[larpfic] A start and an end

[bouteillebleu]

Two bits of fiction here, both for my CUTT character Natasha. Done using three-word prompts, crossposted to lrpdrabbles here. The first is fairly short, and entirely backstory; the second is partly backstory, partly the most recent CUTT interactive, and a lot of italics. :)

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Birth / Too Much / Snow

"It's coming, Sascha, I can see the head. Keep pushing, that's good, keep going..."

There's blood, too much blood. Too much for a girl half-starved by a long winter, too much for a young mother straining to bring her child into the world. Too much for someone who'll be asked for more blood come the spring.

"Once more, just once more..."

"...that's it! Vladislav, go find the priest."

The child is alive, starting to squall as the cord is cut and it is wrapped in a shawl. The mother's eyes are half closed, her tight grip on her husband's hand starting to loosen.

"For the love of Humact, boy, go fetch the priest! She won't last the night if you don't!"

Vladislav nods, and shrugs on his furs before running out into the night, snow billowing in the door before he closes it behind him. Beside the bed, wide-eyed young Vassily watches his parents and new sibling.

"Sascha, it's a girl," the midwife says, and offers the crying bundle to its mother, who smiles weakly. Her husband leans down to take the child and hold it close to her, blood beading on his lip where he is biting it.

Cold billows into the house once more, followed by Vladislav and the priest, who mutters an oath when he sees the room. He swallows, hard, daubs the sign of Humact on the back of his hands in the blood, then lays his palms on Sascha's shoulders and prays.

Her breathing eases. Her eyes open. The baby, squalling until now, falls silent and sleeps against her breast, its breathing likewise steady.

"Vladislav, bring in snow. Vassily, fetch some cloth and a jar."

The child will not have a name for another year or more, not until it has survived the next winter. And there is still blood, too much blood. But what can be saved, and given as the tithe now, will save them through until spring, will help guard the new child against being taken instead.

---

Death / Summer / Shade

She walks down the now-familiar lanes, eyes only watching for the right turnings. The rest of the world is thin and distant; her thoughts are back home, back to one evening a decade ago.

"Vassily was out in the woods. Did you see who killed him, Sveta?"

The girl clutches her bow more tightly, looks down at the floor. "I talked to him earlier that night, but... it's too horrible."

Her eyes are full of pain.

At the still now. It needs refilling; she does that now, hands working quickly to bottle and refill, and her lips move in the litany from earlier.

"Lord Humact, give me your calm and your wisdom. Let me face my enemies without dishonour, let me face my friends without dishonour, let me face my death without dishonour."

"The words are important, but they're not the most important part," Vassily tells his younger sister one sunny summer's day, as they gather wood and food for the evening. "If you keep it going round in your head, keep speaking it, it stops you being distracted. Helps to steady your aim with a bow, or get into the rhythm when chopping wood."

Natasha nods, then yelps as a squirrel bounds into view on the branch she was stripping. Startled, the squirrel dashes away, and Vassily shakes his head.

"And it means you don't lose a decent meal. Come on, Tasha, you can learn those words."

She sighs, then obeys. "Lord Humact, give me your calm and your wisdom..."

The still is refilled again, the lock is set, and all is as it should be. Back through the lanes, down an alley, across some wider roads, to another now-familiar place. The dark stone building is the closest thing she now has to a home; the statues on the gate look down with empty eyes.

Svetlana is clearly in pain, looking at Natasha for support as the adults question her. They see this, and after asking again if she saw what happened, they send her home.

She's so sad about it that Natasha tries to be strong for her as well as for herself and her parents. Her brother is gone, but Sveta was the first to find him, she found the body of someone who only a day earlier was laughing and joking with them, was hoping he might have another chance with Sveta if that boy Boris would move away when his father left to collect the taxes in the south.

It's not Sveta's fault she found the body - but who killed him? He didn't make enemies, he was too open-hearted for that. Even after Sveta had told him "no", he laughed and clapped her on the shoulder and said if she ever needed more bow training, to tell him.

She walks through the temple, mail clinking. Her back and arm still hurt, lines of pain scored across them. The hole in the back of the hauberk needs repairing, though Cal's patch job earlier on the arm is holding well. Somewhere here - the temple is still unfamiliar - is the bed she's managed to find, and the tools she needs to repair the damage. The hollow ache in her chest and the chimes of the temple bells remind her that her first task is her evening devotions. Memories of Isolde barking out orders surface again, and she bites them back and murmurs the litany again.

"You remember how Vassily was sweet on me?"

"Da, what about it?"

Sveta talks about how she'd arranged to meet Boris, the tax-collector's son. Natasha asks if it's the same one that they later found out was-

"Please, Tasha, let me finish."

And she keeps explaining. How she met Boris that night, and how he was happy and wanted to show her something.

She can't picture the next scene. Her last memories of Vassily are of him laughing and smiling, and then of his body laid out for the pyre, his face calm. The priest said his soul had passed on, and they all breathed more easily to hear that. She cried as they lit the pyre, but at least she knew his body wouldn't be defiled, wouldn't be raised by someone to serve as their servant for dark and blasphemous rituals...

Much less raised by a boy little older than him, flush with new power from his chosen god, wanting to impress a girl by showing her what he could do.

She has been silent for a long while. Her first words are tight, restrained.

"Did you kill him?"

"Who?"

"Boris. Did you kill him?"

"...Da."

Sveta is looking down at the floor, and Natasha finally realises what that expression was eleven years ago. It was pain, but also shame, at not telling the whole truth to her parents, her family, her friends - everyone else who was there is dead by now, Natasha realises - so that Vassily could be granted some dignity in his death.

"And Vassily?"

An even longer pause. "Da."

Repairing the mail takes less than an hour, and is tricky work. She speaks the litany as she works, the words keeping her mind focused. When the mail is done, she turns to her axe, cleaning blood off the blade and whetting the edge again. The hollow ache is gone as she lies down to sleep, still murmuring.

Her dreams are full of blood and fire, her friends hollow-eyed and gaunt and lurching, Svetlana and Tiberius at their head covered in blood, Ivan in the rear guard staring at her, eyes silently accusing. And next to her, that gods-cursed fae woman, Prophecy, smirking at her and offering a palm filled with more blood.

"You must stay here, you know. They will go and you cannot follow."

Comments

[optimisticapple.livejournal.com]

wow, those are really amazing, especially the second, it gives a real sense why the wallachians act the way they do :)