(Here's some Heron & Atara, or as we like to call it in my corner, Flowerbird. This was basically for someone on wattpad. I take this as fun practice for writing Elane and Evangeline and others later on tbh but I also really like every character I can try out. Don't take me too seriously. Like..Please don't haha. Also my app keeps unpublishing the chapter ahh)
It's just a day in spring.
Not yet the dry, all embalming sunlight of a hot summer day that makes the air shimmer. Just a green day between soft swaying leaves, looking down to the water of the river from the terrace. Everything flows in sprouting petals around me. If I could, I'd take my shoes off to dig my feet into the ground. Just feeling the life underneath, a tickle of something I could make grow in the soil.
Something I could make appear, swinging between blades of grass.
It could be a lazy day, but there isn't a lazy day in my life or anyone else's. Especially not when summer is hiding behind the corner and the whole silver court is approaching Summerton again. And this summer it isn't just some small events and the usual bartering and discourse. It isn't just a ball and an evening dress to impress someone.
This one month it will be Queenstrial.
My father is in shambles since last week, and everywhere around the province things move. There are preparations to behold. Offical. Or private. Every silver house has its summer residence they have to stock up and move to.
Queenstrial.
Who doesn't want to be a princess?
We all want something from life, right? And we all wish for something, right?
But it isn't like I don't know. Even if I grew the thickest, highest tree with the most beautiful vines, or let the most deadly thorns slink out of the air.
Even if I look my best and are one of the prettiest girls that evening. Not the prettiest. There's some undisputed contention I'm not winning.
I'm just there to present. And maybe I'll marry someone watching from his seat in the garden. But I won't be a princess.
My parents have their hopes for me and a good marriage. But they aren't reaching for the stars. I don't think they can afford to try to make one of the princes marry me. Not the older one, at least.
And then...there's the war.
I look over the edge of the trees, the intricate patterns of branches clicking and moving. One grey feathered dove makes noises inside the breeze, before another answer from close by. It's soft coo's repeating.
A voice pulls me back from the treeline. I look back through the plants that grow over the stone of the terrace. Put in order and blooming in violet and yellow. Left and grown by my own hands. Because I liked the color. Over the edge of yellow, another more intense shade of green in swaying silk catches my eyes.
Green and black means Viper. They're early this year. I look at the book in my hands. The dusty words caught in a page I have read a million times. The floral print is a a little faded gold. You'd expect poetry or more words about flowers. In a sense, I suppose it is. It's easier not to tell people you read books about agriculture in your spare time.
I put it down slowly. It rests on the glass plate of the table.
The only people aware of my hiding spot are the security personnel and one or two servants. The rest hopefully never saw me pass to the forest on the terrace and my favourite spot in our home.
Now I don't look at the book or trees anymore, but still only at the arriving frames underneath , being greeted, moving on. I can see a greyish, bog dog from my vantage point on the terrace, a wagging tail disappearing.
"Are you hiding between your plants again?" A voice asks, not really mean, just a little snide.
For a moment, we both just look at each other. I see it in the way she looks back with green, narrow eyes. She looks at my sandals. Then her eyes wander quizzically over my dress right to my open hair. I look back down.
I've grown taller than her last summer already. She's slim and fit, but short. We made some jokes about it. Atara says people will think I am just a pillar in the palace when I don't speak up.
"Maybe," I answer and shrug. I don't tell her about three units of training, a dance lesson and sitting through a lecture. This is the first time since the sun has risen I have sat down alone on my own. "But it seems I didn't hide that good."
"Your hair stuck out," Atara brushes one of the petals away from her dress. It has sprinkled the silk in a cloud of yellow pollen. "Also, I know you like being here."
I watch her fingers a moment, sharp nails in black and green, one small ring sitting on her pinky. Then I look away, and a strand of my auburn hair gets caught in the breeze. It seems reddish in between all the contrasting shades of green.
"You're early this year."
Her face turns unreadable in the soft shade of a sunbeam that sprinkles over the terrace.
"It's because my cousin has been released from prison recently and my family keeps her close. They say they cannot send her to the capital with only her mother around in her current condition."
We all have at least one unruly relative or someone you'd definitely notice when you saw them in a crowd. Most of them have scandals attached to them, but they aren't accused of multiple cases of murder and have a history of open attacks. I heard she was released a while ago.
"She's here?" I feel stupid asking that, it almost sounds alarmed. Atara looks at me like she thinks the same. "Did you bring her with you?"
Atara shakes her head, and the way she pushes her eyebrows together slightly just says enough about the way something boggles her. "She doesn't leave her room in the Viper residence, don't worry. What did I miss in the province? Tell me something interesting happened."
I sit down on my chair again and offer the other next to me right to her. "You won't believe what happened last week. We were at a dinner party, and I was wearing-"
Atara isn't really listening. Her nails click on the glass in some thoughtful motion.
I put my hand over the faded golden floral imagery, palm stretched forward, but still enough distance between us.
"Are you alright?" I know the answer to that.
