Title: 50 Themes, Kaddar and Kalasin
Author: Kate
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply. They're not mine and I'm not making a red cent.
Summary: A response to the 50 themes/1 sentence challenge. Kalasin/Kaddar, or Kallydar
Walking
The first time Kaddar sees Kalasin in person, she is walking briskly and without hesitation across the dock (so unlike the Carthaki women he knows!); she radiates confidence and charm, and he thinks, "I can live with this woman."
Waltz
The first time Kaddar waltzes with Kalasin, he is shocked by her timidity; her walk and mannerisms are certain and sweet; they have danced minuets and folk dances and she is confident, but in the waltz she hesitates just before he touches her, and he cannot understand it because he imagined her spinning in circles and practicing this dance for the sheer joy of movement.
Wishes
At Kaddar's 24th birthday party, early in their "courtship" (the negotiations had gone so far forward that neither of them could imagine pulling out of the alliance), Kalasin asks Kaddar what he wishes for before she cuts the first slice of the cake; he turns the question back on her.
Wonder
Kalasin performs her duties as hostess by cutting a morsel of cake and transferring it to a plate, which she offers to the Emperor; he takes a bite, but cannot ignore that she does not answer immediately; her intended wonders if she is still in the same room with him, and he wonders what she is thinking about with that vacant look on her face.
Worry
The dreaminess persists throughout the toasts; he has started to worry that she lives in a world of wishes, if they can occupy her for so long.
Whimsy
She turns to him, after his health has been toasted, and grins; "I wished I could fly," she finally answers, and there is no melancholy in the whimsical expression on her face.
Waste/Wasteland
He asks her to describe her homeland one afternoon, when they are allotted three minutes with Varice as chaperone; he loses the content of her answer in listening to her voice, but he perks up a little when she begins to describe the apparent barrenness of the Great Southern Desert, which she doesn't believe is quite a wasteland—she lived at King's Reach on the farthest point of Tortall, so she knows.
Whiskey & Rum
The first significant conflict in the treaty negotiations (there have been spats and posturing over things like the immigration rates, but nothing that both sides weren't certain would be resolved) is over the import tax Tortall places on Carthak's rum; Carthak retaliated by taxing Tortallan whiskey (and brandy) more sharply. Kaddar and Kalasin resolve it by locking the ambassadors and scribes in a room and plying them with samples of each country's special beverage until the clause is written and signed.
09. War
Kaddar enters their suite late one night, and finds his wife weeping quietly by the window, a letter in her lap; Kaddar realizes that she is terrified that the war with Scanra will steal her family from her.
10. Weddings
In September of 461, Kalasin reads Roald's letter aloud when Kaddar asks her to; she reports (more cheerfully than she's been for the duration of the war) that Roald can finally marry his much-admired Yamani bride, Shinko, and that another friend, Neal, will marry his lady, Yuki, and that Kalasin's foster aunt, Buri, plans to wed a beloved almost-uncle, Raoul.
11. Birthday
Kalasin schemes to achieve the perfect celebration for Kaddar's 26th birthday, partially out of guilt because the year before, she'd been lost in the depth of her depression and hadn't been able to get out of bed, much less plan a party. This year, Kalasin arranged a lunch with important councilors and other noblemen who would want to celebrate the Emperor's birthday, and then invited his best friends from the University for an informal supper—ten years lifted off of Kaddar's shoulders when he laughed with his friends.
12. Blessing
When Kalasin learns that she has conceived for the second time, she journeys to the temple of the Great Mother Goddess, in order to beg the Mother's blessing on the pregnancy, labor and motherhood; after the first miscarriage, she is terrified of her own body.
13. Bias
Kalasin models a violet chiffon veil (and nothing else) for Kaddar for his 30th birthday, and when she asks, "What do you think?" he answers "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen; you'll be even more beautiful without that, and no, I'm not saying it because I'm biased."
14. Burning
The first time pirates burn one of Kalasin's orphanages, Kaddar caresses her and promises to help her rebuild, thinking that this will comfort her; instead, she cries and he tries to tease her out of it by saying tears won't stop the flames.
15. Breathing
He is startled when she answers, through little sobbing gasps, that the tears burn her eyes just as badly as smoke; after that he is quiet and he listens to her breathe as she lies on her side of the bed, stubbornly not curled into him.
