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scribblemynameThe current prompts are leaving me dull and uninspired. Seeking creative procrastination: ask me any question about how something works in a storyworld, a why that's been pestering you, or any backstory you just really want to know, and I'll commentfic it.
If that doesn't inspire you, how about a character (original or fandom) and something crazy you would dare them to do.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:08 am (UTC)Jhemet grinned at the faint incredulous uncertainty running through his voice. She tucked her feet back up under her dress and snuggled a little deeper into the couch before the great family hearth at Household Calai and took another sip of tea. At last, she stated primly, "'Judge not what you do not know.'" The translation was somewhat rough. She hadn't actually mastered the Vardin dialect, despite two years in the nation.
Etienne's incredulity increased. He shook his head at her and sat down next to her.
Jhemet had come down out of the mountains of Rothnarak two years ago when she was thirteen years old in search of her dream lover. He was inconveniently older than her by several years and she was thoroughly enjoying him finally taking some real notice of her. She was almost considered a woman now—another season 'til her sixteenth birthday, and he was a man, to say nothing of the fact that both of them were rothnen so she knew without doubt that he dreamed nightly of her the same way she dreamed of him.
"I know you," he grumbled.
She just shook her head and then froze as he reached out and brushed a lock of silky black hair behind her ear. He almost never touched her.
"I know dragons," he repeated, "and I know you." His green eyes were intense as he stared at her, demanding an answer with that gaze.
Jhemet wanted to laugh it off—it was her wont, but she found she could not. Instead, she sighed, put down her book, and handed him her teacup. Then she stood, turned around, and threw her hair out of the way so he could see the butterfly burn peeking out atop her dress in the back.
"I locked it in," she admitted, the first time she'd admitted as much to anyone.
Etienne reached out and brushed his fingers against the burn, startling her as their resonance flared and she felt the intensity of his touching her. But he didn't hold on long, just touched the burn and pulled his hand away. It was an old practice, using clomen plants to set the beat in their human blood.
"You're bound," he said softly.
She caught her breath and turned, realizing finally what it was that had made him hesitate around her. One of their kind, the gifteds, were considered rogue if there was none to bind them, and her people of Rothnarak had long denied the right of any to hinder their free usage of gifts. They were dragons—unmitigated and unapologetic fire. Except for her.
Etienne handed her the teacup and she took it. She could see the decisive set of his jaw and wondered what he was going to say.
"Tomorrow we open dance," he reminded her.
Slowly, Jhemet nodded. It was summerlight. It was time for the great Houses to gather and dance and renew their acquaintances.
He raised his eyebrows, clearly assuming she should have understood him. "I would open dance with you."
A shy girl would have caught her breath at the words. Jhemet could befriend a butterfly. She cradled her teacup closer and gave him her brightest laugh and smile. Then she settled back beside him, handed him her book, and commanded, "Read."
He shook his head at her but obeyed.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:17 am (UTC)Also not sure where these two fit into what I've read other than I recognize the name Calai.
And how would one say her name?
Yay, I feel so smart tonight. :P
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:31 am (UTC)Dragon is a giftset that usually involves radiant fire, but always fire. It's especially common in the Houses of Rothnarak because they bred for it. If you want to see the mindset of Rothnarak and why they are generally at odds with Vardin, then read "The Caller and the Dragon." This is, unfortunately, a rather typical interchange. Rothnarak felt that after kahtchen came into existence, baseline humans didn't really need to exist.
Etienne is the second child of Vilarach and Renaiven and the older brother of Rachel, Jean, and Lenee. His grandparents are Llereya and Cayden.
JH and ZH are variant standard spellings for the sound in Asia or the French J.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:50 am (UTC)Rothnarak are almost like Magneto and the brotherhood, then?
Okay. Good to know.
Right. I've seen Zh pronounced J, and I kind of figured that it was more J, but I wanted to be sure.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:37 am (UTC)1. There is the Queen's bond, which can be made by anyone. It hooks into the kahtchen nervous system and enables her to exert her will over their power. To a point. This is the sort of bond that makes the Vardin people feel safe. They know the Queen is also plain and will protect their interests. Guardians are bound once they have mastered their gifts sufficiently to be useful or thereabouts. Casal for example wanted to become a hunter before the Queen bound her because she wanted to be considered a hunter, not a householder.
2. Rothnen bonds. Bonds is a concept in addition to a link, so the word gets thrown about a bit, but rothnen are born resonant and can sense each other, can't not, so they are considered bonded but not bound until they choose each other and go through the whole process that changes the bond from desire and attention to oneness.
