This is one part character study, one part capitalizing on angst potential, and one part "I had headcanons and I wanted to show them off."
That sounds so vain, I know.
This is also one of those "cross-posted on my Tumblr" pieces, so don't worry. It's mine.
The plot, characters, themes, etc, are not. Disclaimer placed. Let's roll!
I know I don't belong here.
Among the large, leafy trees and soft, rolling hills, among plazas with stone fountains and gardens made of rock and sand. Among the walls of a place with serenity stitched into every breath of air and every wooden panel.
I'm not serene. I am not born of serenity, but this place is etched into my bone and I'm supposed to read it, take it in, and love it.
Maybe I'm not giving it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I'm simply prejudiced.
Or maybe my instinct is right, and I don't belong, and every moment I spend attempting to fool myself is a waste.
.
I try. You cannot say I don't.
I try to interact with the townspeople at the market, at the palace. Try to enjoy the long walks around the palace gardens with Sakura, who talks more than she listens. Try to study the difference in cultures, from the way they serve their afternoon tea to the way they dress to the way they talk and accept these changes. This isn't just another culture, this culture is mine. This is my family. My homeland. My gardens and my sister and my afternoon tea.
But in spare moments I find myself wistfully dreaming. Of tea that's sweet and served with thick, sourdough breads and fig preserves. Of gardens with actual flowers, not sand, rocks, and circles. Of a girl with long blonde hair who liked it brushed, by me and only me, whose smiles were not shy and submissive but bright.
People look at Nohr and see a wasteland.
I see in it a home.
.
The room I'm given is lovely, but it's not mine.
Personal trinkets are stored in the gathering rooms, leaving the bedrooms sparse. Sakura's room is a near mirror image of mine, save her tiny trees and desk covered in calligraphy.
It's a nice room. Only a bit smaller than my own, but the lack of rugs and throw pillows and things makes it seem so much larger. The beds have crisp white linens and a duvet with a design of small, pink flowers and thin, brown branches. The windows don't have curtains, instead there's thick wood slabs that open and close with the manipulation of strings. I tried to open them once. But the slabs felt more like iron prison bars and there's nothing welcoming about the weak, misty sunlight that streams in. The maids are quick to open them in the mornings when they come to clean. I am just as quick to close them again.
And I did try, to make the room mine. Clutter it with my things - tomes and scrolls and sketches of runes, star maps and random drawings and hang robes on the back of the chair.
Each time I tried this, I would leave, then return to find the room as barren and spotless as before. My things moved either into their respective drawers, neat and orderly except for a few of my drawings which make their way into the gathering room.
I watch them interact in said gathering room, hands folded the same way and robes in the same style, and wonder if they know what individuality is.
.
Rain is considered a miracle back home.
Here, it's a burden.
It rains so often that going outside is a luxury. Blue skies are strange. Most days are mist-shrouded and gray, so there's often spent inside wandering the palace. The wooden walls are rarely decorated but if they are, it's with weapons, swords and staves and spears crafted not for war, but for beauty. It's useless to me, a sword with a landscape engraved into the blade. The balance would be ruined by the carving. It's a useless blade, and no blade has ever been hung in the halls of Nohr's great castle without a story behind it, a war.
I feel this mockery in the joking of the townspeople, the incompetency of their esteemed tactician, how the word "war" is spoken with the same inclination as the word "tale".
We could crush them, I think as I gaze at a ceremonial spear with emeralds embedded at the hilt. Claimed to be blessed by the ancestors of the empress. Never used.
The guilt sweeps over me moments later, but the fact that the initial thought crossed my mind is enough.
I ask them later, what would you do if war was on your doorstep? They finish their explanation in five minutes and swiftly turn the conversation back to Sakura's new dress.
No war strategy takes five minutes to explain.
We could crush them.
.
They are still my family, despite the deep-rooted disconnect I feel to them and the land.
And for Sakura's sake, sweet fragile Sakura, I do keep up the illusion of trying. I drink the bitter tea. I talk of gardens and silks. I tour the castle. I take those walks through the garden.
But I bitterly miss everything. That wasteland is my home, a home of a supposedly harsh people who are really nothing but kind, just clever. A home of garden with desert roses, their petals a dark, intense pink. A home of markets teeming with life, frantic people moving throughout their day and the smells of spices and chocolate. A home of stone walls and lanterns lit with blue fire at night. A home of magic. A home I can and have made my own.
Hoshido beats in my blood but I am Nohr, and if I could drain every ounce of Hoshibo blood within my veins and replace it, I would.
I wouldn't be forced to conform.
I would no longer have to try.
.
Sakura asks me, on a day when the sun is actually out, but the light is so weak it can be ignored. The thought comes - Hoshido is a place so weak it even dulls the power of the sun - and is distilled just as she glances up at me.
Her eyes shine, with the faint hint of tears as she asks. "Do you like it here? Do you truly want to be with us?"
It would kill her to say the truth, but it would kill me more to lie.
So I say nothing. I bite into the sweet bread she brought and wish it were thick sourdough instead.