Doman Doll
She was but a child and yet, sitting on that stool was expected an adult. The room was clean and yet, you could see the remnants that she was a child. The handmade dolls that sat on her bed, poised at her pillows. The small trinkets that lined her dresser and the boxes under her bed that held toys and precious things that were gifted to her from her father. Light poured into the room with the morning rays against paper screens and giving more color to the watercolored paintings that would not survive in the fall.The young Raen girl sat quietly with her head down as she listened to her mother, a small and poised woman herself, as she went through the hair ornaments. Mayu herself wore a light blue kimono with silver inlaid. The obi a soft gray with a white floral pattern and the sleeves came over her hands. She could be no older than twelve as she sat there.
“Where is Papa?”
The words rang out in Othardian when she spoke, soft and delicate. Shy even which seemed unusual to the girl who in several bells time would break from her mother’s side and play with the other children, staining the kimono in mud before finally she’d be punished again. The older woman paused in looking at the trinkets and would look to Mayu before taking the brush and brushing out her long blond hair. Mayu would lift her chin up as her mother did this as not to cause hindrance for her.
“He had to see the General this morning. They want to use one of his ships to pick up some things.”
Mayu remained quiet after the answer, letting her mother fasten her hair in small braids. Once her hair was up and off the back of her neck, the hair ornament was put into place and she would reach for the glittering powder.
“Turn angel. We have to make you pretty for our outing today.”
Mayu obeyed though perhaps a few cycles ago, she would have protested more thoroughly. She didn’t want to go to an outing where she would be paraded as a noble’s daughter. Try to impress a man with a son her age or older so that she could be wed into society in just a few more cycles. But she did not protest. She only asked.
“Why?”
The soft brush came across her scales and the glitter would give them a soft sheen like gemstones. Mayu never admitted she liked how it made her scales look like the pearls the fishers would find in oysters.
“You are nearing your Namesday and still we have not received a proposal good enough for you, my angel. Maybe a man with a military background with a promising son or someone with good standing here in Doma my love. I only want what is best for you.”
What is best for you. Mayu was never made to be a noble woman but slowly, she was being molded into what her mother wanted. To know... that many years later when she was free from obligation, she was everything her mother ever wanted in a daughter. Poised, collected, with eyes that could overlook the pain of others. But now she was a child and now, she had to be a good little Doman Doll.
