Feminine Strength is Still Strength

It's a powerful thing, that thing called love. I have seen the remarkable power of women to feel compassion, to love the unlovable, to care for someone else instead of something other than ourselves more than ourselves called sentiment, weak, or derivative in nature. With all due respect, I disagree.

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Additionally, I've seen the story bashed because Calvin (her future love interest) is so intuitive, Charles Wallace (her younger brother) is an obvious and precocious genius, and her father is so wise and able, while the only part of the story she gets (besides some decent intelligence that she doesn't yet believe in) is the ability to love Charles Wallace.

Whoa. Slow down. What do you mean all she gets? Have you ever tried to love your sibling when they are being a jerk? Have you ever seen your brother go off the deep end and realized you had to be there for them, be the one to pull them back from the brink? Do you have any clue how hard that is? I've been there. For real. It's hard.

Then there's the follow up book, A Wind in the Door. Meg accomplished that task last time, but now she has to understand it, the power of her love, her anger, her hate. Have you ever truly loved your enemy? Someone who has hurt not only you, but somebody else you hold dear. It doesn't really matter in that moment if they have done good things. We blind ourselves to those or wish to. We would rather hate, be angry, hold that grudge. It is beautiful to see the ability to overcome that portrayed as a good thing and as a strength. Meg is no weak female protagonist. She's strong because she can conquer herself and love anyway.

This is strength and power and something amazing regardless of gender, and it matters to me.

Love. matters.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

The Commerce of Hearts

THE COMMERCE OF HEARTS
Liana Mir

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Summary: Ah, have mercy on us, powers, we who deal in the commerce of hearts. Fantasy flash fiction of Breath

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The woman who enters my shop is young in body, but she is not young. I have seen battle; I know the scarred.

Her eyes are pale, wounded, weary. She moves as though every muscle in her body aches and glances away from the delicately carved stone bottles nestled among swaths of fine fabrics. Instead, her gaze lingers on the circular glass slabs set beside with gently calligraphed names: vredé, inul, hoshult. Selflessness, duty, peace. Fingers glimmer out to touch, then rapidly withdraw.

“You have been to a collector before?” I ask the needless question, needless as I am Mavren, a collector, and recognize the faces of those I have laid waste.

Her gaze flits upward, shuddering past the old uniform of an Enforcer, that remnant of my former life as the hands and will of the King, then onto my face. There it stays.

She strides forward abruptly in a rustle of coarse cloth and sets her small bag of yet coarser weave beside the one tilted stool I retain, where she proceeds to sit. Her eyelids drift shut. “Leave the duty, she says.

Ah, have mercy on us, powers, we who deal in the commerce of hearts.

Her clothes, almost more slender than she, betray her humble means, Her figure declares her motherhood, and her eyes are the eyes of the heartless, lacking much of the spark of humanity. We are much alike in that.

My palm closes neatly over the skin above her heart. With my flesh, I feel the sharpness of her intake of breath, but with my soul, I feel the acrid potency of her love. She has children who need food and clothing and shelter in these hard days. She has a husband whose work does not bring enough to give it to them. I hunt through the welter of emotion, its vibrancy, and little wonder she is wounded. She has sold her fear, resentment, joy, gratitude, wonder—everything. Everything but duty, love, and the pain they cause her.

I could take the duty. It would fetch a handsome price, enough to keep her a few months before she swept the path to a Collector again. I leave it, yea powers, I leave it.

Love. Pure, undiluted, potent love. It warms my soul and fills me, then I step away and breathe it out into a bottle, stopper it with a black clay infused with implacable.

The mother’s eyes open and are cold, but she has a duty to her family and will care for them. She chose well.

I pay her enough to provide for a family of five for more than a year, long enough to bring new work or much enough to educate the  children to care for themselves. She nods her head and walks past the shelves of hearts, unheeding and uncaring when hers joins them.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.