The Girl Who Waited
Yes, CP, I can make "obscure" Doctor Who references too. Without further ado:
Summary: "Red Dragon at night; True Love's delight." - She waited every night for that scarlet dragon, fluttering in the realm of dreams. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited... Post-Inheritance.
Warnings: Inheritance Spoilers. This is a Post-Inheritance fic. Some swearing, some violence, some sexual references. Minimal in comparison to my other writing, however. You should be mostly fine. There is some (deliberate) OC-ness, although not as strong as my other writing. There is a first-person OC perspective - enough to put people off, I'd expect - but bear with me.
Note: There are footnotes during this. If you see a number in brackets, e.g. (1), this implies that there is a footnote at the bottom.
One
.
When I think of her, I think of her hands. She had cold, broken hands; frigid to touch. Wrapped in thin, sagging leather, rugged and ragged with scars, they were the palms of a rough shaman from the North, not of a dainty queen. Each finger of hers was a brittle spindle of wheel that snapped – softly as it spun – like breaking bones, as she moved them. They were witch fingers – dark magic, she might joke, feebly. When she did joke. She rarely did joke, even when I was a child.
I liked to compare mine, as a boy, my soft little honey-coloured paws – against her black, broken claws. They stank of something feral. Of something wild – and strange, and free. So at odds with the muted yellow silk sleeves, the trimmings of fussy lace, and the still, patient, expression she always wore, even to court.
"Your mother," my father would always dutifully explain, "is an old war horse. Still fierce, if not strong, and will not stop charging on." He always seemed smugly pleased with himself at his inventive metaphor.
I liked to imagine her thundering across the desert; across crag-marked canyons and black mountains, with no-one at the reigns(1). Only one problem confounded me:
"Why doesn't she wear horse shoes, then?" I asked, perplexed.
My father disdainfully told me I had an overactive imagination.
He always failed to convince. No – he encouraged me, even. Although he would not pluck those exact words from his upturned lips, not myfather, but a giddy smirk could be snatched from that tightly sealed mouth now and again.
His hands were nothing like my mother's. Small and fleshy, sweaty, that fumbled awkwardly with eccentric gesticulations and odd shapes. Limp, and flimsy – hands, in his mind, were arbitrary creations, baffling ornaments of designed for dreary men of a lower, crasser substance. What use was a son – my father would postulate aloud, strolling in the luscious eve-lit courtyard, in a rare vis a vis with my mother – a son of a king, no less, if he could not think? If he could not utilise his mind? It was an atrocious crime, an unforgivable act, a mortal sin, as far as he was concerned, not to cultivate intelligence, and treasure intellectual curiosity.
My mother, sniffing a bush of fresh magnolias, muttered wistfully in response about a curiousincident with a flask of sulphuric acid and a small, arrogant man.
That shut him up.
Predictably, my father took my education – a rigorous, structured education – to be his foremost personal duty. (My mother was far too occupied with tedious bureaucracy and rubber-stamping to be concerned with something so trivial). At the tender age of eight, he entrusted himself with the perilous task of becoming my personal tutor in natural philosophy.
He would berate me – with books; with theory; with science. I despised it at first, quivering beneath those fusty volumes; they were rich in iron words of mighty men – men of truth, men of knowledge, men of clarity – men I could barely comprehend. My father patiently watched me struggle. Always watching, always waiting. His hawk eyes glaring.
"It's like this."
I did this.
"It's like that."
I did that.
"Think rationally."
And so I did.
I could eventually recite, by rote, the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow(2); the four capitals of ancient Assyria in chronological order(3); the thirty-five rudimentary elements and the sixty-four rudimentary compounds(4); endless lists of names and numerals and factual information. I could quote theorists, scientists, philosophers, poets, princes – oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt...(5)
And so began a violent love affair with the page(6). Those tangled jungles of frenzied letters – I began to lose myself in them, utterly, in a maddening cacophony – a tune so repulsive that it drew me in further. My thirst for words, delicious words, became insatiable – and my father, noting this, noticing this, brought me vast tankers of them.
