Narrative: What We Were Who: Azabeth Kordura (age 7), Lelahai Kordura (age 7) Where: The country estate of Arlessa Valeré Kordura When: 2nd week Frumentum, 9:28 Dragon Summary: Azabeth meets her new sister for the first time. Rating: G. Also C for Cute.
It was.... big.
That was the first impression Az got as she stuck her head out of the side of the nice Arlessa-lady's carriage and saw the Bannorn for the first time; it was so wide and open that she felt very small indeed, and had to hide in the corner of the coach next to Valeré's skirts and shut her eyes and cover her ears with her hands, before her heart would cease beating like a drum. She was born to Denerim, to crowded streets and close quarters, and the quiet was so loud, what were all those tweeting noises like mice rattling around the inside of her skull! The Arlessa had assured her that they were just birds, that the Bannorn was just open plain and forest, and could not harm her - but she missed the city. Her mother had taken Valeré's gold and handed off her redheaded daughter without qualm, and that did not hurt, but the thought that she might never see Denerim again did.
She missed Lalin, her one true friend, and promised herself that she would not cry. La would be upset if she knew that Az had been crying.
The Arlessa's country estate was a massive thing - the entire Alienage could have fit inside it, Az thought - and she felt even smaller the closer they drew to it; when they reached the gates and the carriage was taken, servants scrambled underfoot to attend to the Arlessa's every whim, and Azabeth's by extension. It was all she could do to keep her head down and cling to Valeré, hands fisted in the woman's skirts, her eyes downcast and mouth shut, focused on the dirt beneath her feet. It was a strange rusty colour, like someone had buried a graveyard full of swords in the earth and allowed them all to go to rust -
"Azabeth," Valeré said, and Az snapped her gaze upward at her prompting, "this is Lelahai. Lelahai, this is Azabeth, your new sister."
Lelahai was picture-perfect on the front steps of the estate, like something out of the paintings in a storybook. They were of a height, with Az slightly taller, but there the resemblance ended, for Lelahai was like a doll, her blonde hair coiffed and curled, her blue eyes enormous in a pale and slightly plump face, her dress immaculate - a cobalt cousin to Valeré's travel-gown, the bodice and hem extensively embroidered, the fabric unimaginably luxurious. Az longed to touch it, to run her hands across it, to revel in the texture - such a gown would have fed Lalin and their circle of friends for a month, and Az had never had the chance to touch a garment that hadn't worn shiny and translucent through the nap. By contrast, Azabeth herself was filthy from head to foot, smelling of horses and hay and her brown shorts and tunic oversized and covered in dirt, her hair a bird's nest, frame gaunt.
The Princess and the Pauper, indeed.
And then Lelahai smiled like the sun rising, and she came forward to take her hand, singing out in tones that were just as dulcet and cultured as Valeré, "Well, don't just stand there, silly! Come on!"
Azabeth went. What choice did she have? Lelahai was clearly a highborn lady, like her mother, and Az couldn't look to Valeré to save her; when she glanced over her shoulder at the Arlessa, eyes huge in her face and terrified, the Arlessa merely smiled and made shooing motions at her before being swallowed up by the business of attending to matters of the estate that had been left to a steward in her absence. Into the corridors Lelahai went, and Az, dragged along for the ride, could only swallow her fear and try in vain to remember how many turns they had made and where, for if she needed to get away from her new 'sister' in a hurry. When Lelahai finally stopped and let go of her long enough to manhandle open a door, it was all Az could do not to bolt from the spot - but she was glad she hadn't, when she glimpsed what was inside.
The suite beyond was a treasure-trove, books on two walls, toys and dolls on shelves and most flat surfaces, a real lady's vanity against a third wall, the four-poster bed dressed in pink and white linens with a canopy to match; there was a wide picture-window that took up most of the last wall, and provided view over the pastures that surrounded the estate, and Az shrank from that, from the feeling of being so exposed, even though a chestnut mare grazed just beyond the fence and served as a touchstone of the familiar in the alien environment. Lelahai spun around, laughing with her arms open wide, and then stopped on her toes, clasping her hands behind her back and leaning forward, beaming good cheer at Azabeth. "Well? What do you think?"
"I..." Az swallowed, floundering for words. She knew her eyes were big as bell-wheels in her face, and she was lightheaded and pale under all the dirt, but she felt backed into a corner by the other girl's friendliness. "It's - it's like a paradise. Is this a king's house?"
Lelahai laughed, unexpectedly, and with a flounce of skirts she sat upon the bed, kicking her feet - shod in blue slippers, to match her gown. "No, silly! This is my room! Mum says you'll get one just like mine as soon as you're settled, and one in Denerim, too!" At her stupefied gaping, Lelahai laughed again, her grin ear to ear and immeasurably cheerful. "What's that look for?"
