A/N: Okay, so I know Sarralyn doesn't appear in the Song of the Lioness, but that was the biggest archive of Tortall fics, so I put it there.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, except for Jasson III (I made him up). Jasson I and II are canon, and are not to be confused with Jasson III.
REVIEW, when you have read. Please, no flames. Or Sarralyn will find you. Okay, just kidding. But you know what I mean.
Sarralyn Salmalín raced along the mages' hall in the Tortallan palace, laughing. Chasing her were her two constant companions: Prince Jasson III of Conté, son of Prince Roald II and Princess Shinkokami, and her younger brother, Rikash Salmalín.
"Sarra! Slow down!" Rikash yelled.
"You aren't supposed to be able to catch me, moron!" She taunted over her shoulder, before thwump! Sarralyn collided with... oh, no. Her mother, Veralidaine "Daine" Sarrasri-Salmalín, Wild Mage, and her adopted aunt Alanna the Lioness.
The absolute last people Sarralyn liked to run into when disobeying her mother's rules.
"Ma! I didn't, uh, see you there." Sarralyn said hastily. Daine looked beadily down her delicate nose at her daughter in the standard you-are-in-for-it-now-young-lady look. Sarralyn found that she got that look a lot, especially from her mother.
"Huh. Funny how it is, when you run like that. Inside." The warning tone. Oh, Goddess. Danger! Danger! Danger! Sarralyn's mind screamed.
"Hysterical," Sarralyn muttered. "Absolutely laugh out loud."
Daine silenced her daughter with a look. The look. The you've-asked-for-it-now look. The look that was a red flag to Sarralyn that punishment was imminent. Daine had lots of 'looks', and Sarralyn was gifted at reading them. They showed her mood, and her intention. It was a way to be one step ahead of her mother in the cat-and-mouse game they played when Daine tried to manage her disobedient daughter and Sarralyn went out of her way to thwart her.
"Caught you! Caught... uh, oh." Rikash and Jasson had caught up with Sarralyn. The boys looked from the Lioness to the Wild Mage to Sarralyn and back again.
"Ah. The Troublesome Trio. I should have known you two boys were in on this." Alanna scolded. The boys looked ashamed of themselves, but Sarralyn held her head high, defiance still etched in her stubborn chin.
"You know your father-not to mention the rest of the mages!- are working on very important and trying things here, and you know they mustn't be disturbed. Sarralyn, why do you always disobey me like this? Have you no respect for me and my rules?" Daine scolded.
"Not really, no." Sarralyn replied cheekily. Daine's blue-gray eyes, which she shared with her daughter, flashed in anger, but Sarralyn wouldn't back down. She was a rebellious, defiant, wayward child, always had been, and probably always would be.
"Sarralyn, that's no way to talk to your mother," Alanna said, but not very seriously. Alanna mouthed 'I'll talk to her' over Daine's shoulder. Sarralyn grinned. With Aunt Alanna taking up her case, she was off the hook. "Say your sorry, and you won't do it again."
"Sorry, Ma. Sorry, Aunt Alanna." The children chorused, the boys sincerely and Sarralyn the 'I'm only doing this because I have to'.
"Daine, I think I hear Numair calling you. Off with you, children." Alanna dismissed, and Daine left to pursue the imaginary calls of her husband. Alanna rounded on the three children, but there was a smile on the past middle-aged face. The children grinned sheepishly up at their red-headed adopted aunt.
"Thanks, Aunt Alanna," Rikash said. Alanna turned around and looked at him.
"For what?" She asked, innocently looking around. She winked at them, signaling that this was a secret.
The children ran off, away from the mages hall where they heard Daine asking Alanna where they had gone.
"I don't know." Alanna replied, and the children high-fived each other.
Later, that day...
"So, Sarra, where did you and Rikash and Jasson disappear to?" Daine asked over dinner in their suite, and Sarralyn choked on her food. Her father, the Black Robe mage Numair Salmalín, thumped her on the back.
"No where."
"Really, Sarralyn, I make these rules for a reason! One day, you'll be a mage with your father and I, and you won't want little children disturbing your work!" Daine scolded. Sarralyn stood up, affronted.
"Mother, for the last time, I am not going to be a mage! I am going to join the Queen's Riders, or I'll... join the Shang! Something with fighting! I'll be a warrior, like Aunt Alanna and Aunt Thayet and Aunt Buri!" Sarralyn protested. "I'm getting as far away from this awful place as I can!"
"Sarralyn, you know you don't mean that," Numair scolded half-heartedly, his mind obviously far, far away in his laboratory where Daine had forced him to temporarily abandon an experiment in favor of eating dinner with his children.
"I do! I hate this icky place! I hate its awful rules! I just want to be... whoever! I want to be free to choose who I am!" Sarralyn yelled. Rikash shrunk away from his elder sister hurriedly, giving her a scared look.
"Sarralyn Salmalín! We've gone over this! You are the only person in the entire world who has both the wild magic and the Gift. Sarralyn, you are blessed with this amazing gift-"
"It's a curse!" Sarralyn interrupted, her gray-blue eyes. Daine ignored her, and Sarralyn huffed indignantly.
"-and to waste it is just a crime! You have such potential, Sarralyn. Many people would kill for that kind of power," Daine said, trying to make her stubborn daughter understand her own point of view. No such luck.
"I don't want potential! I didn't ask for it! I don't care about magic, or spells! You have Rikash for that stuff! Why can't you let me be who I want to be?" Sarralyn yelled, and she waved her arms wildly around, splashing milk across the table.
