an ask i’m too lazy to dig up / accepting (?) | ❝ i’m proud of you. always have been. ❞ / minfilia to ryne | @scionitics
𝐀 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 𝐆𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐘 ; silken fabric turning from yellow, to brown, to red ; soaked to the fibre with blood ; ending in pool as deep as it was fathomless. How many girls had come before her ? These jewels of Eulmore, wrapped in gilded cages, interlaced with beryl and bone. ‘Tis not your job to think on it,’ Ran’jit had told her cruelly, back when her innocence held fast in the books of myth where a sunless sea glittered in the night and paradise was naught a city floating in the efflorescence. Yet she knew, watching him in the light, how he thought about it. How the pages pressed between her fingers spelled a dreadful tale ; girls of sixteen, fourteen, eleven and eight.
Minfilia. A gift, he reminded her, yet the name felt little more a death spell — a curse, the moment it expelled from his lips, that sundered her years like shards scattered across the cosmos ( was she doomed, as that Minfilia was doomed, to die before her time ? whether in blood or exorcism ; expunged or eviscerated ? ). He was not the first that promised her it would be different and yet, like so many girls before her, she dreamed of a crystal-wrought plane where a golden girl stood before a giant diamond of celeste blue, and her smile was hopeful but sad.
“ Please ! “ She screamed, cried, begged. She thrust her hand towards her static frame until she woke writhing in her bed, her fingers only finding silk that held a dozen girls before her.
𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍'𝐓 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐎 𝐅𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐃, at least not at first. He was no better than Ran’jit — he treated her just as meanly. She traded silk and chains for a bed cloth, a companion who was aloof, and Minfilia was afraid. She did not understand what first prompted her to take his hand, to break clean of the protection Ranjit had placed upon her even when the very foundations of Eulmore fought to keep their precious cargo ( less a person and more a weapon ; one to sequester and bury away ), only that when she saw him she felt a sense of elation ; as if though he were a friend returning from a long time away. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was she who left him ; spirited away in the dead of night, traces of aether left in rubble, the constant question of why, why, why ? She withdrew from him, guarded her heart as did he, while the dreams of Minfilia pierced her like light travelling thousands of malms per hour.
“ Is it that I am not enough ? Or am I too much ? “ She asked the question every time, but she shook her head in cryptid silence. Of what she might know she did not say and she was left grasping at the cord.
A golden girl grips at threads of prophecy. She pulls it taut and severs it.
First in Il Mheg the thread is pulled — the first tug of independence. Fae-wreathed, bathed in dark, with even Ran’jit accepting defeat at the hands of such awesome power : how could she resist but to hope ? Perhaps there was a chance she would be the one to break the wheel.
The second, in Rak’tika, a much more painful affair. Thancred’s companions felt familiar in a way she could not place — how they poked and prodded him — and when he stormed to the shade she felt all too keenly the grip of her arm around her nimble frame ; how Y’shtola’s words were as much a consideration as they were a terror. What was her life to be ? If she wished to be more than a girl in a grave, what should she want for ? Though her mouth closed around a number of words she did not have the strength to call them. ‘ I want to live, I want to live ! ’ she wanted to say, but it seemed to simple an answer. ‘ I want to be me, not just a oracle with a borrowed name ! ’ She brought to the thread a knife.
In Amh Araeng, fresh from the loss in Lakeland, her purpose was made clear. A fragmented oracle was no oracle at all, and in living she would have to seize that destiny bestowed upon her. ‘ I want to be strong ! ‘ she protested, even when doing such pushed Thancred further away, and in the ruddy dust of abandon mines she felt for the first time an excitement that was all her own. It was the thrill of an adventure, despite its peril ; it was realising, in being able to help her allies, that they had come to bond and cherish her. Even her guardian, as torn as he was, showed her kindnesses in between his grief. She cut herself loose from prophecy.
The sea of light was warm as it ebbed over her feet, though it left no trace of water. It is no crystal plane nor diamond of blue, but when she saw it was as if she had dreamed of it a thousand times before. She was there ; brave, beautiful Minfilia. She looked at her so warmly.
‘ You have grown to love yourself. ‘ It was not a selfish observation. In trail, tribulation ; in doubt, sorrow and moments of joy... for love. It was all for love.
They embraced in the sunlit sea where the first oracle was strong and real again, and the last felt safe and cherished.
❝ i’m proud of you, ❞ her elder said, her voice carrying in the warmth, ❝ always have been. ❞