He began to spoil me. He spoiled me with rotten fruits of knowledge, bulging, overripe volumes bursting with pages, decrepit tomes thick with mould, lost relics, sensuous words – verbose, pretentious, magniloquent – brisling with thousands of secrets and truths. And I loved it – I loved it too. I did not just read – but I devoured whole books, feasted on forgotten truths; I gorged on archaic, useless knowledge. Whilst I salivated for those pages, my father always lurked; a hovering shadow. I caught snatches of roguish smiles sneaking across his face whilst patting me firmly on the back. Well thought, my son: well thoughtof you. He nearly shook my hand. But he did not; that was improper.
I began to walk along the swanky halls and lavish parlours with a battered book always wrapped up to my chest; I would begin to follow his hollow footsteps into velvet libraries, lurked behind him in vast, marble archives, entombed beneath the earth. The real gods of the world lurk here, he would utter angrily – in his usual short, squirming, hoarse shouts. He had never been taught to speak quietly. My father did always prefer austere silence – everything always sounded better in his head.
My mother watched us from the cool shade. She disapproved.
"He is too fanciful, Orrin. He will be crushed under the strain of court."
During those hot, insufferable summers, those long sweltering days, they met only in the fleeting glimpse of dusk. They would walk among the golden, sun-baked leaves and blooming sweet-peas, wittering meaninglessly about how much the two of them despised horticulture in all forms.
"He's too weak. He's too soft."
She glared pointedly at my father. He said nothing.
"He doesn't live in the real world(7)."
She was right. I lived in a world of butterfly wings, of honeysuckle and morning dew, framed by the golden gates of the palace I called 'home'. Basic was luxurious, luxurious was absurd; even the sunbeams which caressed my every movement were thoroughly cleansed. Dainty, wide-eyed servants would fall at my footsteps(8), waiting on my every slightest desire, on the faintest of whims, eager to fulfil any deliciously spicy fantasy, batting their long, quivering lashes as they combed and ruffled my curls, 'Oh, he'll be a gorgeous one, won't he? He looks so much like his mother...'
"You worry too much," my father finally replied, with a derisive snort. "It didn't do meany harm. Perhaps you should take a break from all that paper-pushing you so adore?"
To prove my mother completely and utterly wrong in all forms possible(9), he proposed a project. Between him and me.
"We're going to fly," announced my father, hoarsely.
I didn't even need to say 'yes'.
The parameters of said project: a small contraption that would able to propel itself for a limited amount of time upwards, unaided. Without magic. Magic was cheating.
We set to work. Plans were organised, drawings were made. Extensive calculations were made; stacks of paper spurned across the floor. The world drew itself into linear Xs and Ys and Phetas and Phis. Clockwork men, we became, working dusk 'tll dawn, dancing to some insane tune. My father's workshop, previously airy, light, smelling of wood-polish and fresh worktables, became littered with broken quills and bottles of ink, dribbling candle wax, cracked teacups –
"You haven't shaved in days, Orrin," my mother said, absently, as she shuffled through the daily pile of documentation. "You're too old. You look ridiculous."
He merely grunted in response. Our meticulous plans, our rabid scribblings – those blotchy words were sprinkled in gold dust to us – and herobjections were mere prattle. We had decided on a system based on a motor mechanism, which could be wound up and continue to spin for several minutes before faltering. These motors would, through pulleys, make the wings flap and the structure soar, and it was a simple case of altering the tail structure to balance the weight evenly.
"It's not going to work," said my mother, passing us by in a long, strident corridor, her endlessly dark eyes – eyes which were my own – locking with my father's as she passed.
My father pointedly ignored her. Each evening, he would slam all doors, lock them two, three, four times, and storm into the workshop, crashing down into his chair, with a bottle of whiskey. He would refuse to come out. His eyes, usually so strained under the weight of his thick, white eyebrows, began to bulge with red, erratic blood-lines. He would refuse to let anyone in – or out. I was there, with him, in the workshop, of course. This experiment was for me.
"I expect you haven't even begun testing yet, have you?" my mother muttered over light breakfast, of toasted teacakes, with a slither of jam.
That evening, we began testing. He would smuggle me out of the palace beneath his thick, musty 'travelling' cloak, worn, stained with grime. We traipsed under hoods through the empty streets, slathered in dirt and stinking of urine, with the faint howls of a starving child could be heard... My father ushered me to turn my head and keep my nose firmly upright, in case of infection. His hand gripped my shoulder severely.
We snuck out to the lake.
"Test on three... two... one..."
