream gives her that same smile that had first turned Stone's legs to jelly from across the street. It had only been two weeks ago, which felt both like an eternity, and no time at all.
"Yeah, but I didn't..." Stone trails off, and Wend gives a small giggle. Wend's laugh is like her smile, a crack in the courteous facade she presents to most of the world. Now, with Wend sitting so close, with her dark eyes dancing as she looks at Stone, it seems impossible that she could ever have seemed the good, buttoned up Tengese girl she had at first glance.
"I'll miss you too," Wend tells her, and then brushes a kiss against Stone's cheek. She smiles even more as Stone's face heats. "But this was only ever going to be for a little while. We had fun, but mother has a very boring boy for me to marry back home. And you have your goats."
"Ha ha," says Stone, voice flat. A sinking feeling has lodged in her gut, and it won't leave. She had known that this could never be forever, but still... a beautiful girl had taken an interest in her, foreign enough to seem exotic. At seventeen, she's only a year older than Stone, but Wend still seems so much more worldly and sophisticated, with stories of Chiaroscuro and Paragon and her own strange homeland. With a graceful, delicate frame and eyes the deepest, warmest brown Stone has ever seen. Stone hadn't even been sure that a girl was what she wanted before that first kiss.
Wend perches demurely on the back of the last of her father's wagons, her head higher than Stone's from this position. They're both enjoying the shade cast by the wagon's covered top and the roof of the trade house it stands beside. Kovental's elevation makes it cooler than its immediate neighbours, but this is still the South, and the sun is unforgiving. Here, they have a modicum of privacy. The sounds of the town are muffled and rendered artificially distant by the wagon's bulk, and Stone can pretend one last time that they're in a little world all their own.
"Are you sure you're fine with this marriage thing?" Stone asks. "You said you don't even like boys."
Wend laughs, clear and delicate. "What's that got to do with anything? I'm the only daughter, so I'll be inheriting all the land from mother. I need someone to go traipsing across the Direction doing the buying and selling while I manage business at home. And there will be children to think of, eventually. No, I'm quite pleased to have a boring, reliable boy to handle those parts! While I look...elsewhere for my pleasure." Wend's hand cups Stone's cheek, and, feeling Stone's face heat, she laughs again. "You're so uncomfortable! Foreign girls are adorable."
"I'm from here!" Stone splutters. "You're the foreigner!" This only makes Wend laugh harder.
Stone's sulking is only allowed to last a few more seconds: Wend leans in, grips the back of her head, and kisses her full on the mouth. Stone quickly forgets why she was annoyed and even, for a short time, why she was sad.
That time ends when the cry goes up for the caravan to leave, and Wend is pulled away from her by the cart lurching forward. "Bye, Farm Girl!" she calls, flashing Stone one last smile before she carefully arranges the skirt of her dress, and retreats back into the shade of the wagon. Stone is left standing there alone, staring after her. After a few moments, Stone sighs, picks up her bundle of errands, and goes on her way, the lingering sensation of Wend's lips fading quicker than the scent of perfume in her nose.
As she goes to find Happy, she catches sight of one face in the small crowd who is watching her, rather than the departing caravan. Pale Cloud is glaring at Stone as if she's stolen something that was rightfully his. A handsome boy from a wealthy town family, who had of course set his sights on a beautiful foreign girl. Wend had returned his advances with nothing but polite flirtation, and now he had just caught sight of her kissing a dirt farmer's daughter. Stone hastily averts her eyes, and continues on her way.
It's a young town, bustling with activity at this time of year. A collection of buildings built upwind of a massive enclosure where several local zebu barons began congregating to trade in the cattle that are Kovental's lifeblood. Their stock in turn attracted merchants from all over the South. The money changing hands had brought skilled trade and business folk plying their services. There were also Immaculate missionaries from the Lap, who had built a small shrine to cater to the spiritual needs of the booming local population, lest anything too unsavoury take hold in their absence.
Surrounding it was the vast expanse of rolling foothills, yellow-green grass stretching in all directions, half enclosed by the looming grandeur of the mighty Firepeaks to the west. Beyond those mountains is Wending Stream's native An-Teng, wealthy and verdant, along with the rest of the Southwest. To the east, the Lap, and from there the well-worn road that curves its way along the great nations and cities of the Inland Sea's Cyonosure Coast.
Today, the sight of the towering mountains against a blue sky makes Stone feel very small and insignificant. "And you have your goats." It had been a bit of teasing, but was it wrong? That is what she has here, that's the rest of her life. Raising goats and eking out a living in the same place she'd lived all her life, the same place her father had died.
Happy trudges along in front of Stone, as placid as his name suggests. In stark contrast to the girl holding his lead, the mule carries his burden without a care in the world, knowing the way without needing encouragement.
"I'm glad one of us is having a good day," Stone mutters to him.
Happy just flicks an ear good-naturedly, as if to say "I'm glad too!" In her head, Happy can be a bit of an ass.
A small rock sails through the air, striking Happy on the flank. The mule lets out a shrill whinny of pain, and Stone whips around, trying to spot just who had thrown it. As she does, a second hits poor Happy in the head, and the usually-steady animal bolts, hauling Stone off her feet. She hits the ground and drags a short distance before the lead is torn from her hand.
It's only as she lies there, watching Happy making a beeline for home without her, that Stone registers the laughter. Face and clothes filthy with dust, Stone pulls herself up to her feet, finding Pale Cloud standing a ways behind her, flanked by two friends. "You could have hurt him!" Stone says, furious. Her hip aches from where she'd hit the ground. Her leg and arm ache where they'd been dragged.
"And your family certainly can't afford to buy a new one," Cloud agrees, voice malicious. "Next time, I'll hit you instead — you don't have any shortage of sisters, at least."
