heavy is the crown: The first inkling I had of something being wrong was when I woke up to a child's grin over my face and a knife stabbing down on my eyes. The second inkling I had was when my terror's peak (because was a kid really about to kill me what the hell was going on oh no oh fuck oh shit) coincided with my eyes bursting into unnaturally red fire.
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/ / Age: 4
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The blackboard I'd glimpsed was hung on the wall behind a lecturer's lectern. Slightly above it was suspended an analog clock, curiously plastic. This was the wall to the left of the doorway, and the room itself was pretty small. Around the size of my bedroom, roughly. Here was a room more meant for tutoring than teaching, and it showed.
There were only two teenager-sized desks and chairs, carved out of smooth, pale tan wood. They faced the blackboard and lectern, and were slightly behind the doorway. A notebook - a modern, if fancy one, with thick unlabeled covers and unlined even paper - an eraser, a pencil, and a hand sharpener were already neatly set up on each desk. The pencils were those 'natural' looking ones with no painted coat or eraser, just a pole of lead embedded in a larger pole of smoothly shaven wood. But the eraser and hand sharpener were definitely modern, being made of white rubber and plain plastic, although devoid of any branding labels. The rest of the room was taken up by bookshelves of hardcover books I longed to examine, but couldn't just yet.
Belphegor automatically bee-lined for the left set-up with a white notebook and sharpener, and I, slinking in behind, assumed possession of the right set-up with a black notebook and sharpener, apparently color-coded by our shirts (and maybe crowns, not that I was wearing mine today).
The teacher was an impatient-looking person with premature gray hairs - that matched their gray eyes - threaded throughout their wavy sand-blonde bob. They had on no hat, but clipped back their side-parted bangs with an unadorned metal hair clip. It was difficult to say what their clothes were like, beyond 'brightly covered' and 'billowing'. It was mostly obscured by the lectern, anyway. Either robes, or a loose shirt and voluminous bottoms that lended themselves equally to the interpretation of 'pants' and 'skirt'.
They left the door open, maybe for more air; the only window in the room was also half-open, though it was glass-paned and framed by gauzy curtains.
They didn't volunteer a name - with the expectation that we already knew by now, after presumably having sat through lessons for a year or so already - and jumped straight into lecturing once we settled into our seats, running over a rehash of what had been taught yesterday: a lot of third grade-level maths and spelling. Much too advanced for a typical 4-year-old, but decent enough at giving me an expectant baseline for the supposedly genius twins.
Their tone was one of somebody who didn't quite care enough about their job to muster up hate for it.
"Now, any questions before we move on to the day's curriculum?" they barked, eyes lidded and clearly not expecting much.
Well, if they're offering.
I raised my hand. "Teacher?"
They arched an eyebrow, gesturing impatiently for me to go on, so that form of address was fine.
"This is kind of off-topic, but when I asked th-" I cut myself off from saying 'the queen', quickly changing words. "-my mother earlier about the name of the kingdom, she didn't seem to know."
The teacher scoffed, crossing their arms. It was a motion that did interesting things to the fabric draping over said limbs, which fluttered in the air for a full second before primly deciding to land in the folds that they did. "Well, she wouldn't, would she? The queen was kingdom-born. Why would she care? The name of our kingdom is one of those… dusty historical factoids that the ordinary citizen can pretty easily live without ever knowing. Now, the king would have to know, because he's a ruler with royal blood. And as a royal educator… I happen to know as well."
There was a pause for breath before they briskly continued in sarcastically cutting tones, "So now I also know that you clearly weren't paying attention in class last month when I specifically went over how the Kingdom of Storms is named for the founding and currently in-power family, maytheyruleeternally, whose family crest was a burning red stormcloud."
Another pause, this time for a head-tilted contemplation. "Although," they allowed begrudgingly, "if you listen to the more… unsatisfied commoners gossip, there's certainly several less official names in unpopular circulated use." They personally seemed disdainful of said alternative names, and didn't give any examples.
"No more questions, brat A," they preemptively stopped me with a severe frown upon seeing my hand raise again, "those can wait until it's history rotation again on Friday."
It was, according the neatly marked out chalk words on the blackboard, currently the 26th of June and a Tuesday.
So I'd nearly been murdered on a Monday, good to know. Garfield was right about the most dreadful day of the week.
I nodded meekly and lowered my hand, properly scolded. Belphegor chimed in on the peanut gallery with a snide snicker, with the schadenfreude all children in a classroom feel at a classmate being called out by the teacher.
Pay attention to the words, my brain scolded.
Which words?
All of them!
So I split my attention between rereading the chalked up words and listening to the teacher's college-style lecture on the the water cycle, where we apparently were supposed to write down our own notes for personal study.
… ?
They're in English! my brain, exasperated, revealed.
And so they were. I hadn't really paid particular notice to this before, this being my first time seeing written words through Rasiel's eyes, and having automatically translated meaning from reading English words, but yes, the words were in English and the date was in Arabic numbers. There wasn't enough of a sample for me to determine time period, but what spelling I did see appeared perfectly modern, for what it was worth in concerns to calendar terms.
