Drabble:110
When she was little, Lissa had seen her grandfather enclose his letters by branding them with the Dragomir seal. It bore the dragon insignia of their clan, wreathed in a band of fire with their motto etched into it. It always fascinated Lissa to watch her grandpa dip the seal in molten wax and then-carefully-stamp it across his letters. If Grandpere (that's what Lissa called him) felt particularly affectionate, sometimes he allowed her to seal his letters. Lissa would sit on his lap and very carefully lower the seal onto the envelope on his reading-desk, her eyebrows frowning with concentration, and stamp it, immediately looking towards Grandpere. He'd smile at her with approval and it would make Lissa's day.
After Grandpere's death, that seal went unused. Grandpa had bequeathed it to the next Dragomir heir, which was Eric. But Eric already had his own letter-seal, and using his dead parent's one seemed somewhat morbid, so he declined it. Andre, his natural heir, then should've been it's rightful owner, but he didn't want the antique heirloom either. He wanted his own seal when his time came, much like Eric, and he wanted it carved of the most exquisite mahogany and designed with gold. Eric laughingly promised to get Andre his dream-seal when he came of age, and gave Grandpere's seal to his secretary for safekeeping with the other family baubles.
Lissa wanted Grandpere's seal, but she knew it wasn't her place to either ask or own it. After all, she wasn't the Dragomir heir, Andre was. He'd seal his letters with their clan's stamp, not she. So she coveted it in secret, longing for it as she watched her father seal his letters with his own stamp, made of yew instead of oak-wood like his father's had been. Sometimes she helped her father brand his letters, and it gave her great pride to seal the letters just precisely, so that the wax never dripped onto the envelopes and the seal formed an exact circle. It made her happy too. But still, she missed Grandpere's seal.
After the accident claimed her family's lives, there were no more documents to be sealed by her, the then Dragomir heir, because not only was she underage, but she had no idea about her family's business or social dealings.
But once she came of age and came to Court, social invitations came streaming in, but Tatiana handled her social mingling, so Lissa didn't need to address them. Her father's secretary still handled their finances, so Lissa didn't even need to monitor them, except to sign on financial statements every now and then.
Then, Tatiana died and Lissa got elected queen, and letters of all sorts came pouring in. Her royal advisors briefed her that she'd be expected to use her house's insignia while signing official documents, and good lord, there were so many of them! Her secretaries talked designs and materials for making her own seal, maybe even modernizing the Dragomir seal a bit, but the only thing Lissa wanted then was her Grandpere's old seal. So, she sent word to her dad's loyal secretary, who personally-and tearfully-delivered not only Grandpere's seal, but also Eric's and Andre's intended, unused one (Andre had been only a few days off his 18th birthday when he'd died). Lissa had shed a few tears herself, clutching the relics of her family to her heart.
From the next day, she'd started using her Grandpa's old seal for the official works, using it proudly and carefully, getting pleasure just from the simple act of using it. When Jill returned to Court, Lissa had gifted the Dragomir princess with Eric's seal and saved Andre's one for the next Dragomir heir. But after Lissa's son was born and he came of age, much like his own mother, he gravitated towards his great-grandpa's seal, and remained adamant on using that seal for the rest of his life. In fact, it wasn't till a century later that one of the Dragomir descendants had accidentally came across Andre's seal while going through the family jewels, but by then the old seal was unusable, an ironic reminder of the one Dragomir heir who'd never gotten to perform his duties.
Thank you for reading. Please review! Cheers!
To yunacarman, Jared is just a figment of my imagination, a character I came up with to look at Dimitri and Rose's relationship from a different POV :p