She huffs defiantly and chooses not to go into details that may ruin the illusion. Then she pulls her hand off the glass plate and on her lap.
I forgot how much I liked her. I forgot how good it is to spend time with someone you like. She doesn't expect me to bow and kneel and be courteous. She isn't exactly courteous herself when she puts her head next to mine and starts whispering. She smirks, she can mock you good. Sometimes her insults are growing out of her throat unnoticed and it takes a moment before you see the harm behind the question.
She makes me laugh.
She doesn't care that I instantly take off my shoes at every private chance given.
Most days we spend together are filled with air that gradually gets hotter the more the month moves on, and there's dresses, and there's jokes. And there's explicit hard hours of trying to stand still, to never stop talking like we are taught. And fight and move like we are taught. It's in my muscles by memory.
And then there's the dancing. I convince my mother that taking lessons together or working with the Viper daughter isn't a bad idea at all. She is an acquaintance since last year, after all, and we would be around each other anyway.
"I'm taller," I offer. "I lead."
"I'm fine with that," Atara only answers, a grey flush of something uncomfortable slipping up to the clasp of her pendant. A talon.
She really tries her best. She stands straight and she knows every step. But sometimes, she thinks too much. She doesn't step on my toes, it isn't that bad. She's still poised and graceful. Her dark hair slips out a low knot on her neck, and she doesn't hold my hand too tightly while we whirl. It's just something I see in her face.
But I can't bring myself to tell her that.
"I didn't know you could dance that well," I praise her instead and feel guilty. Because she squeezes my fingers in gratitude.
Later, when the music has turned off and we changed, running around my home in the midday sun, we sit below my window, patterns drawn over the edges of glass with vines and ivy.
"I'm so glad we train together, else I'd have to be alone with my cousin and my brother," Atara says. "My uncle pesters me to take her with me wherever I go."
"Will she go with you to the Hall of Sun? In that month before the ball?" I ask. Traditionally, it makes sense to get at least one female relative with you.
"I hope not," Atara answers, huffing angry. "And Loren can't stop being an idiot since he returned. I just want..."
We all want something, right? It's fine to want things.
I push my hair back behind my shoulders, flimsy reddish-brown strands curling slightly.
"You're always welcome to stay, I think, at least for the day," I offer. She looks at me with her head tilting. I feel obliged to add some sort of joke. "We're not running off or ruining reputations, we will be fine."
"Where'd you even go?" Atara's voice is low. "A forest?"
I smile. "Maybe I'd make my own city. My own forest."
She leans forward. "Would that make you more of a Queen or a Governor?"
"I don't know." I draw my legs up, to my body, holding them. Hugging myself. "But I do know I would take you with me sorely for the inner relations, we wouldn't want war with the squirrels and birds."
And for the first time since I have known her, she doesn't smirk. She just smiles, green eyes blinking at me and the light from the window. I don't think I've ever seen anything more fragile than Atara Viper genuinely smiling. And I can feel roots of unborn trees in the ground and see sprouting, shaking branches and leaves.
She raises the doves from the trees the next time we sit on the terrace. They flutter too low over my mother's head and make her yell with something uncomposed and high pitched. The wind below the wings catches in our hair and the wings are deafening until the flight has passed. I draw up my shoulders and hide my face behind my cup so I don't laugh.
So much for staying around the Welle residence. But it isn't as if I don't see her every day afterwards.
I see Atara Viper every day for almost two months.
And she never talks about anyone else.
Even if I don't have that many friends, I still have somewhat social relations. Or used to, before everyone started buzzing around and bolting in panic and expectations.
I don't think Atara has friends. If she is friends with some of the others, she never talks good about them. We gossip about the other girls sometimes. But that is all the mention they earn.
It's training all day. Talking and fighting with her family. Loren and Daliah, her father and her uncle.
"We established I'd build a woodland society," I tell her in a silent moment, just the two of us up on the terrace, escaping the day. The water behind the treeline rushes. I just realized I never showed her the boats. Especially not the big golden one. "What about you?"
Everyone wants something, right?
"I just need to make my family look good next month," Atara shrugs it off. "What else does it matter? Do you think you'll marry next year? Some of the other girls are already deep in the betrothals. Even my cousin has a fiance, and she is old."
I answer with the same sort of shrug. "I guess I'll marry whoever helps the standing of my family one day."
Atara only hums once. The sun reflects on the talon clasped around her neck, and it paints a soft line along her clavicle and shoulder showing under her dress. I look away.
"Did you get that invitation? For august?"
"The fight on the first of friday? Yes, of course, I'll come with you. It's part of my duty, you could say."
Atara watches the birds and whatever creature catches her keen eyes in the sky. I watch her watch them. Just a while. The silence isn't angry. Nor very unpleasant. Just more thoughtful than most people would probably give her or me credit for.
"Do you want to see the boats?" I stretch out my hand. "I just realized we've never been down by the water."
This time, she doesn't pull her hand away and under the table. She simply takes my hand. It's soft and warm and firm. And I don't want to let go.