Mist slowly rose off the still surface. It was chilly. Damp.
"Test on three... two... one..."
I would sit, shivering, on the edge of a rickety, fishing-platform, derelict long ago, swinging my legs as my father threw prototype frames across the black lake, and land with a plop.
I have not the faintest clue, in retrospect, why my father chose a murky bog to test it. It wasn't the most practical decision. He was completely mistaken if he thought shewouldn't follow him.
"Orrin!" she called from a lumpy rock above, beneath rotting willow tree, on the second evening. Her voice was clear, ringing, a chuckling bell.
My father did not look upwards.
"This isn't going to work, Orrin," she cried, her words broken by the wind. "Aren't you supposedto be running a country?"
His eyes slowly moved to glance at me.
"What example are you setting, Orrin? You're reckless and irresponsible. Don't you care(10) about your son?"
And then I saw the furious scowl that weighed on his face.
"We are going to ignoreher," he hissed.
We continued regardless of herpresence, testing, throwing, calculating, marking, re-evaluating. Again. Repeat. Again. Repeat. She stopped yelling, soon enough. She would watch us, perched up on her rock, her soft silk gowns marred by the grime. Watching us, my father and I, toil below, far away from her lofty realm. And she began speaking. Criticising.
"The wing material isn't taut. The pulleys have too much friction. The framework is too brittle."
Her words were always clinically spoken. Precise. Extracted by cold pincers from a physician's cloak. We would ignore them, though. I couldn't tell, though, but under the wash of the moonlight – was she smiling as she said them? I would look away before I could tell – I was, of course, completely disinterested in her frivolous criticism. Because my father and I – we were going to soar, together...
After two hours, when the sky above was wrapped up in a blanket of glittering stars, she left. We worked on, into the night – we did not need her presence, nor her scalding remarks, to continue.
She came again on the third evening, though. And the fourth. And the fifth, and the sixth, and the seventh...
I quite liked having her there.
My father would regurgitate every syllable of praise or gratitude toward me if I as so much recognised it, and burst into an angry flame of insults – as he had a habit of doing – but I liked it. The King, the Queen, and the Prince were finally gathered together for an occasion without ribbons or brassy fanfares or pomp. A set. A family(11). Throwing gliders across a murky swamp.
It was enough.
And slowly, the frame didn't sink at every flight. And sure enough, the pulley didn't stick at every other tug. And eventually, the strings no longer snapped.
She still criticised every syllable he uttered. Scrutinising, as if hunched one of my father's scientific instruments.
But my father? No – he didn't listen to her petulant squawking anymore. He was too happy. Too proud. And he began grinning, grinning victoriously. See! See it fly... (like an impossible dream... fluttering in the wind... )
We began to get to work again. Or rather, we didn't. Building the properly sized final model wasn't work for us theorists– no, workmen did the job for us. Aristocrats always hated getting their hands dirty.
"We need a name for it – do we not?" he said to me, "An iconic name – a grand name – something inspiring?"
I nodded obediently in response. He continued to indulge in pondering, his lips barely moving as he spoke.
"There are the obvious names – birds – swallows, doves, partridges – pah! As if we're going to name such a beautifulmachine after a plump little bird..." he trailed off again.
"I guess there's also the ceremonial names – " he pulled an honest grimace. I don't blame him – even my father could be overwhelmed by ostentation. "Lady Victorious, Lady Liberty, Lady – urgh," he paused, looking up to me. "They're all women, aren't they?"
I chuckled uneasily. It echoed hollowly in the workshop.
"Perhaps The LittlePrince?" he said, smirking. I bit my tongue, holding it still – if anyone else had made such a remark over my stature, it would have burst out in flames and I would have pulled a delightful tantrum.
"No," he said suddenly, scratching his beard. "Too obvious. Are there any ideas you have?"
"Me, father?" I asked. My input was only ever required when it was convenient.
"Yes, you, I'm talking to you," he said, with a snort. "Or don't you have a single thought of your own?"
I frowned. Glancing at the nearly-finished machine, strangled by the suffocating scaffolding, the meticulous design, the delicate, intricate, swirling paint... I saw a creature, who longed to be free...
"The Red Dragon," I said, adamantly, with a firm nod for conviction.
My father's face fell. "Why red(12)?"
"Because it is red – isn't it?"
