Fiaethe'tari (fadingleaves) wrote in caeleste, @ 2010-06-10 22:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | fiaethe yávlindelë, ilúvatar voronwé, the heir |
apparition (Ilúvatar)
An ebony box lay across her bed, which she had made herself not a half hour ago. Servants so often thought her observant eye was only capable of seeking points of criticism. She implied that she watched so that she might wring every drop of energy from the servants for her own room. Fiaethe never allowed anyone to think she was more an avid learner than a tyrant; the corners of her sheets were perfectly tucked. Her bed looked as if it were new. Fiaethe absently smoothed a wrinkle from the quilt before her fingers traced over the box and its platinum latches. She popped one latch, then the other, gently lifting the lid and bending over as she reached inside the blue velvet interior. Light danced across her wrists as she lifted the diadem, exposing the golden leaves, the curved silver branches, the citrine, peridot, the amber and ruby that hung in strands from the rim and wove themselves throughout the structure of the crown. Her fingers felt thin and tiny all of the sudden. Too many years had passed since she held this diadem.
This was only the second time in her existence that Fiaethe had lifted it herself from the box. Ordaezel was a shining country back then. And she was a foolish young monarch without blood or love to guide her. At that time, the world had been something to fight for all that it stole. She had lifted the crown herself, placed it on her own head, and started her reign as a petulant child. If not for war, if not for the persistence of grief, the Queen of Ordaezel might have destroyed her own country millenia before the Breaking.
Fiaethe shut the lid and she set the diadem gently upon the ebony, instead of placing it on her hair. A crown, she had come to learn, was only to be lifted by the hands of the low-born and set upon a monarch's brow by the honorable. It was one tradition that held great meaning in her life, and one she believed no person should ever alter.
Perhaps this was why Lord Ramga offended her so, beyond his taking of Kethsahlon and the remains of her dead lover.
She placed a cloth over the diadem and the box. Fiaethe moved away from the bed to look around the room that she used as her home for so many weeks. Having been blessed with good memory, Fiaethe had set about the work that servants busied themselves with in other parts of the estate. Fiaethe placed pieces of furniture back in the spots she originally found them. She placed all of her things neatly in the trunks they arrived in, leaving only a few dresses hanging in the closet. Somehow she could not fit them into anything without crushing the silk. Fiaethe had not bought many dresses since the death of Lord Thuinir and even fewer, if possible, since coming to live here. It did not matter too much, though. It gave the appearance that her foot was in the door.
Leaving was not something she wanted. Her chest ached with that truth. After speaking with Captain Baila, she knew she preferred the thousand suns of Lord Ilúvatar's temper to walking away from him, from this conflict. But she could not ignore the strong possibility that leaving would be a necessity. Perhaps the High Lord would not be able to abide her presence. Perhaps he would not trust her. It was one thing to be a Lady of a dead House. It was another to have been a ruler of a country. Fiaethe would have seen herself as a threat, if she stood in the High Lord's place. So she had to be ready.
Fiaethe chose a winter-colored dress after arriving in her room. Captain Baila left her to her own devices in a swift, yet respectful manner, and though she was rattled, Fiaethe began all of this preparation by digging through her closet. The dress was too fine to have belonged to the Lady Evarahl. The beaded collar alone might have cost three months profit from Lord Thuinir's merchant business; the train, which was the color of evening mist, had taken half a year for Gaeltalad's best seamstress to perfect. Fiaethe intended to wear this in King Eöl's presence, almost sixteen years ago now, had the meeting with Astarii's ambassador gone well enough. Had the Breaking never occurred. Had she not lost Alfirin, and Aeglos.
The bodice was not what made it difficult to draw breath; the fabric fit as well as it had then. Her hair's elaborate braid was not too tight. She did not feel ill. She leaned against the arm of a chair she had set out for the High Lord. She closed her eyes. Readiness wore deeply on her. Fiaethe did not know when Ilúvatar would arrive back at this estate. She did not know how long it would take for news to reach him. She did not know what the Captain would say, or if Ilúvatar would honor her request for an audience afterward.
Fiaethe felt she was translucent; a portrait of the dead and their possibilities.
The knock at her door was a harsh thing.