"Like this?" She couldn't help gawking, couldn't help feeling out of place in that pristine place, twisting the hem of her tunic under her gangly hands. Az thought if she so much as touched something, she would taint it with her commonness, and then the Arlessa would kick her out and she would be stranded in the Bannorn with no way to get home, to Lalin and the stables and the safety of the horses' shadows. Even her accent felt wrong in her mouth, and there were a jumble of cuss-words she'd heard from the stableboys pressing at the forefront of her brain, begging to escape and mortify the Kordura clan.
"Why not?" grinned Lelahai. "Daddy's the Arl, and Mum's the Arlessa. If you're going to be my sister, they're going to be your Daddy and Mum, right?"
The very thought set her to reeling, her hands to shredding her hem. "I... I ain't never had a Daddy." Shyly, from behind a curtain of scarlet hair: "What's one like?"
And from the smile on Lelahai's face, apparently the key to earning her new sister's regard was to ask the proper questions that allowed her to run her sodding mouth. "Tall, and quiet, and he brings me lots of presents, and when he's home he spends a lot of time out with the horses." When she heard this, Azabeth thought, privately, that she might like having a Daddy after all, if they both liked horses roughly the same amount. "He's out on the Bannorn, though, and he'll be gone for a while. You'll probably meet him in the spring." Lelahai grinned and kicked her feet out, pointing her toes like a dancer. "Maybe he'll bring me a new book from one of the banns! I've gone through my collection again, almost."
Azabeth couldn't help her reaction, scanning the books that lined the walls with wide eyes. "You read all of 'em?"
"Uh-huh!" the blonde child beamed. "Mum says I'm very accomplished. I'm halfway through Moira, the Rebel Queen, and I've been hoping for a copy of Dane and the Werewolf in the original. It's a lot more fun picking through it when all the work hasn't been done for me already!" Lelahai paused to take in Azabeth's glazed-eyed look; she frowned her little blonde brows and added, "Is something wrong?"
The redhead swallowed and hid her face again behind her hair. "I... don't read so good." Beat. "At all, really." At Lelahai's horrified gasp, Az looked up, only to see the blonde child having leapt from her seat to grasp her by the arm, blue eyes enormous.
"That's awful!" Lelahai decried, and meant it with ever fiber of her being, much to Az's cringing confusion. "Why, books are the most amazing thing ever! You can travel to distant lands, meet amazing people, learn oh so much - all without ever leaving your study! And some of them even have pictures!"
".... really?" It all sounded too good to be true, but Lelahai nodded emphatically, releasing her to whirl and snatch the nearest book from her nightstand. It was a tattered and dog-eared volume bound in green leather, very old and well-loved, the spine cracked and the name all but illegible. Lelahai flipped it open automatically to a certain page, and it lay flat in her hand as if she had done this many times and the book had learned to anticipate her whims; there painted on translucent vellum was a tale that Az knew well, the story of the Raum, king of thieves, thief of hearts and spiritual ancestor of the Black Fox, romancing the Empress of Orlais. Azabeth had heard the story a million times, but never had she seen it painted so vividly, the scene of the Raum with the Diamond of Andraste held up to the light so it shone with the sun's own radiance, the members of the Orlesian court shielding their eyes and on their knees - all but the Empress herself, who was all but immune to the Raum and his charms. Which was why he pursued her like a cat chases a mouse, because the Raum was that kind of man; but seeing the picture, Az could almost hear him, could almost imagine his voice in that silenced court as he laid the diamond at the Empress's feet. "I have stolen you the sun and the moon, my Empress; where next should I quest for your heart's desire?"
"Do you know this one?" said Lelahai, and she tugged Azabeth to the floor, entranced, the dirty stable-child and the arl's daughter sitting hip to hip, with that glorious book in their laps. "It's ever so romantic. If you could read, you could relive it over and over and over again, as many times as you liked."
"That... would be wonderful," breathed the redhead, and her hand hovered over the page, but she dared not to touch it until Lelahai took her wrist and pressed her fingers to the vellum. It was crisp under the pads of her digits, smooth and cool and no less enrapturing for merely being letters and images in a book.
"You won't hurt it," she grinned, and she put her own small pale hand next to Az's filthy one, her fingers underlining the topmost sentence on the lettered page. "Here, I'll teach you. We'll start with this one right here...."
Valeré found them like that, many hours later, Azabeth no longer frightened and afraid, and had to forcibly drag them to the bathing-chamber, the sisters chatting enthusiastically the entire way.