To gild a lily
Her name was Leliana. She supposed she had a family name at one point, not that she bothered remembering it. You have to keep the important things close to mind trying to survive the slums of Equinox. It wasn't always
that bad. Her father was a well-to-do member of the planetary adminitorium. Her only memory of him was his death at the hands of the arbities. He was found guilty of embezzlement. It was quick and loud. The loud bang of the autogun's report carved into her mind forever.
Her mother tried to take care of her for a time, the useless fool that she was. She didn't work before her father died, living off her husband's ill-gotten gains. After a few weeks struggling in the gutter she sold her own child, Leliana, to a workhouse, where she toiled twelve, sometimes fourteen, hours a day making widgets and gizmos for some kind of contraptions. Or as Leliana would say, "Steady work."
It was a normal childhood really, Leliana lied to herself, three good meals a day, no bugs or rats - for food or in her bed - and a warm place to sleep. All of which was an improvement from the slums. Still, it wasn't pretty, quotas are quotas, and her fellow children were cruel - she had teeth kicked out, nose broken enough it would never look right. She took to wearing a scarf of red to cover much of her face. Even though it was more a stinking rag, it was better than getting heckled.
When she was old enough she managed to land better work as a stocker in one of the massive facilities that managed the farming equipment necessary for an agri-world's needs. Leliana was a hard worker she thought, or at least diligent enough to pass the cut. It was at this point her life would change. She was still pushing and carrying around many of the same widgets and gizmos she made as a child. So much for progress.
If, at this point, one were to believe that Leliana was a miserable creature, existing only to escape the pain of death, one would find themselves only half right. Despite her taciturn, pragmatic, and downright antisocial behavior Leiana was a glass-half-full kind of lady, and capable of surprisingly foolish choices. A delightfully human quality.
Leliana found herself at what any clear-thinking person would have recognized as a not-properly-imperial cult meeting - or five. All because Tahm Sadova from maintenance was talking it up during lunch break. She would silently curse his easygoing smile, but well, she was only human.
So there she was, standing in the deep groves of Equinox's central forest, with her smelly red scarf and scratchy oversized workmans coat, and her messy white hair, the only one dumb enough to follow Tahm of all of her coworkers. Honestly, if this was a story, she'd be dead before the end of it for sure, but she knew it was too late for cold feet. A well dressed woman, high priestess Dana herself, walked up to the pulpit and began to preach, "And thus, the maiden spoke to me!" It was a pretty good presentation all-in-all, in Leliana's humble opinion. Despite this, some people were hesitating, even Tahm was agasp at those sharp looking tendrils meant to connect the pilot to the plant creature-armor-thing.
Then Dana stepped into the Belladonna, showing it was safe, and asked for volunteers to follow her, to fight against the flayers. Leliana examined Tahm, the only member of the cult she really knew, and he was searching about his fellow cultists, looking for a sign of what would happen. Suddenly one girl stepped forth from the small pack of heretics, boldly declaring, "I volunteer!" then another, and another.
Leliana tugged on Tahm's sleeve, getting his attention, "Good Speech", and before she could worry about the consequences of her boldness, she walked forth up to the line, up with the other young women, her hand held high alongside them, declaring at the top of her tiny voice, "Me."
Leliana liked to imagine she cut a striking image up there, so brave and bold.
After some ceremony she clambered into the Belladonna's, well, pilot seat, for the lack of a better word, and joined with the strange miracle monster, and in a moment, her world changed. For the first time in her life she felt a true connection to the inner world of other minds. Admittedly, even up until that point, Leliana only had one foot in the cult, ready to bolt if things went south. Or so she told herself.
Not anymore. She couldn't even process it. She didn't know the words...
Leliana followed along with her new sisters, silently, the goal was to train with their new warforms, but before they could get much of anything under their belts, they found themselves charging into battle against the dreaded flayers. She was no fighter, she wasn't even what you'd call scrappy. But now she was striding into battle encased in multiple tons of goddess grown warflora, and she feared no evil.
They spotted the settlement, bursting past the treeline at a full sprint, lances in hand, and descended upon the unsuspecting alien menace. Her Ironbark lance impaling one, bursting through it, skewering a second lurching horror in its robotic neck, before the weapon snapped at the haft from the incredible force of her charge. Without hesitation Leilana deployed her curved sickles from her forearms.
All her life, Leliana had a hard time expressing herself, she knew that now more than ever, but here, on this battlefield, she found herself an artist, her brush: The Reaper blades gifted to her, the paint was the viridian energies bestowed upon them, and her canvas was the metal corpses of her foe delivered before her!
She found joining with her sisters warcry through the heart-link, shouting with all her mind, body, and soul.
Victory was theirs, and when she returned to camp and emerged from her Belladonna, she immediately noticed something was wrong. No, not wrong. Changed? Healed? Her hands, her arms. Gone were the many scars and calluses born from a lifetime of factory labor. That lurking sharp pain in her left knee, gone, her skin, radiant and healthy. She felt her face, her nose with her hands, felt her new teeth with her tongue. Leiliana ran her fingers through her new silky smooth hair, all restored - no - made better than they would ever have been. With the right dress she could walk into the highest echelons of the spire and no one would think her above her station...
What a pathetic reason to sell her soul, she thought. A pretty face? A pretty smile... While all her battle-sisters celebrated, she silently wept. Leliana was swept up in the emotion of the moment, until that moment she forgot the most important thing. Her soul belonged to the Verdant Maiden now.
AN: shucks votes were closed before I got off work. I had this idea in mind all day but low and behold something very much like it was written by Burn-The-Candle, and I think his or her work, Soul of Fractured Petals, is much clearer and more to the point. I admit I am not much of a writer, but I really wanted to give it a go. I hope it is taken well.
I had too many ideas to fit into this little story. I wanted to incorporate the idea that based on the descriptions of the Belladonna, if someone went into it with a preexisting condition, there is no reason they wouldn't come out healed of it! Nifty I think. Plus if we're going to do anime hijinx, we need a
Rei Ayanami Expy, they are practically obligatory, unless things have changed a lot since the last time I seriously followed anime, lol. My goal was to create a hardworking, taciturn, young woman who isn't quite as cold and calculating as one might think, and who wasn't 100% onboard the cult train until she got to be a 10 foot tall, multiton badguy wrecking machine. Even then, there is no getting off this train once it is rolling. So she would have to deal with it going forward. Can she find true happiness? She is selfish and petty as well. It was my attempt to add a little personality? Of course over a longer narrative arc she could grow out of the foolishness, pettiness, etc. I smashed this out in about three hours start to finish so I apologize in advance for... everything really. I hope I managed to keep everything in the same tense, mostly?