It was. Bright vermillion, waving like a fiery flag, faded to a deep, rumbling crimson, almost sorrowful; our contraption was drippingin the colour.
My father was silent for a moment. A loud, uncompromising breath. He swallowed, slowly. Then he chuckled. Slowly.
"You're too observant for your own good, boy."
He even ruffled my hair, with an awkward left hand – I twitched. I was eleven years old– and far too old for that. But I let him, anyway – my father rarely deemed it appropriate to touch another.
The Red Dragon it was, then.
It would first fly on Scarlet Eve – the last day of summer, and the last day of the Old Galbatorixan Empire, now confined to the dusty pages of history books. The festival was the most chaotic, violent, and wonderful that I could ever imagine – even as a morbid child – and they went wild, especially in brash Belatona, who adored a good festival whenever it could drop the regimented, reserved demeanour of a capital city. The world erupted into a firestorm of swirling ribbons and gaudy fanfares, alit by flaring torches, softened by the scent of easy wine. Our machine would fly as the people below danced in the crimson night, adorned in the colour of the blood, the blood shed by our dutiful soldiers thirty-five years ago, who graciouslysacrificed their lives for victory(13).
When I thought of her, my mother, the second, third, fourth things that came to mind were those Scarlet Eves. My father was always never to be seen – busy somewhere or somehow with organising displays and dances and diners (all official, all approved). Yet my mother – my mother, her arms usually laden with official documentation, with rigid work – she was restless those nights. Jittering.
"Marco?" she called, to me. There was something shrill about her voice. "Are you... occupied?"
Her polished fingernails drummed repeatedly on the edge of a frail vase. Regular patterns. A procession of fingers. She didn't look at me. Her eyes were scouring – impatiently – for something else, flitting back and forth across the room.
"We shall walk, Marco," she would say. Her voice was very soft. It might break if I touched it.
I would struggle to keep alongside her long, purposeful strides – strides that, those nights, quivered, but lurched forwards regardless. I was not permitted to hold her hand usually – but she would let me clutch it tight, grab it, then. I think she was glad. We would promenade around the Palace boundaries two, three, four times, before we tired.
"We shall stop here."
We would sit in the empty chapel pews, our hands in our laps. The figures of the windows were mere shadows, trembling ghosts, painted silver and pearly grey. I had never seen them in the day, blasted in full colour – my father thought little of petty 'gods', and my mother thought of different gods completely, with strange, gnarled names like Hkarmish and Jhunito and Azezel.
"Oberon is my favourite. King of the shadows."
She would spend the next few hours telling stories. Small tales – usually whimsical folk tales, little fairy stories, slight fantasies. I liked her stories about the north the best; the barren tundra, the frigid ice, earth as rigid as iron – unshakeable – as she was supposed to be. She liked those stories best too – of a heartless, cold world – distant, yet all too real. She sometimes dropped a mention of her own life – tiny, insignificant things, the itsy bitsy details, from when she was a little girl – but not often. Her voice would begin to shake a bit when she spoke of that.
There was something , you see – something I could not quite understand... something unknown that seized her on those nights, the still, tranquil figure of my mother...
I ignored it. I pretended she was talking directly to me.
I would listen to her every word, slurp up her every syllable, lilting, like the cusp of the sea, ebbing and flowing, as she weaved her tales – this strange creature who acted nothing like my mother. She was lovely, this woman – ever so flustered, ever so... dazed – it was fun, even, if I dare use the word, amusing – but I couldn't quite comprehend... grasp... I felt like I was missing something.
I missed my mother.
"The poor thing. She's very lost," said a chamber-maid(14), sadly, as I passed by, one year.
"Pining," nodded a second, with conviction.
"Hungry,"spluttered a third, stifling laughter.
After hearing that, I stopped looking forward to our Scarlet Eves.
That particular Eve, I was far too preoccupied with importantmatters to think of her. I was stood directly next to my father, overseeing the events alongside him for the first time, nodding and smiling expectantly to cheering crowds. First was the lighting ceremony, strings of candles being lit off rooftops, then was the first dance, swirling, the second dance, twirling, and then carnival procession, of beads and blood and drumbeats, float, by float, by float –
Really, I did not care. I was burning in anticipation – in waiting – for our Dragon to fly. To soar. To sail across those stars, a monster in the sky. I wanted to see it – I wanted to see, something, my own effort, for the first time in my life – actually work.
