the miednic trio really just. get to me.
like. oveta is 14 and angry at the world. she's been let down by the adults in her life and she's already killed two people on her mission to take matters into her own hands. the gods have abandoned her. she is 14 and angry and lonely and starving and there is a man camped on the side of the road and she thinks i've already killed two people and draws her sword. she wants to build an army, wants to pull the throne from under her cousin and claim it for herself. what is the point of all this blood spilled, otherwise?
kova is 15 and angry at the world. she's already lost everything, now all there's left to do is take. she's a snarling mess of teeth and claws, a whirlwind of a teenage girl with scars on her face and sticky fingers. there's a pretty girl sitting at her table, asking her to join a cause and all kova can see is an opportunity. she takes, because it is all she knows anymore. she takes because she feels like the universe, at least, owes her that much. she takes and she flees and she grits her teeth against the guilt.
mika is 42 and has already made peace with the fact that he will die alone. he's made a lifestyle out of murder and he's good at it. but one day his opponent will be quicker and there will be no one alive to mourn him and that's just how it'll be. even now he's pretty sure the only thing really keeping him going is survival instinct, not any general will to live. and then some random 14 year old with blood under her nails and a fire in her eyes tries to rob him. (keyword: tries.) he is 43 and starting to figure out that maybe he is made for more. because the girl in his charge is a powerhouse with a goal too big to achieve on her own. because he is 43 and being robbed again by a girl with scars on her face and a dagger shoved in her fur boots. because somehow, he is the only person they've got.
oveta is 19 and has built a kingdom from the ground up, has bled and cried for the people she now considers hers. she has claimed the western shoulder of the continent, ripped it from her cousins hands in a move far more satisfying than a simple takeover. this she has worked for. this she has earned on her own. she is 19 and her family is small but they have never let her down. she has killed countless, but they have been there at her back with weapons of their own. with water to clean away the blood.
kova is 19 and her sister is a queen. she has found her peace, the storm in her heart calmed to a steady drizzle and even then: only on rainy days. she no longer takes, but instead has become a guardian. a beacon of safety, of surety - she has and will tear limbs free from men who wish harm on people like her, like the family she was born into and lost. she is happy, a child with the face of a soldier, napping in the sun and stealing only to make oveta chase her. her laughter is loud, and when she bares her teeth it is to smile.
mika is 68 and he has no illusions of a lonely death, limping out to the woods to die from his wounds. he knows his daughters would only drag him back by the scruff of his neck, lay him to rest in a warm bed with a hand in each of theirs. his girls have become queens and generals and warriors. they have built armies and kingdoms and families. still, they turn to him in their moments of weakness.
oveta is long dead, but her name lives on in every girl born into her bloodline. she has been dead for centuries but the throne still sitting proud in grand hall was a birthday present hand-carved by kova and mika.
kova is dead, but she lives on in the laws banning the hunting of shifters in miednic, in the laws protecting orphans. she has been dead for centuries, but the city built around the royal family home (a sprawling estate built into the mountains) is named in her honour.
mika is dead (long before either of his girls, he is grateful to know) but he lives on in the training drills practiced throughout the country. he is dead, but it is his sword shown in the miednic banner, holding up the mountains. He is long gone, but it is in his honour that the castle is called Wulfe Hall.
like every inch of what miednic is today was built and shaped by three people just trying to survive, who somehow stapled themselves together as a family and changed history.
