Feb 28, 2024
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FFXIVWrite2023 (#9 - Fair)
"But it's not faiiiiiiiiiiiir, I want to stay with Daddyyyyyyyyyy!"
A child's complaint echoing throughout the Beehive wouldn't usually disturb Leti-Mao's carefully orchestrated performance. (Very carefully, she'd received two lessons and a week's worth of practice before being put on display. Rather like the rest of Eulmore, the Beehive's adjustment to a wildly different economy involved a lot of... trial and error.) She kept her balance, tail curling demurely around her hip, but her expression shifted.
For a moment, she wanted to swing the golden hoop she was on hard enough to get the momentum necessary to punt the nearest table lamp right into the back of the child's pompous little head.
Fair. Fair.
What a life, to be able to complain about something being fair! To even know what fair felt like in order to recognize when it'd been denied! Or to even feel that one could complain just for the sake of complaint, for the sake of expressing discontent and being heard!
She held her pose, fingertip just touching the painted metal arcing over her head, and struggled with her face. It'd been so much easier, once. Before that damnable Warrior of Darkness burst into Eulmore, disrupting everything. Before she'd lost her position as one of the bonded and been forced to scrounge for patrons, to hunt for a protector, to desperately sell herself for the sinner's mercy, that soothing milky tonic she'd enjoyed for so long.
Fair.
Oh, she'd heard the phrase 'life isn't fair' thousands of times. The whiny kid would hear the same, no doubt, snapped at him by his irritable mother as she dragged him through Eulmore's polished marble halls. Now, perhaps, he'd taste what 'unfair' meant if the city-state policies changed again, forcing the wealthy to earn their quarters.
Maybe he'd be thrown out of his cushy bedchamber, forced to work in the thin soil with his father, while the scowling mother struggled to put together a nourishing broth over as little as Leti's mother'd once done.
Eyes closing, she gritted her teeth, felt the hoop wobble when her body tensed. Leti caught it, held onto the metal, and flicked her tail in lazy, seductive curls before her breasts to distract anyone still watching her. Thinking about the past only upset her. Being upset only made her want the sinner's mercy more. And when she couldn't get it...
It only made the high walkways of Eulmore look that much more seductive on her weary walks back to her narrow, windowless chamber when the parties ended and she'd been dismissed.
Fair.
It didn't exist. It never had. Even the phrase 'life isn't fair' didn't do it full justice. Fairness, justice, equality, opportunity... All of them were lies told by the wealthy, by those who'd won the coin flip in life, to those they used for their pleasure. And the lies worked because no one seemed willing to accept the fact that they couldn't control their lives, they'd never control their lives, someone could (and would) always come into the world and tear everything apart.
A mother, a patron, a Warrior of Darkness, a damnable lying hume with a scant pocketful of coin...
Fair meant about as much as trust, and Leti knew very, very well what that word was worth.
"I hope you fall off a walkway and hit the rocks," she whispered spitefully, golden eyes narrowing as she glanced at the Beehive's doors.
And, because life was not and could not be fair, she knew for a fact he wouldn't.
An ornament for an empty room. Didn't that just define her entire life? It seemed to her that she'd spent all her waking hours performing to empty seats. Even when physical bodies filled the space around her, they were as empty as she.
Late to the party but. 😫 = How does your muse handle a family member being stressed out? What about sick? [For the two you think LEAST would have a family or the weirdest kind]
Tara simply leaves. If she visits her father (on the occasions he's not in prison) and he's in a mood or feeling ill, she just walks out the door. After all, he didn't exactly coddle her throughout her childhood, why would she bother doing the same for him? After all, Volaire taught her that nature would cull the weak, slow, or stupid. If he can't take care of himself, well... He's just proving his own point.
Leti-Mao, with absolutely no idea how to handle someone who isn't a client, would be completely useless. If someone's sick, they won't be up for sex. (Although if they're stressed... maybe...?) They'll not be interested in her dancing, but... maybe a hot bath? At best? Everything Leti-Mao knows in reference to dealing with people would be of absolutely no use when dealing with illness. Likely the best she'd manage is a bottle of bourbon, a trash can by someone's bed and a blanket thrown in their direction.
Both of them simply proving the point that if you've never been cared for, it takes either extremely astute observation (Chessi, obviously you're not as stupid as you think you are) or someone caring for you in order to give you a blueprint to work with.
MiqoMarch #1 - Selfie