This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Damn the old lady. Damn her into whatever creative torments have ever been invented for priests to wish on their theological opponents, all simultaneously, for ever and always, let it be done.
Aya is quite aware that she'd revise this opinion if her opinions had any power over the fate of the old lady. Since they do not, she will stand here and silently call down curses.
She was supposed to be willed to herself. She had plans. She was going to sleep in the temple attic and work for the post office and save up enough to go to Carthapane. She was pretty sure she could be enrolled in a college by twenty-five, doing something useful by thirty - she was undecided pending her more formal education between illegal human export and working within the system for debt relief or purchase-to-manumit programs -
And now she'll just count herself lucky if she gets bought by someone with loose enough security that she can flee over the border without falling into a magic, attempt to teach herself Tsopixi, and do - she doesn't have a plan after that, now. Her plan went up in smoke when the old lady's will was read and she was left to the idiot grandson and the idiot grandson traded her to a reseller for enough to cover his bad investments. She can't go work for the post office with marked heel and no papers.
And she is keenly aware that she is sixteen going on seventeen, which is a much different situation than she faced when she was on the block a decade ago being advertised for her literacy, assessed for her ability to take dictation.
She shifts position. The chain between her collar and the wall jangles. She watches people going by, browsing, reading the sign posted in front of her.
"Ayabel" - 125 seo
16 yrs, healthy
Reads & writes (Esevi, some Ancient Sudre)
10 yrs housegirl experience, previously farming
No history of rebelliousness
Yeah. No history of rebelliousness, because the old lady was old and coming up on the end of her life, the old lady let her read books and left her enough free time to think and draw, the old lady was going to will her to herself and then she could get started on her life.
This history won't last long, Aya doesn't think.
Most especially if anyone looks at the second line and brings her home for the obvious thing.
namesthesky
namesthesky
"Since... you seemed... worried, I thought I should mention, this is a nicer situation than I would have likely wound up in if Berete hadn't picked me out, by a long way. I don't know if you're mostly upset on my behalf or because something about me is inconvenient, but I'm going to - try not to be inconvenient."
(She sounds so cringing even when she's actively trying not to be. She wonders how much papers in her pocket would have helped with that, if she'd have gone through awkward months of deferring to everyone she met if she'd been manumitted as expected. She supposes it wouldn't be an awful habit for a junior post office employee to have, and anyway that doesn't matter anymore.)
(She sounds so cringing even when she's actively trying not to be. She wonders how much papers in her pocket would have helped with that, if she'd have gone through awkward months of deferring to everyone she met if she'd been manumitted as expected. She supposes it wouldn't be an awful habit for a junior post office employee to have, and anyway that doesn't matter anymore.)
anotherbreeze
"...Thanks," he says. "That's - good to know. And, I don't know, it's not that you're inconvenient exactly? I mean it's technically sort of true but it's not the point. It's complicated."
anotherbreeze
"It's like... it's like being Father's only son," he says, leaning back against the doorframe. "There is no next heir; after me it's a handful of distant cousins in other provinces, none of which even border Viore, and they all have equal claim. So if I fall out of a tree and break my neck or something, and my parents don't manage to cough up another child in time to grow up before Father dies, it means chaos and rioting at least. Worse, if the cousins get to fighting each other and the King takes too long to come clean up the mess. So every time I think about doing something that might risk my life, it's not just 'what if I die', it's 'what if I die and thereby fuck over a whole province'. You could call that inconvenient, I'd for sure climb a lot more trees without it, but the population of Viore isn't really stopping me from taking stupid risks with my life. They couldn't if they tried. It's just," he shrugs, "I'm not keen on riots. I don't know, does that make sense?"
anotherbreeze
"Yeah. Something like that. The details aren't the same, but it's the same general idea."
namesthesky
"I'm unavoidably on your plate because anything you could do to get me off your plate would have bad side effects for me and you don't want that," she concludes. "Well, I can stay out of your way and leave you alone, if you'd rather?"
anotherbreeze
"I don't know," he says. "Maybe? But I don't want you afraid of bothering me. If you need something you can't get by yourself, that's on my plate too. The part of this situation that bothers me already happened, and it's not something either of us can change, at least not while Father is alive. You're not going to make things worse just by talking to me or whatever."
namesthesky
"All I really need is food, things to draw with, and a place to be; everything else is mostly a perk except for things you can't give me now. I guess a change of clothes would be nice eventually but I'd be surprised if Berete didn't produce one at some point."
anotherbreeze
"I'll remind her," he says with a shrug. "And even things that are just perks, I can probably get for you without going too far out of my way. If you, I don't know, wake up one morning absolutely craving candied orange slices, I can tell Berete to make some."
namesthesky
"I know how to make all the foods I'm likely to wake up craving. Would she not let me without instructions?"
anotherbreeze
"If it was something that might take a while, or use up something she doesn't have a lot of, she'd want you to ask her first. And she might want to know I was all right with it, but," he waves a hand to indicate the broad scope of this generality, "anything you wanna do with your time short of maybe burning down the house, I'm all right with."
namesthesky
"Maybe burning down the house?" She laughs a little. "Well, I have no arsonist tendencies, don't worry."
namesthesky
Aya scrunches towards herself a little.
"My prior owner - led me to believe I'd be left to myself when she died. I was thinking of asking you a similar question but I'm not sure I want to."
"My prior owner - led me to believe I'd be left to myself when she died. I was thinking of asking you a similar question but I'm not sure I want to."
anotherbreeze
"If I'll free you when my father dies, you mean? I will," he says. "But you don't have to believe it if you don't want to risk the disappointment."
namesthesky
She nods.
"I was going to -" She stops again. "I don't know if you actually want to know or if you were just mentioning not knowing earlier for some other reason."
"I was going to -" She stops again. "I don't know if you actually want to know or if you were just mentioning not knowing earlier for some other reason."
namesthesky
"If she'd willed me to myself I was going to sleep in the temple attic and I had a job half-lined-up at the post office and I was going to save up and go to school. She left me to her grandson instead and he passed me along to a reseller at the market where Berete found me."
anotherbreeze
He absorbs this, looking thoughtful, possibly sympathetic.
Then he blinks and says, "—You know, I don't even know your name? I just noticed that."
Then he blinks and says, "—You know, I don't even know your name? I just noticed that."
namesthesky
"Anyway. I'll let you know if I want something and can't get it myself, and otherwise stay out of the way, is I think what we've concluded?"