"You are who you are! Grow up and accept it, Sarralyn!" Daine's nostrils flared, and she slammed her hands down on the table, spilling Numair's wine.
"No!" Sarralyn yelled. "You just don't want me to be a warrior because you were too pathetic to be one yourself!" Daine stared at Sarralyn, and everyone in the room was aware of some line that had been crossed. But Sarralyn was stubborn as a mule, and she wouldn't back down, even when she sensed she'd overstepped the delicate boundary between being hateful to get your point across to just being hateful.
"Go to your room! You will be a mage, if it's the last blasted thing you do!" Daine stood up, her wavy brown hair escaping its pins in her anger. She pointed a quivering finger at Sarralyn's door.
"Never in a million years!" Sarralyn yelled, slamming the door of her bedroom behind her in her mother's face.
"This training nonsense has gone to your head! From now on, they are hereby revoked! I'll tell Alanna in the morning!" Daine snarled at the door.
"No!"
"I will, Sarralyn! You are a mage! A Wild Mage, too! And you will be trained as such! All this ridiculous training has given you false hopes!" Daine said, truly believing she was doing the best for her daughter.
"I hate you!" The words were said with the most malice and intent to hurt as possible, and Sarralyn's teary sobs added to it. No parent, stern or lenient, likes to hurt their child. And all parents hate being "hated" by their children.
"Well... deal with it!" Daine screamed, slamming a pale fist against the door. "Uggh! That child will be my death!" At Daine's anguish, the numerous animals that held residence in the Salmalín apartment let out howls, croaks, or chirps of misery.
"Rikash, take your leave," Numair said quietly. The boy did not need telling twice. He bolted to his room, and they heard the clatter of the chain being drawn across the door. Daine's blue-gray eyes flicked between the doors of Sarralyn and Rikash with weariness and stress. She sat down at the table and placed her head in her hands, a tired sigh escaping her lips. Numair wandered over to his wife, and bent practically double to massage her shoulders comfortingly; he was a tall man.
"Why is she so stubborn? Can't she understand I just want what's best for her?" Daine whimpered into her hands frustratedly, not to mention slightly childishly. Numair, who was long since gotten used to these moments of fragility is wife slipped into when dealing with their headstrong and contrary daughter, was patient.
"Daine, love, are you sure being a mage is the best thing for her? She certainly wants to be like Alanna and Buri," Numair proposed hesitantly. His wife wheeled around and gave him a world class glare.
"She's six years old, Numair. She doesn't know what she wants." Daine dismissed.
"So, you know what she wants better than she does?" Numair asked, throwing her words back at her. Daine stood up, shaking off his grip angrily. She shot him a betrayed glare as she mopped up spilt milk with a discarded handkerchief.
"Of course I do! I'm her mother! I'm an experienced adult! I've been down this road before, and she thinks she knows the route better than me!" Daine hurled her handkerchief down on Rikash's abandoned peas angrily.
"Maybe... maybe they aren't the same 'road' or whatever you called it. Maybe she wants to go somewhere else than you wanted."
"When I was thirteen, I wanted a job, a home, and a family. I found out I had wild magic, and a lot of it. I became a mage, and I fell in love. She has a home and a family. One day she'll go to school and become a mage. A powerful ally close to the king. Or queen, depending if Roald, Jonathan, or Lianokami is on the throne. I couldn't have dreamed such possibilities when I was her age. And she has all this opportunity right at her fingertips, and here she is, wanting to throw it all away and become the next Lioness!" Daine picked up the discarded handkerchief and scrubbed mercilessly at the table, which was relatively clean. Numair eyed her vigorous scrubbing warily, sensing her anger. He proceeded with extreme caution, as if treading through a field of land mines.
"Perhaps, we are denying-"
"She is denying herself! The world, even! She could be the greatest mage the world has ever known, and she throws it all away to be a commonplace warrior! All this work you and I put in to give her this type of opportunity!" Daine yelled, gesturing wildly to demonstrate the magnitude of Sarralyn's potential.
"You really think she could be that good?" Numair sighed, sitting his impossibly long body into one of the armchairs, petting a cat absently as he did so.
"The greatest," Daine said softly, her eyes shining. He took in this eye shining, and sighed again.
"That's it then. She'll be a mage," Numair agreed, and Daine squealed childishly and kissed him.
Inside her room, Sarralyn sat back from where she had held her ear up against the door to hear her parents not-really-whispered conversation. She knew she should have a sense of defeat; resolution to her fate as a mage. But there was some kind of unquenchable rebellion and defiance ingrained deep inside her being, and it was set alight.
Numair had been her steadfast ally throughout the constant siege of Daine's attempts to interest and influence her in sorcery. He'd told her "Enough," and had defended her right to choose her fate. But with his surrender, obviously aimed to reunite a divided household, had seen the end of her dreaming.
Dreaming was over. That was for children, and Sarralyn, in that moment when faced with the struggle of chasing said dreams in the face of those who should have supported her, decided she wasn't a child anymore. The time for dreaming had passed; the time for actual action had come. Sarralyn had grown up knowing Alanna the Lioness, Keladry of Mindelan, Queen Thayet, and even her own mother; the famous women who were known for defying all expectation and limits, and following their dreams no matter who or what stood in their way.
And Mithros be darned if Sarralyn Salmaín wouldn't do the same. After all, didn't her mother want Sarralyn to follow in her foot steps?
A/N: Love it? Hate it? Tell me! Review! (and check out my Chronicles of Narnia fanfic (:)