Disclaimer: I don't own anything - TRC, RG Veda, anything.
Ashura-ou watched from the window of the study as General Kuyava lead a battalion of soldiers in procession down the curving road away from the palace of Celes. The army's weapons were brightly polished, and their gleam was nearly blinding in the evening sunlight. High summer was really the only time for such events – the near constant darkness of winter made everything seem like a funeral. The rays of light passed through the facets of the crystalline window frames, messily scattering rainbows over the dark bookshelves.
Ashura-ou moved his eyes back and forth between the procession outside and the man bent over the table in the center of the room, carefully comparing the two sights. The man was copying magical runes out of an old book, making sure to get each one wrong in precisely the right way, so that the transcript would have no power, but would still be legible to anyone who knew the language.
"You know, Fai," Ashura-ou began. The other man didn't look up for a moment, instead putting a few more strokes on the page before him. Then he raised his eyes and asked, "What is it I know, Ashura-ou?"
"You're rather like the weapons those soldiers are carrying."
Fai followed Ashura-ou's gaze until it turned back on him. Then he cocked his head in what he intended to be a charmingly inquisitive way. "How do you mean?"
"They're very dangerous, of course," said Ashura-ou, no longer looking at either the procession or Fai, instead examining the fall of the rainbows over the dark, flaking book spines. "But it can easily appear as just a decoration. A sword with a jewel-encrusted hilt, an elaborately carved bow, spears polished so much that they reflect light like this…" Ashura-ou traced a path of light with his fingers, from the view of the soldiers, to the crystal, to one particular rainbow just to the right of Fai's head. He continued, "It seems frivolous, and it blinds one to the fact that even weapons like those are meant for piercing flesh and spilling blood."
Fai blinked for a moment, then grinned. "Have you ever considered becoming a poet, Ashura-ou? It calls for more metaphors that ruling does."
Ashura-ou smiled back at Fai, but his smile had a quiet, bittersweet character to it, as his smiles always did. Fai could never bring himself to respond that expression with anything but honesty, so he let his face relax, and added, "However, you did forget one point of that comparison, your majesty."
"And what was that?"
"A weapon is a tool. It has no will. It's easy to break and easy to replace. When you say a person is like a weapon, it follows that that person is also a tool."
Ashura-ou's eyes slid away to the floor. "I may be ill-suited to poetry," he said contemplatively.
"Maybe," said Fai lightly, and he started to hum a tune. Ashura-ou listened and watched. A soldier's blade, scattering rainbows, he thought. That would describe Fai perfectly.