3. Gift bonds. Healers often create a temporary bond with the one they are healing, linking mind to mind or body to body in order to heal. Llereya has pathways from her mind to others and can simply follow a bond to physically find someone. It's her gift bond that enabled Cayden to find her on her birthday, not their resonance. Gifts all vary, so there are many, many variations on how these kinds of bonds work.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 03:56 am (UTC)I think I understand the gift bonds the best.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 02:58 pm (UTC)The rothnen bond at birth can be considered like a gift bond: it's a way two people are linked together. Being bound means being consciously tied to someone else in an irrevocable way. When rothnen solidify their bond and create a mental bond over the physical resonance, they're considered bound.
Jhemet is not bound to the Queen's will at this point, so that would normally make her a dangerous rogue who could do terrible things to the plain, but she bound herself by essentially surpressing the part of her gift that could hurt others.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 05:09 pm (UTC)Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 06:03 pm (UTC)Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-22 06:15 pm (UTC)I tend to write from insiders, and that's no help at all half the time.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-23 12:14 am (UTC)Then again, I have others where the explanation just refuses to come.
Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-23 12:49 am (UTC)Re: To Dance with a Dragon
Date: 2013-05-23 01:06 am (UTC)(Now I must admit... I did that with the Memory Collector when I realized there was too much unexplained history.)
Yeah, that's probably it. I've filled in the blanks for myself a few times, and I usually guess wrong.
Blood of Dragons [1/2]
Date: 2013-05-22 08:14 pm (UTC)A/N: Hope this helps. Will be happy to keep expounding. :grins:
Akena was a slender, black-haired shadow slipping through the House of Britak, down stone passageways and through the book-walled rooms of their Household's seat. She was sixteen years old and unbound. She had mastered not even one of her gifts and sometimes a tiny flame of wonder burned in her whether her parents felt shame at the fact.
Sixteen years to make a woman from a child. Sixteen years and she should have been a guardian. Sixteen years and she should have lowered her neck beneath the Queen's hand and be bound to service of her nation, Vardin.
Dusk made the House quiet. It suited Akena's purpose, for though she moved with grace and silence, there were others in the great families who needed no ears or eyes to sense her passage, for she was of the kahtchen, those gifted with various abilities: to see with their minds, to hear thought, to sense the passage of another kahtchen, to exert their will over common elements, to pass through time or space, to bring forth fire and not burn.
She paused above the corridor overlooking the training courts but did not step into it. Instead, she reached out with her kahtchen senses and felt the flicker of clomen, that element of giftedness, burning within a single body. One. Akena licked her lips in concentration, reached again—straining. Her father. Her father who was fire, who had bound himself under the name Burn, and who had named her born of flame.
She stepped out into the corridor, but turned out of it to a small side door leading to the stairs that went below. She would join him.
Burn, as every other guardian, trained with and without his gifts. He trained with fire, burning and leaving unburnt the things he wished. He trained with staff, sword, and his own hands as weapons in the dances which taught a guardian how to protect the plain.
Akena stayed in the shadow of an awning, where garden vine flowers trailed up the side of the House and she could watch her father before letting him know her presence. She had heard the stories since she was a little girl—stories of how the dragon households of the mountains of Rothnarak were once brothers in arms of the households of the valleys of Vardin and stories of the great wars fought between them over who had the right to live: those who could kill a plain human with a thought or those who were the untainted creation of God. And in between stood the guardians, the gifted kahtchen who had promised to keep both alive by sacrificing their own freedom to do so.
But Akena wasn’t bound. She was still a little girl for all she was a woman.
Like a shadow, she flew out from under the awning and her father met her, stroke for stroke. She lost herself in the training, in the idea that she too might one day be a guardian.
He broke off when she stumbled t he third time. She didn’t look up from the ground at him, kept her eyes on the rapidly darkening ground and heard her own breath ragged in her ears.
“Akena.”
Akena. A command. She scrabbled herself to a standing position, ignoring the pain of overworked muscles and screaming bruises. She brushed the shimmering black hair from her eyes and stood before her father. His own eyes stared back, almost hurt within them as he tried to read her.
Re: Blood of Dragons [2/3] - apparently I miscounted
Date: 2013-05-22 08:15 pm (UTC)She could not do as little, to burn only what was needed. Her hand clenched on his before she could stop herself.
He turned to her in surprise and realizing the futility of saying nothing, she went on while she was still brave.