16. Breaking
In the month after Kalasin's first miscarriage, when she is most ill, Kaddar wanders around forlornly, wondering how the world can be inconsiderate enough to keep turning when his heart is breaking.
17. Belief
No matter what she says, Kalasin cannot shake Kaddar's friends' belief that all Tortallan women are uncommonly pretty and athletic—after Alanna's dueling, Daine's archery, Lianne's trick riding and Kalasin's demonstrated competence in swimming and self-defense, young nobles in Carthak begin speculating about how men woo Tortallan warrior women.
18. Balloon
After the near disaster of her swim during their honeymoon, Kalasin puts a seamstress to work developing a bathing costume that will fulfill Carthak's policy on modesty without inhibiting motion; the first time she tries the prototype, it balloons around her body and Kaddar laughingly compares her to a puffer fish, so she cheerfully splashes him while his sister Aaminah, similarly garbed, giggles from the shore.
19. Balcony
During the fifth month of their courtship, when the wedding plans are beginning to feel rather like a runaway horse, Kalasin slips away from a luncheon for a moment and steps out onto a balcony to peek at the small patch of land she has learned Kaddar tends himself—the Emperor is in the walled garden, tending to the lotuses in the water pond.
20. Bane
Kaddar is waiting for Kalasin to emerge from her boudoir so they can leave for an award ceremony, when his wife appears, shaking a heeled shoe at him and ranting, "Remember when I said that four-hour dinners were the bane of my existence? Well I changed my mind; these gods-cursed sandals are."
21. Quiet
After that declaration, his wife exits to her boudoir once more, so Kaddar tries to snicker quietly.
22. Quirks
As Kalasin wrestles with the sandal, she realizes that one of the things she likes most about her husband is his laugh—he tries not to laugh directly at her, but the quirky rolling sound pleases her.
23. Question
Three months before the wedding, Kaddar finds Kalasin on the balcony that looks into his garden, offers her an orchid and asks her, formally, if she will marry him. He explains that she needed romance and a good story to tell their grandchildren—she feels breathless at the idea of growing old with this stranger.
24. Quarrel
Kalasin and Kaddar rarely do anything as obvious as quarrel when they are angry at one another; their conflicts exist in great unspoken walls of silence and unnaturally strained politeness.
25. Quitting
Kalasin catches Kaddar surreptitiously smoking one of the slender cigarettes she discarded when he asked her to quit; she crosses her arms over her chest and he shrugs defiantly, "So Aaminah and my mother weren't the only smokers; I still prefer cigars."
26. Jump
Kalasin is poised and balanced in the saddle on Chavi's back; she collects the reins to approach a jump, challenging Kaddar and Westwind to duplicate their success.
27. Jester
Courtiers compete about how best to display the leisure time that extreme wealth buys them; Kalasin disapproves of some of the foolishness, because she believes in working for a living and working hard. But she does not truly put her foot down until Kaddar's mother buys a slave-jester for the four-year-old twins' amusement.
28. Jousting
Because she comes from the North, where women are warriors, Kalasin is enlisted as judge of arms competitions each and every year…mostly, her presence is enough and she lets the knights judge, but the jousters always beg to wear her colors—she wishes she could explain that her brother Roald is the only man who has ever tilted while wearing her scarf, and that hardly counts, because he wore Shinko's too.
29. Jewel
The Empress is nineteen years old and recovering from a miscarriage when her mother-in-law descends to suggest (in honeyed words) that Kalasin ought to ingratiate herself with her father so that when he dies, the Dominion Jewel will pass to her and her heirs. Such a success would, it is suggested, compensate for her slowness in producing an heir. Fazia is trying to provoke Kalasin, to encourage her to leave her bed—the trick fails, so Fazia returns, and tries another. Kaddar's mother is crafty and persistent while Kally is young and weak and confused—Fazia believes that her victory is inevitable.
30. Just
Kaddar watches in quiet awe (he often vocally questions the practicality of her actions) as Kalasin struggles to free slaves, improve prisons, and build hospitals and orphanages and schools, for the knowledge that what she is doing is just. Knowledge is her only reward—pirates burn, raiders attack, and nobles tisk.
