Pragma
My first fic, enjoy! (I know there’s probably errors but I’ll correct them later haha)
Shirayuki is getting married today.
The veil is heavy, the embroidered pearls cascading down the front are clouding her vision. The sedan chair in which she climbed to be brought to her husband’s family is uncomfortable. The sound of the gathering crowd around the wedding parade is deafening. But despite all of this, she smiles.
When you are the eldest daughter of a wealthy family, your first and uttermost important duty is always to bring more wealth and prestige to the family.
If Shirayuki had been the heroine in one of the novels her sisters’ read, she would have escaped the night before the wedding with a dashing young man who would have declared his love to her passionately. They would have run off on a dark horse and gone on to live together a great adventure full of passion, betrayal and, involving in some way or another, pirates.
But Shirayuki was not one of those maidens. She was adventurous, passionate and her love for everything related to plants bordered on insanity, but she also loved her family very much. Her parents had always taken good care of her, indulging in her passion for medicinal plants, buying her the latest books on the subject. Her sisters were sweet, nonsensical girls who loved to daydream. They would surely marry for love. Her sacrifice would not be in vain, if it meant she could bring happiness to the people she loved the most.
So, she would not run off into the night with another man. Had her situation been different, her position lower, the duty she held so important, maybe.
The morning of her wedding, her sisters had held her tight, congratulating her with tears in their eyes. The youngest, Hana, her hair not as bright red as Shirayuki’s but with quite a few more freckles constellating her nose bridge, had told her that she was sad to see her go and that she admired how strong Shirayuki was, something she had heard often during her childhood.
Shirayuki was strong.
She hoped that whoever was waiting for her at the altar was kind and that he liked plants. She hoped she would find love in this predicament and, with care and nurture it would bloom.
She did know her way around plants, after all.
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Obi is getting married today.
And this, much to his great displeasure.
After serving Zen for years, he had been knighted, a title and a great sum of money had been handed to him. At first, this had been a blessing. To finally be able to proudly announce that something was his, a privilege he had never been accustomed to before, was something he never thought he’d be able to do in this lifetime. He would forever be grateful to Zen.
But as the years passed by and everyone started to settle down one by one, Obi started to hear rumors about him. How after all this time he still wasn’t married, how strange it was. He would have been content to keep going this way till the day he died, but fate had other plans in mind.
Apparently, Lord Haruka had planned everything behind his back, assuring the father of the bride that Obi would never refuse. Of course, if he did refuse, the scandal and backlash he would have to face would have been enormous. This did not scare Obi as much, since he could very well disappear into the night and never return. But it could somehow have a bad repercussion upon Zen. It also happened to be that the bride was the daughter of the richest man in Tanbarun. Alliances this good never arrived on such nice silver platters more than once in a lifetime.
He could never allow that to happen.
So, Obi found himself in his most formal uniform attire, standing at an altar. His bushy hair had been painstakingly smoothed back and he had traded his usual black undershirt and green vest for a dark vest with shining golden buttons and a blue sash the same color as the colors of Clarines. He found with satisfaction that he could bear these colors with pride.
For his friend Zen and his country, Obi was ready to make this sacrifice. He never thought he’d marry for love either way. His line of work had never been suitable for him to find someone that he could love in that way. And with all the past deeds and crimes he had committed, he frankly did not believe he deserved that kind of love. He was too tainted, too besmirched.
With his past behind, he could only look towards the future.
Obi would not hope for love. He did not deserve it. He only hoped for peace and kindness.