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2. Weaver
Tactician: Blue
She'd wanted him to be her teacher, but as the days pass after they set out, he finds himself more often the student instead. During the days she shows him how to hunt and track the Sacaen way, so that he might not succumb so easily to hunger in the future; at night they lie awake by the fire long after the moon has risen and she tells him stories of her people, the words spilling from her mouth without prompt -- awkwardly, at first, but building steadily into a rushing river of colors and memories.
She teaches him many things about the land. Here is where the phantom stallion runs with his herd, she'll say, or the roots of this flower are good for fevers, but this one makes the horses sick. And it occurs to him that it is no mere adventure he is on, no silly whim of an innocent girl, but something at once both simpler and yet grander, a journey with no beginning and no end.
One evening at dinner she presents him with a simple bracelet, woven in a colorful triangle pattern he has come to recognize as a standard Sacaen design.
"Blue is the color of Father Sky," she says. "And orange the color of Brother Sun." She pauses a little before continuing, a shy smile playing about her lips. "And green for our beloved plains."
And the thought drifts unbidden into his mind then, a half-realization -- Ah, how lonely this child has been -- and he smiles back, not unkindly, as he accepts the gift.
"Thank you," he says, and is surprised to find that he truly means it.
Kent: Green
The man they find accompanying Lady Lyndis -- the tactician Mark, as Lady Lyndis introduces him -- unnerves him at first. Mark speaks little, and only with Lady Lyndis, and he wraps his tall but scrawny figure ever in a ragged dark green cloak that hides his face and muffles his voice. The self-professed tactician is the exact opposite of Sain, who shares his colors but nothing else, and Kent thinks that perhaps this is what unsettles him. He has been traveling with Sain so long, that silence has become alien to him.
He tries to make conversation with the man, the first evening after their meeting, if only for the sake of politeness, and partly in attempt to ignore Sain's continued unabashed flirting with the Lady Lyndis, even now that they have confirmed her identity and status. He admits, also, to a modicum of curiosity. (Doesn't Lady Lyndis realize the impropriety of traveling alone with a strange man?)
And so he asks, "Where do you hail from, Mark? I cannot place your accent, and you do not seem Sacaen to me."
"I hail from no land, sir knight," comes the quiet reply. "I have been a wanderer for as long as I can remember, and can claim no country as mine."
But what kind of life is that? he wonders then. Solitary and empty and filled with long stretches of silence, perhaps. Where is the meaning in such a life, a life without responsibility, without duty, a life in which only one's own survival matters? That is no life, he thinks, but mere existence. And that seems to him, somehow, sad.
"Then you have no place to call home," he blurts out suddenly, and flushes when he realizes what he has said.
But before he can apologize, the other man says, "No, I do not. Is it so wrong?"
And there is no malice, no edge in his voice, only simple curiosity.
And because Kent is a knight, and knights do not lie, he admits, "I cannot say. It is strange to me."
"I see," says the tactician, fingering something tied about his wrist, and then there is nothing left to say.
(The next day, Kent asks Sain where his home lies -- for he realizes that despite all the years they have known each other, he has never asked -- and Sain looks at him strangely before answering cheerfully, "Why, home is where my heart leads! Wherever the beauties are, I go! Wherever my lovely ladies call home, I call home! Wherever --"
Kent hurriedly shuts him up before their companions overhear.)
Lyn: Red
Red is a color of much ambiguity among her people. Red for blood that is shed in death; red for blood shed in the birth of new life. Red for fire that burns and destroys; red for fire that cooks and warms. For some it is an ominous color; for others it is an auspicious color. But above all red is the color of fate, and fate is above all else fickle. And so the Sacaens prefer their blues and greens and browns, the colors of Sky and Earth, constant and eternal.
These thoughts and others run through her mind after she first meets the two knights in Bulgar. The first, the one with the looser tongue, is adorned in green, a good color. But the other -- she has never seen anyone in so much red (save for the bleeding, the dying), and so when she receives the news they bring her, she thinks only, Ah, thus is red the color of fate, for the news they bear is double-edged indeed
The green knight catches her staring at his companion in the days that follow. "Ah, you wound me!" he exclaims. "Am I not more interesting than my grumpy friend?"
"What?" she says, flustered. "What are you talking about?"
"You have been staring at him all day... I really cannot see why!"
She frowns, struggles for a suitable explanation, but in the end all that comes from her mouth is, "He is so red!"
It is the green knight's turn to stare, before he bursts into loud, helpless laughter that causes both the tactician and the red knight ahead to turn and look at them. The green knight waves cheerfully, trying to control his guffaws and his horse, who has been startled by the noise and his rider's sudden movement. The red knight glares before continuing down the road, followed by the tactician.
She feels her cheeks heat up, though what she said is true. From his near-red hair to his armor and his tall gelding and his saddle and the weave of his saddle blanket and his face when he is angry or embarrassed --
The green knight winks and leans over from atop his mount to whisper in her ear. "They call him the Crimson Knight nowadays, you know. Just as I am known as the gallant Emerald Knight! But when we were younger, and less experienced in the ways of the world..."
He pauses dramatically.
"They mostly called him Carrot-top."
After that, her thoughts no longer turn to fate and slaughter when she looks at the knight in red.
Sain: Threads
The night Lyndis receives the Sword of Spirits, she tells them all a story.
Sain doesn't remember much of it afterwards because he's paying more attention to her lovely voice and the play of shadows upon her delicate face than to what she's actually saying, but one thing in particular sticks.
The Weaver sits at her loom, and she picks out threads and weaves them into her carpet of our lives. We know not what threads she may choose, nor what patterns they shall create. But no matter what, the patterns she weaves are beautiful beyond words.
He finds himself wondering if the Mani Katti is the same -- a blade woven together from the great spirits of the past. But then he shakes his head. What a foolish notion!
He has never given much thought to fate -- indeed, does not believe in it, as often as he tells women that their meeting, their love is destined. He finds it romantic, very romantic, in fact, but little more.
He kind of likes this Weaver lady, though.
After all, a woman so talented must have beauty to match her skill.
Yeah, Sain just runs away with this series of ficlets. Heh. For those anime fans who are reading this, in my mind he's totally Tamaki from Ouran Host Club. XD
The Sacaen "mythology" that first makes an appearance here and will be expanded on a little more later, maybe, is drawn from my own thoughts and from various existing mythologies. (I think of Sacaens primarily as a mix between Mongolians and the plains-dwelling Native Americans, with a few minor Bedouin quirks.) The theme of weaving in mythology and folklore is a pretty common one -- here I was thinking primarily of the three weaving crones in Norse and Greek mythology (the Moirae a.k.a. the "Fates", and the Norns), and to a lesser extent the popular weaving/storytelling metaphor. If you're interested I suggest checking out the Wikipedia entry "Weaving (mythology)".
Yes, I am a mythology geek.