Ysalwen Surana, Warden-Commander of Ferelden (
freedom_is_grey) wrote2015-12-30 06:13 pm
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What happens in the library stays in the library. Unless it's demons
Ysalwen is seated at a table in the library, tomes and scrolls spread out before her. There's also the remains of at least two plates of sandwiches next to her elbow, and two empty glasses of water. There is one half-empty glass, too.
Liranan, seated at her side, seems to be watching that half-empty glass as if his life depends on it.
Time continues to pass.
Liranan, seated at her side, seems to be watching that half-empty glass as if his life depends on it.
Time continues to pass.
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He stops short as he comes across Ysalwen at her table. She wasn't here last time he passed this way. He's pretty sure the table wasn't either. The library is funny like that.
"Good afternoon, Ysalwen," he says, bowing politely. "Or is it evening?" Or the next morning, possibly? "One easily loses track of time in here. And hello Liranan!" Seimei pulls a small paper package out of his sash and unwraps it to reveal what looks like a cookie. "I bear tribute to your august self from the finest dog treat bakery in Tokyo."
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"Oh, Seimei. I'm -- actually not sure, myself. Maybe evening?"
Um.
Liranan, meanwhile, heaves himself up and approaches for the indicated tribute. He has been working hard, making sure Ysalwen remembers to drink water!
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Seimei kneels and holds the cookie out to Liranan. It is very artfully decorated with frosting, like a fancy cookie from an upscale bakery.
"What are you studying so intently?"
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He will refrain from licking Seimei's face, though, as a thank you.
Ysalwen, meanwhile, smiles wryly.
"Well, you did say I could look up the stories about you, so. That's what I'm doing."
A slight twitch at one corner of her mouth.
"Reading them, too. It's -- interesting."
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She lifts up the one he's looking at, flipping through it carefully.
"The language is very simple, at least, and there are a great many pictures."
Ysalwen hands it up to him a moment later.
"Take a look, if you like, and you can tell me if it's accurate or -- very off-center?"
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"Well, most of it is accurate, generally speaking. But my father was not a court official. He was a zuryo, a provincial governor. He wouldn't have met my mother otherwise. And my mother didn't have a fox tail when she took human form, like she does in the picture. She was too skilled for that."
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Her voice is, for a moment, very wry. As is her expression.
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Osaka is a major city now. At that time, it was out in the sticks.
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Hmm.
"Multiple wives were uncommon then? And now? Or -- and were there multiple husbands as well? Or is that one of those things that no one would dream of doing?"
Multiple husbands tend not to generate greater numbers of children, after all.
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Marriage meant something very different back in the Heian era.
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Her voice is very dry.
"But -- ah. They fear spirits, then? Or do they consider such beings beneath them? It's difficult to predict, on the whole."
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Seimei, of course, never lumped them in that way.
"If my father had simply had a tryst with a fox spirit, it would not have been considered such a bad thing. But to marry one, and acknowledge the child you had together? That was unthinkable.
"And by the way, noblemen's wives at that time were most certainly not slaves. They did not have such a high status as men, and were limited in certain ways, but no man regarded his wife as property. In fact, women inherited property. Men by and large did not. We were expected to make our fortunes at court."
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"I wasn't necessarily talking about your world, but that's all right."
Her mouth quirks at one corner.
"Court being where the power was, then?"
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"The fathers of those daughters, or the mothers, as well? And aunts and uncles and cousins and -- or just the head of said family, whoever it was?"
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Ysalwen bites back some profanity.
"Subtlety. From the shadows. Quiet pressure."
It's one thing to choose it. It's another for that to be the only choice.
"I'd be terrible at it. Did you agree to work together, you and your wife? Did you like each other?"
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So a match made in heaven it was not.
"She may not have liked me much in the beginning, but she recognized that her welfare was very much dependent on my own. She also took to heart her grandfather's pronouncement that I just might amount to something." Seimei smirks. For Kamo no Tadayuki, that was high praise.
"So early on she sat me down and said, 'It is the duty of a wife to support her husband whether they have great affection for each other or not, for their fortunes rise or fall together. I will offer you what help I can, if you are wise enough to take it.' And fortunately, I was." Seimei chuckles.
"She was right. We did not choose to be allies, but there we were, so we decided to make the best of it. Affection came later, although it took a few years." Seimei pauses, lost in thought. "It's been a long time since I thought about those days, let alone talked about them."
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At least in her experience.
"I've heard of worse marriages. I haven't seen many, because usually one person is already dead if it goes that badly."
It's a joke. Mostly. Ish.
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Also, it's good to have the reminder that he used to be human. But that's about the present, isn't it? Not the current topic of conversation.
"I don't know if you've come across the Kagerō Nikki in your studies, but that was a very unhappy marriage."
And is now one of the enduring classics of Japanese literature, oddly enough.
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"The worlds have no end of unhappy marriages, I would guess."
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Seimei turns a page in the storybook.
"Ah! Here is Kamo no Tadayuki," he says, showing the picture to Ysalwen. In it, a young boy (presumably Seimei himself) is writing Chinese and Sanskrit on a paper with a calligraphy brush. Sitting beside him and overseeing his efforts is a man with a flowing grey beard and prodigious eyebrows. He looks down on the boy with a smile of approval.
"Kamo-sensei did have a beard like that, but he almost always looked very stern. And I would not have been writing on paper at that age! Paper was too expensive in those days for a child to scribble on. I had a tray of wet sand and a stick. I didn't graduate to paper until I knew my characters." Seimei shakes his head and clucks his tongue.
"I was fortunate to have such a teacher, even if he was a curmudgeon. He had studied yin-yang magic - onmyodo, we called it - with the Daoist masters in China. To him it was not simply a job or a means to an end, as it was for so many, but a sacred calling.
"My mother also had a hand in my training - beyond engaging Kamo-sensei, I mean - but that is not generally known."
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"What was it like? To be taught by your mother. And -- her magic was different, then? Than this onmyodo, I mean."
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This was a concept that Seimei instinctively grasped for centuries before he learned how to put it into words.
"Unlike the magic Kamo-sensei taught me, my mother's magic involved no incantations, implements, or components. It was just something she did. She taught me how to change shape, how to create glamours and illusions, how to perceive spirits and magic that most humans don't notice."
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