｢ I N T R O D U C T I O N S ｣ ↪ your oc’s backstory 2k21: e m o t i o n s e d i t i o n (1/???)
｢ prompts from @yourocsbackstory !! ｣
“Who are you?”
Mai was sitting on a bench under the shade of a willow tree. The sun was out, soft like morning dew; her husband was arranging for a carriage at the entrance to the park, and the air smelled of spring rain.
The child - the mortal child - was staring at her, wide-eyed with...well, it certainly wasn’t fear. Wonder, perhaps, or awe? Whatever it was, Mai felt a sliver of unease slither around her gut, apprehension hissing through her veins. Was this some far-fetched ploy of her husband’s, designed to catch her unawares?
Mai reached out with her mind - carefully, carefully - and probed gently at the boy, her shadow-spun magic murmuring in time with the rustling grass and whispering breeze. There was no sign of her husband’s influence within the human; no sign of the silken cold that crept slowly under somebody’s skin, numbing everything that made them alive.
Mai exhaled. The child was still staring at her, and Mai offered him a warm, if insincere, smile. “My name is Mai,” she said. “Where are your parents?”
He blinked. “I don’t know,” he replied, furrowing his brow as he considered her. “Are you an angel?”
It was Mai’s turn to blink. Then she laughed, as soft and lilting as trilling birdsong. “Certainly not,” she demurred, smoothing a hand over the front of her skirts and adjusting the lace-trimmed capelet settled over her shoulders. “Wherever did you get that idea?”
“Mother says all angels are beautiful,” the boy said, eyeing her skeptically. “And you’re not from here.”
It was hard to argue with either of those points. Mai found her thoughts drifting - entirely against her will, mind you - to flaming red hair and blue eyes that burned like molten starshine, alight with something glittering and wild and so, so different from the golden, lifeless beauty of the kingdom in the clouds that it made Mai’s un-beating heart stop.
Figuratively, of course.
“No,” she agreed. “I’m not from here. Have you heard of the Borderlands?”
The boy’s face scrunched itself up into a contemplative frown. “Demons live there,” he pointed out, accusingly. “Are you human then? You don’t look like a demon.”
My husband doesn’t either, Mai mused to herself, her gaze flickering to where the slender king of the underworld was paying for a carriage to bring them to their house in town. And yet, here we both are.
She supposed that she couldn’t fault the boy: mortals tended to think of demons as hideous, grotesque beings with leathery wings and twisted joints and deadly-sharp talons, something that Mai Mei - with her ink-black tresses and walking dress of snow-white watered silk and fine satin gloves that shimmered like liquid moonlight - was very decidedly not.
“I’m a queen,” she murmured instead, tilting her head to the side and regarding the human boy. “But only because my husband is a king.”
“What about the rest of your family? Is your sister a princess?” asked the mortal, and Mai shook her head.
“My family is dead,” she found herself admitting, fingers clenched tight around the handle of her parasol. “I never met most of them. Only my uncle and cousin, but my husband killed them.”
She paused, delicately. “I suppose I’m no better, though. I killed my first three husbands, and I fully intend on killing this one too.”
The park was quiet. The boy seemed bewildered, and Mai ignored him for the time being, instead glancing back toward the king of the underworld. Her eyes flitted over summer-golden daffodils and wistful lavender wisteria trees and carefully trimmed rose bushes, the petals flushed with pink sunrise. There was not a single blossom out of place, not a single speck of soil spilling out into the meticulously-laid stone path. And Devil help her, it was suffocating.
Mai stood abruptly, something in her chest tight and aching. She knew that mortals like this boy feared the windswept desert, where the deadly heat of the sun bled the land dry and the sovereign in the clouds was nothing but a faraway dream. But the long-eared jackrabbits and crawling centipedes and all the other creatures that made a life where the darkness was salvation were wily and stubborn and so much more alive than anything in this manicured garden of neat hedges and fluttering butterflies that hummed with springtime, trapped in this fanciful man-made paradise. It reminded her all too much of the glory-bright realm above.
“Mai, are you ready?”
Her fourth husband’s quiet, pleasant voice snapped Mai out of her reverie. His eyes glittered like icicles as they glided over Mai and the child, shining and sharp.
Mai nodded. “Of course,” she murmured, taking his arm. She turned back in the direction of the mortal boy, whose eyes were wide as saucers again - this time, though, Mai could feel his fear thrumming through the air, roiling like a gathering thunderstorm.
The king of the underworld gave the boy a dazzling smile. “Where are your parents, young man?”
Mai shook her head. “He doesn’t know. I’ll help him along?”
Her fourth husband gave a nonchalant shrug. “Alright. Be quick about it - we should be going soon.”
Mai reached with her mind once again, letting tendrils of her whisper-silk magic spiral out of her. She planted the suggestions in his head: find your mother. Forget about us.
With that done, Mai let the man who murdered her family sweep her out of the flowering park and into the waiting carriage, leaving the human boy under the gently swaying branches of the willow tree.
