@paleobird inquired:
Name: Ava Ostrom
Age: 25
How well do we know each other?: Decently well!
Do you have a pet name for me?: Not at the moment.
Do I have a pet name for you?: I don't think so!
Are you attracted to me?: You're very pretty, yes!
Why do you want to marry me?: Uh... political reason, I guess?
Big wedding or Small wedding?: Whatever works for you!
Do you see children in our future?: Hm, I'm not so sure, but... maybe
Spouse Application - Accepting
It comes like an old, familiar friend, that tickle in Miranda's gums, that sweet, low simmer in her gut. It's been such a long time. Miranda almost forgot what it felt like, what sweet relief it brings, such a fond kindness it extends out to her and runs through her veins until they come back hot, until her heart remembers to dance. It's a kindly relative in that way, a favorite nanny, someone who brings snacks and toys for her little hands, not yet grown into itself, someone who runs their face all over hers and tells her all her favorite stories while getting her to promise not to tell anyone else. Not to let anyone else know, because then this couldn't happen again, because the troubles would start and Miranda's kindnesses would vanish.
Rage is such a strange animal. It comes to Miranda more often than it should, so often that the fact that she knows it by name should be cause for concern, would have left her community speaking behind her back and concerned for the points of her teeth. But she's a royal, and royals play by different rules, of course. It matters less, when you have more to defend, more to call your own. Loyalty too is highly prized, far moreso than rage is feared.
And if Miranda's rage is kin with her cruelty, well, that too can be overlooked. That much is expected, really, a hazard of the job, something to keep in mind but not to fuss over too much. It's only really important when it spills over, after all. When it becomes too much, when it starts to impact her duties, her purpose, the thing she was designed for. Then, maybe, concern is warranted, but if it keeps its manners about it, then it can stay as a polite house guest. It's been here before, after all, a family friend. It knows the way around the grounds already.
Miranda doesn't sneer. She doesn't bare her fangs or flatten her fins or growl like an animal. Miranda doesn't do anything at all.
All Miranda does is watch Ava. Her eyes, pointed forwards to direct herself towards those who wait in front of her, focus on Ava's face. It might be tempting to say that it's like she's never seen Ava before, but it's not really that kind of look. It is prying, intense, a categorization of her features unlike anything that Ava might have endured thus far, but the difference is subtler.
It's that Miranda keeps going. Her eyes — a stark and violent blue that never feels quite like they should be as bright as they are, gruesomely tropical and evocative of shallower, warmer waters than any warmth she actually holds in her gaze — fix deeper on Ava.
Miranda does not speak. She does not seem to breathe, her body struck with a stillness so abrupt that she does not look real, like motion is something that forgot her where it shouldn't have, a void surrounded by the world itself. Miranda just stares. She stares down and into Ava, the weight of her gaze pushing her deeper and deeper, inescapable, suffocating, wrenching free everything about Ava and laying it plain under her flensing gaze, pulling her apart and laying her plain to the air.
The world around them goes quiet, obeys instruction that it was clearly given. The world around them flees, turns darker by proxy, as Miranda pins Ava down, transfixes her into the singular space, the weight of her awareness greater than that of her family line, greater than duty, greater than the kingdom at her back and the ocean far above her. There is nothing else to do but to be reduced down into the smallest single fraction of yourself against such an event horizon, to forget how to run, to forget anything that might have helped you. Nothing would save you now. Nothing would help. There is only Miranda, and she sees all of you for what you are.
"Let me be perfectly clear."
It is not Miranda's voice. It is, but it is not, because it is not a voice that Ava would have heard now or ever again, not without a price to be paid, not without something to be lost. The voice is smooth and it is deep, unruffled as dark water without a ripple and without end, a dark and stubborn pool that invites all in, to be dragged down beneath the surface without recourse, without recovery. It is the voice of authority. It is the voice of a command which cannot be ignored. It is the voice of a thousand years and a thousand lives, of something grander than anyone could imagine, of beauty so intoxicating that no one would remember the intestines spilling out hot and writhing afterwards.
It is not magic, and it is not a siren's call. It needs no parlor tricks, no miserable attempts at forced control, no mockery of the power it holds. It simply doesn't need any of that. The voice that comes out is the voice of the ultimatum which orders creation by its own drum, because the voice is entirely what it says it is, because there are simply people who could command the stars to fall and they would listen.
It is the voice of the Crown Princess.
Princess Miranda does not move her lips, does not shift her chest enough to speak, does not inhale and does not exhale. The voice comes, willed from her, while she is taken by the stillness which the Earth revolves around, the fixed point in space which commands all to dance around it. It is the ultimate stillness of an ambush predator, the kind of stillness so resolute and perfect that alterations in her position do not seem natural, that she may as well have been a statue fixed in each and every place forever, and that all Ava did was forget between blinks what it was.
"If you wish to come to me and insist that you know me, and insist that you wish to pursue me as a political union — then I will treat you as such. Do I make myself understood?"