Come to think of it… I'd been speaking instinctively, but the words had been English, too, so I hadn't found anything strange. I'd been hearing English, as well. Both output and input, upon further reflection, were oddly accented in a way I couldn't place exactly beyond 'not-identifiably-American-dialects' and 'not-so-accented-I-can't-easily-understand'. I hadn't taught or studied faking accents, although I'd had a friend-of-a-friend who did, and I was a little regretful how I hadn't paid attention to her drunken expositions on the subject when we met up at bar parties.
My primary language had carried over, then. Had my others?
On further thought, I was pleased to discover I hadn't lost any of my linguistic skills in the- life transfer (?). They hadn't been any of the blurred, vague memory areas. I was as fluent in Mandarin as I'd always been, which was pretty fluent, and as familiar in Spanish as I'd always been, which was rather decent for having only learned from classes, videos, and Duolingo. I'd always meant to practice it conversationally more with native speakers, but had never gotten around to making time for that before whatever it was that happened, happened.
This concluded, I refocused entirely on the lecture. I didn't really need to write down notes for this - it'd be kind of shameful if I did need to - but I did so anyway, to both further my new impression of Rasiel as a faithful student and to practice my handwriting with a new hand.
Gratifyingly, once I paid conscious attention to it, Rasiel was right-hand dominant. That would make retraining myself for ambidextrousness a lot easier, considering I had the memory of starting off left-hand dominant already. It would just take some reinforcing to meld mind memory with muscle memory, and having a young and flexible body should help - or so I hoped, though of course I didn't start trying that out in the classroom. It might give off the sense that I was fooling around, which a lifelong urge to seek approval from authority figures felt distinctly horrified at.
Anyway, letting the teacher's words (they'd moved onto the characteristics of life) just kind of sink into me gave me plenty of time to refine my dexterity, and also snoop in the past pages of Rasiel's notebook.
Fortunately, I quickly got the hand of it, pun not intended. Unfortunately, this notebook was rather new, containing only massive suspicious ink stains I credited to Belphegor, and then one or two pages of fractions and simple problems for the last four letters of PEMDAS. Of uncertain fortunateness, my handwriting was distinctly different from Rasiel's; not quite my narrow, neat printing as an adult, but my reflexive shift in grip rendered it more orderly than like Rasiel's looser scrawls.
All in all, class time felt mildly productive but mostly jokingly easy.
The hardest part wasn't giving the answers the teacher was looking for without falling into lethargy - the hardest part was staying calm and not reacting to Belphegor's constant petty harrassments, like flicking crumpled up balls of paper at my hair, bumping my desk, and once, emptying his full sharpener stash of pencil shavings onto my lap.
This was all done in plain view. I looked pleadingly at the teacher, who appeared cognizant but unmoved, like an impassive, indifferent idol idly noting a ritual sacrifice.
The less I reacted, the more he escalated in an attempt to provoke a reaction, until finally, about two hours in (we'd arrived at 7:53) I had to do something. I leaned over and issued a whispery threat to cancel the race if he continued. He frowned but acquiesced, subsiding. I brushed off the last bits of wood shaving from my trousers, glad and a little guilty that I probably wasn't going to be the one cleaning them up.
The teacher arched an eyebrow at the exchange, never once stopping their steady drone.
Lunch couldn't come fast enough.
At 11:30, they glanced at the clock and yawned. From the depths of their lectern shelf, a napkin-covered basket was unearthed and set on top of the lectern, and a small stool was dragged out. The teacher handed a napkin to each of us, then gave us each a rather large sandwich (chicken, tomato, spinach, and… mayonnaise?) and a capped glass bottle of milk, before sitting back on their stool, unfolding a napkin on their lap, and taking out their own, even larger sandwich and bottle of…
I chose to think it was cider, and not its barley-descended cousin. A responsible educator would never drink even a light intoxicant in the presence of children, right?
… Then again, this was assuming that they were a responsible educator, or even that the same standards of job security applied in the- Kingdom of Storms.
I assumed the kitchens had already prepared all of this beforehand, judging by the moist sweat on the cool bottle and the conclusion that this was way too much effort for the teacher to undergo personally. Having only eaten half of my breakfast, I heartily fell upon the modest feast, intensely aware of Belphegor's stare on me as I ate. I couldn't see it, but he sure made sure I could feel it. His foot tapped an impatient beat against the stone floor, even as he chugged down his own bottle and downed his own sandwich.
Upon tentatively but thirstily tasting the milk, I was surprised to find I enjoyed it. Rather, Rasiel's taste buds enjoyed it, and his dry throat definitely thanked me.
The second I set down the bottle, Belphegor, who'd finished before me - I'd taken care to eat slower for worry of digestion problems when running with food just sloshing about - was already at the door, itching to take off. I joined him, more sedate in composure, and hiding my nerves. Competition of any kind always got my heart beating a little too fast.
"Ushishishi~… Ready, set, go-"
He was off, and so was I.
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I ran, but carefully paced myself. At first I kept up with Belphegor, but as we drew closer to the dining hall doors, I started putting down my feet a little slower and heavier. Subtly, I lagged behind more and more as the distance we still had to go became less and less. In an effort to not arouse suspicion, I did make sure to not lag too much; so by the end of the race, Belphegor was still in my sight, and it only took a few more seconds for me to catch up to me at the door where he'd already finished smacking the open doorframe.