“I’m a dragon, father,” she said, chin lifted, daring him to deny her. He was so very Vardin with his dark blonde hair, his mastery of his normal gifts, and she looked like her mother, Shaina, who was powerful enough to claim abstention, the right to simply abstain from using her gifts unless life and blood were at stake. Akena looked like a daughter of the mountains with her golden skin and black hair inherited from Shaina. She breathed fire. She felt the burning rolling out from under here skin whenever she felt anger, joy, anything. She sensed clomen as another heard sound. She was a dragon like the dragons of the mountains and unbound. By law, that made her rogue.
Her father’s eyes seemed to burn into her, even in this shadowed passageway. He reached out and brushed her long hair from her face himself, hand lingering gently. “You are my daughter,” he said at last. “You are a daughter of Britak.” He shook his head. “Even Alyón has dragons.” His birth House and one which produced the guardians most favored for national service by the Queen.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to be told that he too breathed fire when he was not feared by the very people he had sworn to protect. It wasn’t enough.
She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak and—
Voice sharpened, he silenced her. “Not all dragons are rogue.” He turned his back and continued on.
After a moment, she followed.
Mother found her in the morning. Akena stood leaning over her sword, palm pressed against the hilt, hilt pressed into the warm earth on the hill looking up toward the mountains. Akena did not have to turn to see Shaina Casal out of Britak, the most powerful kahtchen they had ever known, approach behind her. She could feel that hum of power reaching out to embrace her. They called her mother Universe, for she could destroy one.
“Mother,” Akena said softly, staring into the swirling sigils etched into her steel. “Am I wrong?”
Silence stretched. She had expected as much. Shaina never answered before thought. Akena had long practice in patience and she exercised it now, waiting until at last her mother came and settled on the ground beside her, traced one finger lightly over the symbols on her sword.
“When I was four, I glimmered,” Shaina began.
Akena turned sharply to listen, for her mother had never spoken of how she gained her gifts or control of them.
“Sometimes, the most powerful gifteds glimpse their power before it is theirs,” Shaina went on. “I did that. I touched my mother and she grew very pale and very sick. When I was older, I learned I could never touch anyone again without taking away their life.”
Akena knew it. She had touched her mother and been amazed at the strangeness of how it felt to be healed and drained at the same time.
“But—” Shaina stood, taking up the sword out of the earth and wielding it knowledgeably. “I also learned that mastery, hard won, is worth much.”
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-22 08:16 pm (UTC)Akena watched her mother take up the dance where Burn had left it the night before, watched as her mother put her sword back into her hand and bid Akena continue it again. So Akena did, until her muscles ached and her bones were weary enough for the sun to be sinking in the sky, though it was not yet noon. She questioned Shaina with her eyes for she had no words left to ask.
“I am also a dragon, daughter,” Shaina said.
It took Akena aback, but could hardly be denied. Shaina may have been born with one gift, the gift to use another’s life and strength and power, but it had granted her all else. Shaina was all gifts, even the dragons, and though she was the Abstention Line, she too guarded their Household and their nation. She had taught their sons and their daughters to guard, taught them the histories, taught her own daughter the laws of the Households of Vardin.
Akena lowered her eyes, accepting her mother’s word. She raised them again and stared into dragon fire in her mother’s eyes. She would guard, no matter who looked into her eyes and saw the enemy.
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-23 12:11 am (UTC)No... but maybe related somehow? Reread Crossing the Barrier, but still didn't know for sure.
She sounds a lot like... Rogue. Yet... she has mastery so that she doesn't kill.
She also sounds a bit like Ashen.
And everyone is afraid of the dragons?
I admit my brain's not with me again. Is this an earlier piece? Where does it fall in the timeline?
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-23 12:47 am (UTC)Later in the timeline, sometime immediately before or after the Opening of the Barrier to outsiders. Nobody really trusts the dragons. Mãenet usually are afraid of them.
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-23 01:10 am (UTC)Ah, like the supercharged Rogue, only a bit different. Cool.
The sword thing threw me off. I was thinking it must be earlier.
So... Dragons are kind of... outcasts even among the kahtchen?
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-23 03:04 am (UTC)Let's just say they can have personal relationships and respect, but the prejudice hasn't been all stamped out. Aysha's reaction to Rohth under pressure wasn't pretty. It's because they fight Rothnari all the time who bred for dragon. It's become common to call Rothnari dragons and that's when dragons began to be a perjorative.
Re: Blood of Dragons [3/3]
Date: 2013-05-23 03:23 am (UTC)