A coil of anger twists in Stone's gut as she limps her way over to the three snickering boys. Only one of them is taller than she is, but all are more heavily built and much better fed. Stone is a wiry thing, her height rendering her gangly more than imposing. She fixes Cloud with a glare, filled with something powerfully resentful, an outright venomous surge of protectiveness. Who is this rich little snot to talk about her family? To harm a good-natured animal they've had all Stone's life? And over something as petty as childish jealousy.
Her head swims. The world seems at once both dreamlike and hyper-real. Life teams all around. Blades of grass swaying in the breeze, straining always toward the sun. Insects flit through the air, preyed upon by brightly singing birds. Small animals creep through the field, skirting wide around the four angry humans on the road.
Stone's voice is strange and distant as she speaks, compelled to hurt him somehow, to drive a thorn deep into his pride and twist: "Even if she did care about men, she wouldn't pick you. She thought you were cocky and annoying. She told me."
Cloud's eyes go wide. When he strikes her, Stone doesn't feel it the way she should. Her head snaps back from the force of the blow, but she maintains her glare. Past the fury, she feels wonderful, every ache in her body slipping away, a boundless energy beginning to seep into her, almost as if drawn up from the soil itself, from the fields all around.
"Cloud, what's wrong with her eyes?" one of the boys asks.
Later, Stone would understand what they must have been seeing. Her dark eyes lightening to an intense green, her brown hair slowly going blonde from the roots down, becoming the exact shade of sun-bleached grass. At Stone's feet, the plants of the field overtake the dirt road in an instant, the grass all around sprouting up and going to seed, twining ominously around the three boys' legs, joined by a collection of brightly-flowering weeds.
"What are you doing?" Sky demands, voice shrill. The air seems to somehow thrum with living vitality.
Stone doesn't know how to answer that. Fortunately, she doesn't need to. The trickle of power becomes a wild rush, filling Stone's soul, pushing it outward and overflowing the confines of her body. The plants at their feet shoot up impossibly fast, a mass of thistles and razor-edged grasses rising as tall as a man, twining and clinging viciously. All this is bathed in a green glow centred on Stone herself.
The boys cry out in pain, stymied by the many sharp, stinging plants as they try to flee. Stone lets them — she instinctively knows that they're already poisoned by the Wood Essence in her anima, even if she doesn't have quite those words to describe it yet. It won't kill them, but they'll have a bad day or so. More than that, she's stolen what little dignity they had between them.
Satisfied by this retribution, Stone takes a deep breath, glorying in the feeling of her new Aspect's element all around her, her soul soaring up with every airborne grass seed swirling into the sky. She's still standing there, shrouded in Terrestrial Anima, when the party of fearful townsfolk comes to investigate the wild claims of the frightened boys.
Stone will not be punished — she's not just a farm girl anymore.
==========
Two months later
"The baron would give you more work if you stayed," Stone's mother tells her, hands fretting in front of her.
"He would!" Stone agrees, packing the last of her meagre belongings in the pack she's kneeling over. "He'd pay more, too, if I asked." She'd shown him she was reliable over the weeks she'd worked for him, guarding his herds from opportunistic raids. Such small time thieves are prepared for some hired toughs to try and run them off, not a young Exalt. Stone is starting to get a better idea of what she's worth, and she's sure she could leverage that to increase her rates, for all that she's already been making more money than she's seen in her life.
"Then why are you leaving?" Stone's mother asks.
Stone sighs. She rises, and rests the battered brass length of her second-hand firewand against her shoulder with a jaunty, casual air still more affected than natural. She can see the path her mother is imagining for her. Staying in Kovental, making her fortune by serving this baron or another or several in turn. Exalts at loose ends aren't so common as to be undervalued in a backwater country like this one. Buy some real land once she's rich enough, and then — treasure of treasures — a cattle herd of her own.
Zebu Baron Lucky Stone. Wealth and security for her family. Something to pass down for generations to come. A far cry from what they have now — a cramped farmer's hut where her mother has laboured to raise five daughters. It's the sensible choice, probably. It's certainly more appealing than shaving her head, giving up all food with flavour, and never kissing a girl again, which is what the monks in town have tried to suggest. Somehow, though, her mother's preference feels like nearly as much of a cage. "I can't stay," Stone says. "I need to see some of the world. I'll find work with a caravan out of the Lap." She crosses to her mother, and gently kisses her forehead. When had the woman who'd raised her gotten this short?
Stone's mother only sighs pensively, her features a preview of what Stone might look like later in life, a middle-age many, many decades away now.
"I'll always send money home," Stone adds, an earnest promise she'll keep all her life.
"Just be careful," her mother says. "You're not invincible, whatever the Immaculates like to say."
Stone laughs, bending down to ruffle the hair of one of her younger sisters, who grins up at her. "Well, it feels that way, a little!"
"That's not funny!" her mother admonishes.
"Sorry, sorry," Stone says, raising her free hand placatingly. "I won't get killed, mama. I promise."
"Just be careful," her mother repeats, looking despairingly at this grinning demigod with the face of her eldest daughter.
Stone leaves then, pausing only to give Happy a fond pat. She'll return now and again, she tells herself, believing it. In truth, she will only return to this place once more before her mother's death, scarcely recognisable, bearing another name entirely.
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- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't know if Aster has the right temperament to shamelessly give herself a cool name just because. She's more the type where, if she lives long enough to do enough damage, she'll be given some kind of overblown sobriquet that she'd be very embarrassed by.
"I am not a bloody hero!"
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Ah, so Scorching Sunflower is still in the books, it's just not Aster who would call herself that.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Vermont
Most humans are doing that very slowly anyways, I suppose.