And so, the carnival came and went, and the third dance would occur, and then a fanfare would be made, and a procession would follow...
My father was nervous too. He did not show it – well. His fingers, now and again, were the giveaway. They would clench, into tight, rigid little balls, before relaxing again.
"It's coming next," he muttered to me, during the cathedral's midnight chimes. "After the bells."
Twelve dongs passed. Dong. Dong. Dong. My heart could have stopped at each one.
But something – something was weaving through the crowd. Ruby red – and glistening; those were actualrubies. It streamed through the people, and ran up – to us, to the stage.
My father gave her a loathsome look. But she wasn't looking at him – no, for the first time, she was looking at me.
"I hope you're content with this," said my mother, sternly. I blinked – she waslooking at me. And frowning. Why was she frowning? I didn't understand –
A roar erupted from the crowd.
"Here it comes!" called my father. His head was turned towards the attention of the sky.
The Red Dragon shot out of the cathedral tower. Ruby red – and glistening. Its wings arched over the flaming city, sweeping us up and down with its rhythmic motion. I watched it flap... once, twice, three times...
It was flying. It was really flying.
We watched it for a few moments, as it circled above Belatona. We could only marvel, really. This mechanical beast – we had seen nothing like it before.
And he, my father, he was grinning. Maddeningly.
"Spectacular," he murmured. "Absolutely – " he turned to face me quickly – but then quickly to my mother. He did not hide his utter joy – grinning in public no less, what would have his dreary parents thought? A delighted – a deviousgrin – whose set of crooked teeth made my skin crawl. It was an honest smile.
My mother did not flinch.
Suddenly, the Dragon erupted into flames. (Redflames, blazing like the sun itself.)
I still don't know how it happened – how it could possibly happen, without the aid of magic. Because all of our calculations, all of our theories, all of our potentialities accounted for – no, this wasn't even logical. There was nothing remotely flammable, nor was the frictional forces ever going to be strained enough to have even a fraction of the heat... no, this made no sense.
I didn't understand.
How the majestic creature, this wonderfulcreation of ours – could die with a fragment of the wind – no, I don't understand it at all.
I watched the hard graft of the past three months explode into a rapture of red.
"Spectacular," my mother murmured. A gentle smile braced her lips. "Red Dragon at night; True Love's delight."
It was one of her folk rhymes(15).
.
Footnotes of Varying Importance:
1(I still cannot fathom what pitiful creature would dare mount my mother. Certainly, it was not my father)
2(11 m/s)
3 (Assur, Dur Sarukin, Nineveh, and finally, Aberon.)
4 (I utterly refuse to list them all.)
5 (Hamlet. What else did you expect, you ignorant cretin?)
6(She was – is – the cruellest, maddest, sickest, nastiest, most relentless lover I have ever had. And obviously, I was completely and utterly infatuated with her.)
7(My dearest mother forgets that this statement rarely doesn't apply.)
8(Aged ten, and I already had a gift with the ladies.)
9(It was his most treasured pastime, his greatest pleasure.)
10(Irony was non-existent for my dearest mother. So was hypocrisy.)
11(Fate had no sense of irony either.)
12(Red dragons were notorious. They were an omen. Entire towns would lay waste in their ravenous wake; flumes of the smoke from the blackened, barbecued bodies billowed behind them – supposedly. Equally, to spot one was usually considered rather unfortunate luck).
13(A more cynical (and accurate) estimation would be that it symbolised the bloodied corpses of the enemies we happily slew. What? It's not as if the Crown Prince of Alagaesia is expected to be a patriot.)
14(Now what was her name? Felicia? Annette? Adriana, maybe – or perhaps Lily; they all become one, eventually, those soft-faced women... )
15(I would have loved to be able to say they were cheering because I was there – although I think that's a mite too presumptuous, even for me.)
16(It was past 12 o'clock. The correct phrase would have been: "Red Dragon in the morning; True Love's warning.")
A/N: This was meant to be a one-shot, but it's actually going to be a short (emphasis on 'short') chapter story. Nowhere near on A Midnight Masque scale (my main IC fic - check it out, if you haven't!). If The Girl Who Waited ends up over 7 chapters long, I'll eat my hat.
Yes, she married Orrin. Go on, shoot me.