A/N: LJ tammydrabbles prompt 14: "weapon of choice"
Words: 337
Characters: Sarralyn & Rikash
A little riff on growing up, first love, feeling misunderstood, and how girls and boys mature at different rates.


Ringing the Changes

Twelve-year-old Rikash, sprawled on his belly on Sarralyn's bed, watches his sister dress for a Midwinter party. He is on holiday from the Royal University; she has been visiting some friend or other, an invitation their parents didn't much like but didn't quite dare refuse.

She is different than she used to be, when they were children, and Rikash isn't sure what to make of some of the changes.

Sarra never used to spend so much time in front of the mirror, for one thing. "You look pretty," he ventures, and she turns to glare at him.

"Pretty just won't do, I'm afraid," she says, mocking. "The daughters of the noble houses are being presented to the King and Queen tonight."

She turns back to the mirror, leaving her brother more puzzled than before. "You aren't being presented, are you?" he asks.

Sarra's tone grows even more scathing: "Of course not. Don't be so stupid."

Rikash is confused and hurt, and he has never been good at hiding his feelings. She sees his face in the mirror, and suddenly her expression softens—just a little. "We don't have noble blood," she explains, abandoning the mirror to perch next to him on the bed. He rolls over and looks up at her face—their father's glossy black hair and long nose, their mother's large, expressive blue-grey eyes—and sees something there that he has never associated with his sister: a kind of desperation.

"We don't have noble blood," Sarra repeats, "so if I want L—if I want young men to notice me, notice me enough to defy their parents' wishes, I need something else, something better."

And she hops down from the bed, strikes a dramatic pose that emphasizes her ever-so-slightly-too-revealing neckline, and leans toward her brother with what a slightly older boy would easily recognize as a come-hither look in her eyes.

"This," she murmurs huskily, "is my weapon of choice this evening. What do you think, little brother?"

Rikash sits up abruptly, flushing scarlet, and flees.