Хоть пей (да всё напрасно) - Starling Birdsong
1k late night Starling Birdsong character study for @roteladiesbigbang 's prompt number 18, Derelict. Title is taken from Kanzler Gi's Романс о Тоске.
Spears and swords surround them, point at them, threaten them and the fear and exhilaration of it thrums in her blood like an unsung melody.
She isn't small or helpless here, she has arrived on a dragon, she flew through the air with the queen of the whole realm by her side.
Phantom pain sears through her finger, but she doesn't care, doesn't care at all and it's the highest of freedoms to not care as she bows gallantly to them all.
Starling Birdsong does not face the guards and warriors as enemies; she faces them as an audience.
And she knows just how to command it.
The words are just as important as the silences. The rise and falls of her harp's strings.
Starling never sings of herself. She always leaves that to others.
She isn't humble, far from it. She soaks it all up - the applause, the gifts, the invitations, the glorious, undying fame.
A lord or another, from the far edges of Farrow, once asks her why. Starling raises an eyebrow at him, her head cocked, feeling the reassuring metallic press of her earrings against her cheek. "It's simply bad form for a minstrel. Where would we be if we sang only of ourselves?"
She doesn't just leave it at that, although she could have. By the end of that feast, that lord becomes the laughingstock of all his guests. Funny, she doesn't even remember his name now. Vanguard, Virile? It was gauche and self-important, she is sure of that.
By the time she starts telling this as an anecdote, she barely even remembers the instant of gripping icy terror when he had asked her that question and she'd thought of- she'd thought-
Nobody ever asks her again and Starling never tells.
Starling Birdsong is a name that has gone down in history. Her songs, her deeds, they've become important - they have become as awe inspiring and unbelievable as the legends of old.
Nobody remembers Jay Birdsong. He is, at most, a footnote in history, the ghost haunting the ballad of the Antler Island, who was stepped over by a man who didn't even realise or remember he'd saved his life (for another short while, at least).
Nobody sang of Wren who had died even earlier or her mother who'd followed after or her father who had not believed Starling could have a future outside their town.
How could it be otherwise? The only one of them who survived was her.
And she could not sing of them. Some tales were not made for songs.
FitzChivalry Farseer makes Starling believe in destiny, in fate.
He's fought the unfightable. He's survived the unsurvivable. He appeared right before her, like the old legends of El's tests and guises, clad in dirty shepherd's clothes and lies. He didn't trust her then.
Starling knows the ebs and flows of a yarn, the weaves of myths and melodies. The hero always turns up right then when all hope seems lost. Life isn't like tales or songs. She's learned that lesson well.
Reality had become even more unbearable than hope.
Starling would rather burn up than wither; whatever it took, she would not go quietly, she would take the risk, death or life, life or death - after all, she wanted the world to know her name.
Starling used to have different dreams, before. She'd wanted to be the good kind of minstrel, the kind that traveled but not too much, the kind who dreamed of palaces where everybody looked only at her, listened only to her, but didn't speak it, the kind who thought she could always come back home.
She had laid there, bloodied and still and nameless, for two days. It is the only reason she lived when nearly everyone else died.
(She didn't know it. Not then. She too had thought she was dead.)
She used to have different fears, before. "Will they like me? Will they like my music? Did I make this carving right or will I have to do it over? Stupid Jiani keeps copying my fashions and doesn't even wear it well. Most of my friends are married and I am still apprenticing, well, they're probably just settling anyway, nobody in this town is very impressive anyway." She had lied awake at night, tossing and turning, wanting and not wanting to be free of the expectations of the careful daughter and supportive sister.
None of them mattered, in the end.
She had not known to fear this. She'd staggered upright then, grimy and wild and lost, as if she were pulling herself from her own grave.
This only ever happened in news of raids, only ever to others. How could it have happened to her?
Restlessness has made its home inside her and it won't leave her be. It burns in her throat like she swallowed a hot coal of want and only its burn keeps her going.
She will not die. She cannot die. She will not be forgotten.
Every other fear cannot measure up to this.
Kettle's hands had been sure and warm when they'd checked her splint. That stayed with her for some reason. The old pilgrim woman had been taciturn and mysterious, and she'd kept her secrets close, but that aside, she had never once turned Starling away.
"You have chosen a dangerous life, minstrel," she'd said back then, staring at her intently. "It can do worse than breaking a bone."
Starling's fingers trembled from more than the cold, then. She'd teetered on the edge of hysterical laughter or hysterical tears.
"It already did," she'd said at last, a high-pitched sound leaving her throat like a bird taking flight. "It already did."
She couldn't run from danger because danger was everywhere. She could just choose which danger to run towards. Or so she'd thought until-
She did start crying then, eyes fixed on the splint around her finger and Kettle's wrinkled hands. It was so cold her tears almost froze on her cheeks.
"So it did." Starling found an odd comfort in the old woman's matter of fact manner. "We will move on in the morning. Rest while you can, minstrel."
Starling has always cared more for the words than the silences. The pause is only good if it makes the resumption of her harp and voice shine all the brighter. The words are all that gets transcribed to paper, they are the only thing sure to survive.
She searches for that high of not caring and sometimes she finds it. She wants to put herself together like a broken tile, a torn shirt, something that can be fixed. Failing that, she wants to forget.
Starling Birdsong has soared through the skies and through her fame. She has made it. She has reached her dream, despite it all.
If this were a song, she would end it here.
But life is not a song. She has learned that lesson all too well.
She can fool others. She can fool herself. But the restlessness and the silences have stayed with her, even after all this time.
