I own nothing.
Farnese's hair was a pale blonde, her skin white, her eyes a near-colorless blue. She soaked up color as a sponge did water. Perhaps better to say that whatever she happened near lost its color to her. When she stood beneath the moon, she glowed silvery-white and the moon seemed as though a smooth gray stone tossed into the sky. When she wandered aimlessly through the gardens, her steps listless and an aura of discontentment permeating the air around her, she became as vividly colorful as the flowers that surrounded her, and the flowers grayed and browned. She danced before the fire, and her eyes became as embers, her swishing hair like molten gold, her skin a mirror for the dancing red flames—the flames were as the shadows cast upon the wall by the fire that Farnese became.
People seemed as aged, weathered marble statues in the presence of Farnese de Vandimion.
Aurelia, Lady Vandimion to the world, saw her youngest child in all lights and moods, though never close at hand. Children were… Children were. She'd borne four, though not for her own pleasure. Two boys who seemed likely to go far in the world. One boy who'd not go nearly as far, like as not. And Farnese.
The memories of her sons' earliest childhoods blurred together, an uninteresting mass punctuated by occasional interesting moments. Farnese, on the other hand, was never dull. She could reduce grown men to trembling wrecks within minutes. She was the terror of the Holy City, the demon child of the Vandimion family.
Federico, who fancied himself such a tyrant, was himself completely undone by Farnese. By Farnese, his seven-year-old daughter. This enough was more than enough to endear the girl to Aurelia, who always enjoyed watching her husband squirm. What a woman she would make when she was grown! If she kept this up her legend would be enough to rival that of the most infamous queens and warrior women. Her charisma would be enough to find the entire Holy City following after her.
But for now, Farnese was just a child. If Aurelia passed her in the hall it was like walking by a stranger—or, maybe more accurately, the child of a friend. She was someone whom Aurelia must be kind to, indeed, wished to be kind to, but Aurelia had nothing to say to her. She never had anything to say to children.
(And perhaps she was just a little frightened that if she stood next to Farnese for too long, her daughter would leech out her color and her spirit until she was as one of those weathered statues too.)
-0-0-0-
Of all the places Aurelia expected her daughter to end up, a convent wasn't one of them. Federico had made the ill-advised decision to marry her off in order to be rid of her. Farnese was of an age for it, after all; she was older than Aurelia had been when she was wed. Aurelia had expected some sort of response to this on Farnese's part, something drastic, though she'd admit that she'd not expected to have as a consequence the burnt-out shell of a house. It might have been amusing, if not for Federico's reaction, and Aurelia's own sense of horror at the sight of the charred foundations, of blackened pillars stretching up to the sky like the hands of a suppliant towards God.
She barely seems human sometimes, Aurelia thought, pulling her mantle closer, barely feeling her husband's hand on her shoulder, trying vainly to steer her away from the sight of one of the Vandimion's estates now ruined beyond repair. More like a storm than anything else. Her shadow will linger when all else has rusted and tarnished and rotted.
But for the most part, when Aurelia thought of Farnese languishing in a convent, she just felt sorry for her. Farnese was not made for a nun's life. She could perhaps be an ascetic but not the sort of ascetic who bowed her head and lived a life of quiet contemplation. Not the sort of ascetic whose world shrank to the confine of the convent walls, and whose voice could never rise up to shout. She would either wither away in that sort of life, or burn until the whole place burned with her.
(Farnese would leech the white and black of the other nuns' habits, but it would be no use, for the nuns would hardly look any different gray.)
Aurelia put Farnese from her mind. She found plenty in the homes of her friends to distract and fascinate her, far more than she found in her own—her sons had grown from boring children to boring men, except on the occasion when Magnifico made an amusing blunder in one arena or another. The homes of the Vandimion family were far too staid for one such as her. Aurelia had only ever been at home beneath candlelight, her ears filled with the songs of music-makers and the bright conversation of the intelligentsia. You would find none of these things on a Vandimion estate. Nothing had ever been so colorful as before since Farnese left.
Eventually, Aurelia learned that Farnese had fallen in with the Holy Iron Chain Knights. It didn't come as much of a shock, really; if anything Aurelia was surprised it hadn't happened sooner.
It seems to me that Farnese might chafe as a ceremonial leader. All the same, it must be better than the cloistered life of a nun.
What must Farnese be like now? She was out in the world, traveling among men, clad in armor, doing the church's work. The life of an ascetic indeed.
When news came down to Aurelia that Farnese was taking a far more active role than the leaders of the Holy Iron Chain Knights usually did, she wasn't surprised at all.
I wonder what sort of woman you have become. You certainly sound interesting.
-0-0-0-
When, at last, Farnese came home, she did not leech color off of others as she once had. She was not colorless without the color of others, though she came close to it—a pallor blanched her face and her eyes and lips seemed tinged with gray. Instead, what color she had swirled fitfully behind the surface of her eyes and at her fingertips, sparks of red and blue and yellow. She no longer lashed out without restraint, and now acted as a dam to the violent river of her own emotions.
Oh, she had a legend alright—her shadow stretched the length of Vritannis and into Midland, trembling and undulating like the shadow of a candle flame—but her legend was not enough to sustain her. Farnese had reached a moment of crisis so palpable that Aurelia could swear that it had taken the form of a miasmic gray cloud that hovered about her daughter's head and shoulders. Once long ago, at about the same age, Aurelia had reached such a moment, when she was the mother of two boys, had done everything society required of her, and found herself empty and aimless. Her moment had been quieter, but here it was like looking in a mirror.
Aurelia had never been much of a mother to any of her children, let alone Farnese. She knew few who were ever parents to their children. But she'd not have to be to see what was wrong.
"At last I came to understand inside this cage of stone. This is not a place I can return to. It's simply where my journey started so long ago."
Farnese was not a woman who would ever thrive behind stone walls. Indeed, she would never thrive within cities of men, within the confines of the name 'Vandimion.' Aurelia had never thrived when her life was narrowed down to 'wife' and 'mother.' She knew.
Farnese walked away from the world Aurelia knew, straight-backed and tall, and shone silver.