31. Smirk
On their honeymoon, after his uncle catches her swimming, every time they pass within sight of the sea, he smirks at her and she blushes.
32. Sorrow
From the outside, they appear to have everything—wealth, health, youth, beauty, love—but it is not their blessings but rather sorrows that cement the growing bond between them.
33. Stupidity
Kalasin bears curiosity and downright nosiness about Tortall and her upbringing with patience and at least the appearance of good humor but one of Kaddar's friends eventually (inevitably) crosses the line—she is flustered, and Aaminah, Kaddar's sister, intervenes by lightly slapping the back of the friend's head and saying, "Stupid." Aaminah is Kalasin's first friend in Carthak, so when she and her baby die in childbirth around the same time as Kalasin's miscarriage, the triple loss strikes deep.
34. Serenade
After an inconsequential difference of opinion that results in a freeze-out worse than a Scanran winter and an uncomfortable time in the hall, Kaddar tries to make things up with Kalasin by serenading her badly, but enthusiastically, leading her to make the rule that conflicts between them should be silent.
35. Sarcasm
With no little sarcasm, the Empress invites him to reenter their suite after his "sterling musical performance."
36. Sordid
After the impromptu serenade, the first chambermaid asks Kalasin's hairdresser what on earth the Empress did to deserve such a punishment from the Emperor; the hairdresser claims that she cannot reveal the sordid details because it would be a breach of trust, yet, in reality, she does not know.
37. Soliloquy
Kaddar engages a theater group from the University to perform a play for Kalasin's thirtieth birthday; she struggles throughout to maintain her composure, finally losing it when the actor playing the King launches into a soliloquy lauding the beauty of fully opened blossoms.
38. Sojourn
While preparing to return to Tortall for the first time since her marriage, Kalasin packs every trunk three different ways, feverishly joyful about their brief impending residency in Corus.
39. Share
In the first month of marriage, Kaddar is called to an urgent trade counsel, away from a private dinner with his bride; when she protests, he tells her, "You'll have to learn to share me with the Empire."
40. Solitary
In the years before the babies are born, Kalasin spends many solitary nights practicing sharing her husband with his first love, the Empire. She learns to work alone and at strange hours.
41. Nowhere
She returns to Carthak after her Midwinter in Tortall (Kaddar half-feared that she would take the children and stay there) and during their private reunion, she nestles close to him and declares, "There's nowhere else I would rather be."
42. Neutral
Before Kalasin arrived, Kaddar could keep his face absolutely straight—after her arrival, he finds himself unable to maintain his studied impartiality.
43. Nuance
Instead of holding an inscrutable expression on his face, he studies the nuances of Kalasin's gestures and expressions, learning by observation to differentiate between her studied expressions and her genuine faces.
44. Near
"Don't even come near me," Kalasin warns as she limps in, broken heeled-shoe in hand, mud on her simple day dress and hair bedraggled, "Your sons have done enough!"
45. Natural
Kaddar dislikes watching a hairdresser work on Kalasin's hair—it seems unnatural to pin up the long wavy raven tresses into shapes never seen outside the court.
46. Horizon
Before their children are born, Kaddar's favorite memory of Kalasin happens on the private beach outside their seaside palace—she stands in the sea in a puffy bathing costume, water to her knees, arms raised to the sky, looking as though she is worshipping the sun or the sky. She is the one vertical point between him and the end of the world on the horizon. Kaddar thinks he could be content to live in this moment.
47. Valiant
On the tenth anniversary of their marriage, Kalasin and Kaddar commission a joint portrait; their advisors recommend posing Kaddar in armor on a horse, valiantly slaying a Stormwing, symbolic of Ozorne's evil.
48. Virtuous
The advisors also recommend the Kalasin pose surrounded by the children, eyes lowered modestly so that she appears to be a paragon of female virtue.
49. Victory
The Emperor and Empress win in some respects—the portrait shows them in their home, with their sons and daughter, in a piece of court art that humanizes the rulers of a nation.
50. Defeat
They are defeated in terms of their costumes, however; Kalasin is veiled virtuously (though the artist uses oils, so her sparkling eyes sparkle and upturned lips are hazily visible through the glaze) and in the background of the room is a fabricated portrait of Kaddar in armor, standing over the body of a Stormwing. As far as defeats go, the rulers of Carthak can accept this one.