Coronation Ball
Jan. 28th, 2013 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feredarStory: Coronation Ball
Year: 940 FY
Characters: Sela
Warnings: References to mass familial death, some internalized misogyny, reference to long-past death in childbirth.
Notes: This takes place in the Queen Sela AU.
The room was at once too bright and too dark, all smoke and ashes and somehow hollow. Someone--Sela couldn't recall who--had come up with the idea that they should use alcohol for the lights, instead of more traditional pitch or softly scented oils. It made them brighter, and different colors, depending on what kind, but it didn't dispel the gloom that lay just under the surface. Rather, it made the whole thing seem all the more hollow, too-shrill laughter echoing over the crackling flames.
And Sela...Sela sat above it all, numb, feeling more like a statue than a Queen. Her parents, gone, her brothers, gone, and she, the first reigning Queen in two hundred years, felt like a fraud.
She managed the right smiles and the right words as her court--her court--was presented to her, but she couldn't help thinking that this was some horrible nightmare. She hadn't been raised to it, trained to it, not the way even the last of her brothers had been.
It wasn't just a loss-gloom, hanging under the too-bright lights and brittle laughter. Sela knew it. The loss was there--her father, a good king, honored and respected; her oldest brother, the crown prince, beloved by all; and the others, the safety net for Feredar in the years to come, when, as the attack on the Palace itself proved, things were getting more and more agitated.
And her people--her court, and presumably the rest down in the city, though her security hadn't allowed her out--were afraid. Because here she was, a small, frightened, untrained, slip of a girl, and the last reigning Queen had died in childbed, and if that happened...
She took a deep breath, and quietly rose. It took a few minutes for everyone to quiet down and turn to her. Gripping her skirts underneath the heavy cape that had been placed on her, she forced a smile. "I would like to dance," she said.
Of course, dozens of men--young and attractive and...otherwise--leapt up to fawn on their new Queen. She kept her smile frozen in place, picked one at random, and followed him out to the center of the hall.
She focused on the music, on the too-bright lights, on the warmth of his hand on her waist, and tried to forget the pervasive fear that she would crumble.
Year: 940 FY
Characters: Sela
Warnings: References to mass familial death, some internalized misogyny, reference to long-past death in childbirth.
Notes: This takes place in the Queen Sela AU.
The room was at once too bright and too dark, all smoke and ashes and somehow hollow. Someone--Sela couldn't recall who--had come up with the idea that they should use alcohol for the lights, instead of more traditional pitch or softly scented oils. It made them brighter, and different colors, depending on what kind, but it didn't dispel the gloom that lay just under the surface. Rather, it made the whole thing seem all the more hollow, too-shrill laughter echoing over the crackling flames.
And Sela...Sela sat above it all, numb, feeling more like a statue than a Queen. Her parents, gone, her brothers, gone, and she, the first reigning Queen in two hundred years, felt like a fraud.
She managed the right smiles and the right words as her court--her court--was presented to her, but she couldn't help thinking that this was some horrible nightmare. She hadn't been raised to it, trained to it, not the way even the last of her brothers had been.
It wasn't just a loss-gloom, hanging under the too-bright lights and brittle laughter. Sela knew it. The loss was there--her father, a good king, honored and respected; her oldest brother, the crown prince, beloved by all; and the others, the safety net for Feredar in the years to come, when, as the attack on the Palace itself proved, things were getting more and more agitated.
And her people--her court, and presumably the rest down in the city, though her security hadn't allowed her out--were afraid. Because here she was, a small, frightened, untrained, slip of a girl, and the last reigning Queen had died in childbed, and if that happened...
She took a deep breath, and quietly rose. It took a few minutes for everyone to quiet down and turn to her. Gripping her skirts underneath the heavy cape that had been placed on her, she forced a smile. "I would like to dance," she said.
Of course, dozens of men--young and attractive and...otherwise--leapt up to fawn on their new Queen. She kept her smile frozen in place, picked one at random, and followed him out to the center of the hall.
She focused on the music, on the too-bright lights, on the warmth of his hand on her waist, and tried to forget the pervasive fear that she would crumble.