Meta for chapter 14 of As Mountains Yet Unseen:
Like Emmrich, Lucanis finds it restful to be around Isolde :) he’d never understand this on a conscious level, but around Isolde he doesn’t feel that constant pressure to perform and perform perfectly. He can’t get rid of it entirely, given his whole upbringing, but it’s a lot lower than usual. Especially since around her there’s no pressure to talk. They also speak a similar language when it comes to taking care of people (subtle acts of service) so whenever they’re being thoughtful the other person notices it and appreciates it.
Lucanis is generally speaking a “stay out of my kitchen. You can sit over there with a cup of coffee” guy, but Isolde is so attentive that it makes the work basically frictionless and he doesn’t have to worry about her doing the wrong thing or getting in his way. He’d still prefer if it was in a bigger kitchen so they weren’t right on top of each other, but the fact he lets her do it at all says big things.
“It was a minute change, the kind that only Rook or Neve could be counted on to catch.” Notably, Isolde fails to include herself on this list, even though she’s in the same category.
Isolde’s hypervigilance shows up again. There isn’t a level of relaxed she can be where she stops monitoring where people are in a room and where they’re going and what their mood is.
Bellara is finally getting to try and SUCCEED at making dishes she’s long wanted to try but a) knew she was going to mess up because of needing to have multiple things going at once and b) hard to motivate when she was just cooking once a month or whatever. And all that while getting to yap? She’s having the time of her life
Part of why Isolde doesn’t know how to do her hair is because. Well. She was orphaned at 12 and spent her adolescence trying to figure out how to have food to eat and a place to sleep. The social dynamics she learned had a lot more to do with bosses than peers. Her life only stabilized at 24 (three years ago) when she joined the Veil Jumpers.
Her hair situation is also not helped by the fact that she spent most of her life seriously malnourished and is currently badly underweight.
Isolde’s mom cameo here is stolen from my mom. Mom how had you not figured out that you should start brushing out knots at the tips while pressing the hair to the kid’s skull so that it didn’t yank the scalp. You also have hair like?? Anyway hair brushing hurt so bad for years
Emmrich put her in a waterfall braid! :)
Emmrich had previously communicated to Harding, not in so many words, that he was trying to help rehabilitate Isolde for the whole abused shelter cat thing. Harding will then fail to realize that they’ve moved from that to dating for m o n t h s.
Isolde’s relationship to Neve mirrors Harding’s relationship to Isolde. “STOP LOOKING AT ME THAT CLOSELY. DON’T PERCEIVE ME STOP ITTTT”
Amadeus was, obviously, a past lover for Emmrich. The gift of a peach tone blush is hilariously bad, Emmrich’s skintone is olive. “Amadeus, it’s like you never once looked at me.”
Elves get stupidly pretty skin, it’s just a fact. Very soft, too. Their form of “bad skin” looks like a normal Human’s skin.
Isolde’s internalized racism is alive and well, yep. Objectively speaking, Isolde is meant to look very average/plain, a totally normal 5/10. (I probably drew her too pretty tbh.) There’s a certain elegance to her face if you take a second look, but the first look means most people don’t look twice. But given anti-Elven racism? Functionally to Humans (and City Elves) she’s working with 3/10.
“Riffraff keep out” is notably not the way Isolde speaks. Other people have said this to her, and it entered her self-talk.
As far as Emmrich knows, Isolde was a slave who lived somewhere towards the Arlathan border. He tried to find a place as close to that as he could. Of course. Oops. She’s not actually from there. And he really didn’t think about how dangerously racist this area was. This is a romance (and not really one where I want to directly explore racist violence) but uh. There was a real chance of getting hate crimed here. Beyond that, it’s obviously the worst place for dealing with social disapproval of their relationship, and Isolde is really sensitive to it.
Given that Isolde has no curves to speak of, the people who have no frame of reference for what’s going on except “escort” are… confused.
Isolde’s point of reference for men’s hands are manual laborers. She notably worked as a bricklayer for long periods of time. Even Elves with their soft skin end up toughened in that kind of position.
Isolde is correct, the opera costumes include cloth of gold.
When Isolde is comparing what Bellara or Neve would have done, one of my betas commented “Lucanis would have known exactly how many paces between him and the nearest exit, and Isolde would totally have begged for that information right about now” and that made me laugh.