"Good race," I tried to say with a smile, walking up to congratulate him. His back was to me, since he was still facing the doorframe. Naturally, I couldn't read his expression. But he'd won, so he should be happy, right?
I was promptly talked over (and almost bowled over) by a furious Belphegor who reached up to grab me by the unbuttoned shirt collar and shake me slightly, in synch with the shakiness of his shoulders from pent-up aggression.
I underestimated his intellect in my appeal to his maturity. If he wasn't a 4-year-old genius, that probably would've slid right past him. But, well. He was.
(It was kind of refreshing, out of context. Not many children ended up with as many smarts as they did family inheritance. In context, I would've eagerly settled at that moment for Belphegor being a happy if average child whose greatest issue were abandonment issues from distant parents.)
"Stop talking down to me!" he screamed, temper completely lost. Fortunately, no spittle. A surprise, really, considering how slobbery humans generally were until they learned fine precision restraint of their bodily excretions. A few heavy breaths in silence seemed to calm him down enough to shift from 'shouting in my face' to simply 'ranting in my face', which was still a notch above 'ranting at the breakfast table.'
"I've never beaten you in a race! I know you let me win Siel! I know you, Siel, and that was you letting me win! As if I can't tell when my twin is purposefully dragging behind! You just think I can't win unless you let me, huh? Admit it! You don't! Well, you're wrong! Race me again!" Belphegor demanded hotly.
His shoulders trembled for a second longer, before he jerked his hands away from me like they burned. Instead, he turned his head to the side and bit out something in a low, irate mutter that sounded oddly like 'kaching', visibly straining to regain his metaphysical grip.
I looked at him helplessly, uncertain if I was bullying a 4-year-old or if I was being bullied by a 4-year-old. One of those options was certainly worse, but in the crux of the moment I couldn't quite tell which.
"It's {Si} C," I corrected weakly, to give my frantic brain some breathing space in its search for a way out of this. My hands busied themselves with the all-important task of fiddling with the ends of my neckerchief and smoothing down my crinkled collar. "And-"
Denying I'd let him win was a straight up lie.
"-I don't think you can't win unless I let you," I flimsily finished, with the crushing sense that I was just making it all worse.
What help are you, brain!? Abandoning me in my minute of need!?
He- didn't glare, because that needed visible eyes, but he scowled fiercely at me. I mentally added on the eyes.
"Race me again," he insisted flatly, smile no longer even forced.
Brain, thou has failed me. Failsafe verbal flailing, engage. "I didn't mean to- make you feel like I was condescending in any way. I just wanted to try and fix-"
"I don't care, race me again, and this time do it like you mean it, Siel," Belphegor ground out, chin up in stubborn defiance.
The squeaky high pitch wasn't even very lightly mildly amusing, now.
I still held back.
"Siel- {C}, don't you want to be a better sibling~? Race me."
It was blatant, shameless, completely transparent manipulation.
I folded miserably, knowing that we weren't getting anywhere like this anyway. Break was going to end soon anyway. At least this way, maybe he'd be encouraged to separate Siel and {C}, if only because he thought I'd be more amenable when addressed with the latter. It was a useful misconception I didn't mind enabling.
"Alright, I'll race you back."
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Diplomacy check: natural one, critical failure.
Anachronisms, language, possible ingrained censorship, oh my! Just keep in mind C has no idea about their setting (their best guess is a fantasy world), and has to take the information they're given at face value, for now. There will be an explanation for all this eventually (that filler/lore arc I mentioned earlier, and several steps [two arcs' worth] of foreshadowing along the way.)
I'm fitting a lot into this arc for just one day, but there'll be a timeskip of a few months for the next arc. I do still need more name suggestions (but thank you, fernandfeather) for the king and queen, before I write the end of arc 'bonus content' with alt. PoVs of events. I'm also taking scene suggestions for that, by the way.
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[Profile: Chapter Seven
Name: Rasiel of the Red Storm
Nationality: Kingdom of Storms; The Kingdom; The [Classified] Kingdom …?
Language(s): English; Mandarin; Spanish; …?
Nickname(s): Siel; Angel Child; Razzy; Si/{C}; Brat A; …?
Likes: Detail; Preparedness; Milk; ...?
Dislikes: Enabling Bad Habits; Outright Lying; Dogs; ...?
Notes: - Default tone is calm and calming. Is not always aware of how this can be taken.
- Scares the maids (+ staff). Not the teacher.
- Burgeoning paranoia (?).
- Good memory.
- Ambidextrous (?).
- Neat, narrow, print-like handwriting.
- …?]
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[Next Chapter Preview:]
The teacher told me to wait a minute after class.
I did, and they spent that minute staring at me in critical silence, eyes narrowed.
Patiently, I kept still and didn't fidget. I was familiar with the 'silent pressure' scare tactic. I didn't use it much myself, preferring the gentler 'inviting expectation' form of nonverbal coaxing, but some of my colleagues swore by it for the more tenacious troublemakers.
