TITLE: An Appropriate Introduction
AUTHOR: GirlMood/Passivesky
FANDOM/CHARACTERS: Fire Emblem/Amy, Calill
RATING/WORD COUNT: T
SUMMARY: Amy will outlive them all - growing into womanhood is only preparation for the separation. Amy, Calill, and momento mori.
NOTES: These days, I never seem to plan for the things I write; the result is that I write imperfect, whimsical pieces like this. But they are fun to write - and I'd be happy if anyone enjoyed reading it. Reviews are always appreciated. Unbetaed.
Amy is fourteen, tall and narrow eyed with boyish mannerisms, when Calill first puts a rouge brush in her hand and says solemnly: "It's time to go to war, beautiful."
When she is older and wiser, Amy will know that there was never a more appropriate introduction to womanhood.
Calill teaches her the magic of rouge; the power of a deep red lip stain; and, greatest of all, a woman's stare.
Amy practices on street urchins at the edge of town, on the painter's apprentice Johnny, and whomever will look her way. She is delighted to capture the attention of a sailor, an older man, and even more so when he tips his jaunty hat at her and grins a gap-toothed smile. Amy prances the docks in her free moments, wearing her favorite gowns and her hair rolled into curls; she paints her lips daring, outrageous shades of color and smears her eyelids with heavy charcoal and directs half-lidded glances at young cabin boys who muck up their chores in distraction. When one is driven to such distraction that he marches right off the end of a pier, Amy realizes how correct her mother is, how powerful the right look could be.
But one day, she puts that weapon to such great use that Largo has to fish her out of the midst of a slave auction. She's wide-eyed and trembling and there's a large bruise in the shape of a hand on her cheek (Largo's good arm has half-killed a man for that one), but she doesn't cry, so Calill puts her arms about Amy, rubs her back, and then she takes her home.
Amy sleeps in her parents' bed for a month.
Years later, Amy is forty and one half. She is still tall and her eyes are still small and dark, but her manners are significantly less uncouth. Calill beams with pride when strangers praise her young and beautiful daughter, and her pasty cheeks turn rosy and young with pleasure. Cosmetics can no longer conceal her mother's age: her hair is white and her face is lined with thin wrinkles; her hands are veiny and spasm on cold days; and she has acquired a cough that won't quit.
It frightens Amy, because Largo died the spring before and many of Calill's friends before then: Marcia, Nephenee, Makalov and so many others, so many others that Amy puts her face in her hand and cries at the thought. Sometimes, she feels like her life has ended just as it began - the vanishing of friends and family whose lives she will long exceed leaves her bereft because she has never entered circles very far from her own. Sometimes, Amy places her hands onto her mother's cheeks and presses their foreheads together, and she tells her: "I'd like to give you some of my time. Don't you know any spells for that?"
Calill laughs, covers Amy's hands with her own (Calill's nails are painted with the power of a deep red lip stain, polished for maximum effect) and she doesn't answer. Some questions shouldn't be.
Instead, Calill says: "It is time to go to war, beautiful."
And when her mother passes the next week, Amy paints her lips in the brightest, bitchiest shade of red that she can find, rolls her hair into tight, aggressive curls, and shadows her eyes with crimson ochre and sparkling dust; she crosses the houses, opens the front door, and looks out into the sunshine.
It's hot and humid, and her powder is beginning to cake, but Amy clenches her fists, grits her teeth, and goes out into the street where she joins the flow of people and is lost in the crowd.
Fin.