[Wh- He said that he smelled them!!! While holding Claude’s (Khalid’s) freshly laundered shirt! At her house! Of course she assumed he meant intimately!!! After all, she can smell… Well, she couldn’t smell… that two people, precisely those two, had been intimate, but she could smell… sex… and then also the scent of others, so usually one just… assumed… That’s part of why she’d left Akua’s so early in the morning after That Night, afraid to be detected by smell by those she might not know capable and-
And anyway- !
He says he wouldn’t accept it. If she had to twist herself to be accepted, or to be loved, and she looks… pensive for a moment. Not about Claude. About… other things. About her past, too. The weapon she had forged herself into in order to survive in the world she’d been born into. It was good she had, surely, better to be steel than a flower crushed underfoot, but…
But Set knew better than some, than most. The threats that Hayame had lived her whole life under. What she’d seen happen to the women around her for a single mistake, a single mistake of birth. The fate that had awaited her. If she felt even the first hint of it… of fingers ripping her hair, of feeling cornered, powerless, of being treated like… like the barely-different-from-a-horse that she had been… She would run, and likely leave blood in her wake. Hurt, hurt, too, and a sure belief that she was stupid to ever have thought she might be able to have something good, but…
She wouldn’t tolerate it. … She wouldn’t, right?]
… He treats me well.
[Too well, she sometimes thought. She should say that. He deserved her saying that, even if she can’t say it without her cheeks ruddy and her lips pursed strangely. Set is right, though, about why she hadn’t told anyone and kept it secret. It had nothing to do with how much she trusted anyone, only some to do with how she feared it might affect her reputation (a warrior ruined by softness) and his (a diplomat arguing for peace bedding one of Meridian’s most vocally hard-line members), and so much to do with…
Not knowing how she felt. And if she didn’t know… How she could tell anyone? How could she say what this was? Her world… a woman having sex was either married or a whore. There was no concept of “dating”, and courting was ritual and exchanging wealth wi to intimacy dangled as the reward after sale, and so this… this thing where a man claimed he loved her and instead of saying she loved him back she said “you are a fool”…
She looks taken aback. Just to hear something other people must think is normal. “I’m happy for you.” She… she wanted to be happy for Set, for Akua, for Liem, for Yuri, for Gray… She’d told him that, hadn’t she, on the banks of that pond where they lay exhausted, his shade left temporarily behind. She didn’t know what form that would take, but she wanted it. Even so… other people weren’t supposed to say it to her. Finally, she remembers how to move again. She takes Claude’s shirt gently from Set’s hands, and puts it in her basket. Muttering, trying to be… fun, despite being obviously touched by his words…]
Set, I am…
We are… far too sober for this sort of talk, are we not?
[She’ll put the laundry in. And they can… they can go where he wants to show her? Hopefully… somewhere, eventually, that does have strong liquor.]
no subject
And anyway- !
He says he wouldn’t accept it. If she had to twist herself to be accepted, or to be loved, and she looks… pensive for a moment. Not about Claude. About… other things. About her past, too. The weapon she had forged herself into in order to survive in the world she’d been born into. It was good she had, surely, better to be steel than a flower crushed underfoot, but…
But Set knew better than some, than most. The threats that Hayame had lived her whole life under. What she’d seen happen to the women around her for a single mistake, a single mistake of birth. The fate that had awaited her. If she felt even the first hint of it… of fingers ripping her hair, of feeling cornered, powerless, of being treated like… like the barely-different-from-a-horse that she had been… She would run, and likely leave blood in her wake. Hurt, hurt, too, and a sure belief that she was stupid to ever have thought she might be able to have something good, but…
She wouldn’t tolerate it. … She wouldn’t, right?]
… He treats me well.
[Too well, she sometimes thought. She should say that. He deserved her saying that, even if she can’t say it without her cheeks ruddy and her lips pursed strangely. Set is right, though, about why she hadn’t told anyone and kept it secret. It had nothing to do with how much she trusted anyone, only some to do with how she feared it might affect her reputation (a warrior ruined by softness) and his (a diplomat arguing for peace bedding one of Meridian’s most vocally hard-line members), and so much to do with…
Not knowing how she felt. And if she didn’t know… How she could tell anyone? How could she say what this was? Her world… a woman having sex was either married or a whore. There was no concept of “dating”, and courting was ritual and exchanging wealth wi to intimacy dangled as the reward after sale, and so this… this thing where a man claimed he loved her and instead of saying she loved him back she said “you are a fool”…
She looks taken aback. Just to hear something other people must think is normal. “I’m happy for you.” She… she wanted to be happy for Set, for Akua, for Liem, for Yuri, for Gray… She’d told him that, hadn’t she, on the banks of that pond where they lay exhausted, his shade left temporarily behind. She didn’t know what form that would take, but she wanted it. Even so… other people weren’t supposed to say it to her. Finally, she remembers how to move again. She takes Claude’s shirt gently from Set’s hands, and puts it in her basket. Muttering, trying to be… fun, despite being obviously touched by his words…]
Set, I am…
We are… far too sober for this sort of talk, are we not?
[She’ll put the laundry in. And they can… they can go where he wants to show her? Hopefully… somewhere, eventually, that does have strong liquor.]