Freyjin sat in her room braiding Veema’s hair after a lengthy day. Veema was sitting on a short wooden stool while her mother sat in a chair. The two bits of furniture were not excessively formal, simple, moderate quality materials. Finished wood, not even polished. But it was functional, ‘It’s better than what I gave her.’ The thought came unbidden to Freyjin’s mind. Her ears twitched anxiously at her perceived failure. The silky smoothness of Veema’s hair was another improvement. The mistress’s orders of required bathing and the provision of simple soaps kept them all clean…
‘That’s part of it… isn’t it. If you were honest with yourself, you’d admit it.’ Freyjin thought, recalling the way her owner’s fist had connected, ‘She would have fought for her daughter… I let mine go.’ She worked quietly on the silky, clean strands of blonde hair that were so like her own. The bruise her daughter had on her face when she’d been brought to the estate was now gone. Freyjin felt the bitter recognition of her shortcomings all around her.
“Mom, are you alright?” Veema turned her head slightly over her shoulder to ask.
Freyjin forced a smile, “No, nothing, Veema. Nothing at all. How was… how were classes today? Was the teacher nice?”
Veema nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, when I mentioned you were my mother, he was extra nice to all of us. We learned a lot.”
“Good, speaking of ‘we’, where are Straen and Lenah?” Freyjin asked, glancing over to the open door that led to their shared quarters.
“They stayed in the baths a little longer. They were talking to Miss Solution when I left.” Veema replied innocently and Freyjin felt her blood run cold.
‘Lady Solution… there is a monster if ever there was one…’ Freyjin thought as she recalled the way the woman had picked up a bandit and used it as a club to beat another three to death, brushing off desperate thrusts of swords as if they were mere tiny children’s fragile twigs.
“What did Lady Solution want with them?” Freyjin asked as calmly as she could. The sadistic smile on the monster’s face, it was clear even their mistress could not contain that one, and that one savored agony.
“Nothing, they wanted to talk to her, I didn’t ask about what, I wanted to come back to you.” Veema replied with an innocent and toothy smile on her face.
Freyjin leaned over and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “I’m so glad you’re h- ah, with me again…”
“Me too.” Veema replied, just as the white haired twins came into the room.
They quietly took stools up and sat on opposite sides of Veema, their backs were straight, and as Veema did, they wore simple dark night clothes that came down to their calves and covered their arms. The linen clothing was simple but functional. They all sat with a formal posture while Freyjin took care of them one by one.
“Lenah, how was your day?” Freyjin asked in the kindest voice she could.
Lenah turned her head, not to look at Freyjin behind her, but leaning slightly forward, as she looked right, Straen looked left in the same way, having traded expressions Freyjin could not see, they nodded and sat up straight again in unison.
“Fine.” Lenah answered in a neutral voice.
“Oh.” Freyjin said as she finished with Veema and moved to start on Lenah’s hair. She chewed on her tongue as the silence stretched.
Freyjin sought for another question like someone drowning sought a lifeline. “Did you learn things today before you started working?”
“Yes.” The monotone answer came back immediately.
“Did you like any of it?” Freyjin inquired further.
“I think so.” Lenah answered again.
Seeing it going nowhere, and thinking of what Veema had told her, she sought another question. “What did you want to talk to Lady Solution about?”
“None of your business.” Lenah bit off the words like meat from a bone.
Freyjin flinched.
“Lenah I’m…” Freyjin started to say.
“Not my mother, not our mother. Our mother is dead, our sister is dead, neither of you can replace them, so stop trying.” Lenah spat the words out like a snake spat venom.
“I… I…” Freyjin tried to get out words, rearing back as if she were slapped.
Veema however stood up… shooting to her feet, she made a little fist, glared at the seated, blank faced girl and raised her other hand. It came down hard, only to be caught at the wrist by the well trained Freyjin.
“No Veema… no.” Freyjin hung her head. “She’s not wrong…”
Lenah turned her head around, surprised by the admission, her expressionless face had only the faintest twitch at the eyes.
Freyjin spoke in a small, urgent voice and releasing Veema’s wrist, she put that hand on Lenah’s shoulder. “I’m not… I’m not your mother, I can’t replace her. I’m not trying to, either. If something happened to me, like what happened to yours and someone took Veema in… she wouldn’t ever forget me either. She never had siblings but, if she did? Well, I know nobody could replace those either. I don’t want to replace what you’ve lost… I just want to look after you… like I do mine. Just… just let me help. You don’t have to call me mom, or mother, you don’t even have to feel anything about me if you don’t want to. Just let me help you.”
Straen let out a dismissive “Hmpf. We have no choice about staying with you, but it isn’t like you wanted us, mistress assigned us to you. We’re just property you’ve got to watch.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“That’s not fair!” Veema shouted, her head turning left and right to the white haired twins, “She’s being nice to you, at least be nice to her!” Veema sniffled unhappily, her little hands forming tight, angry fists.
“And there’s where you’re wrong, Straen.” Freyjin said with greater confidence, “I asked to keep looking after you, I wanted to, maybe part of me needed to, but I made a choice, a choice the mistress granted, though she made me prove I wanted to do it.”
The twins crossed their arms and stuck their noses up in the air, “Sure you did.” They said in unison.
“Next time you talk to Lady Solution about something that is none of my business…” Freyjin said with a calm, quiet tone, “ask her yourself. For now though, let me take care of that hair…” Freyjin then gingerly reached to Lenah’s hair, and went back to brushing it again.
----------------------------------------
Sado rubbed his forehead for what felt like the thousandth time. ‘If you keep that up Sado, you’re going to rub your head clean off.’ He stared down at the curious flow of the western script. “It’s like being back in school all over again." He grumbled unhappily.
“What is?” Diana asked when she walked into the office he’d been temporarily given. Her raven hair flowed behind her, somehow it appeared to always catch the breeze in such a way as to curl like inviting fingers making a ‘come hither’ gesture. The light through the window caught her just right, as it always did, giving her an alluring, angelic air.
Sado however, was too sore from his last thrashing with Lady Solution to truly appreciate it. Deep bruises at the chest made his cough painful, but he answered in the clear and noble voice he still had with him. “All this work… translating the sacred text of the Death Worshippers, and preparing to travel east to meet with another Prince on his own ground."
“Didn’t you do that all the time back when you had a city?” Diana asked with a cocking of her head when she leaned back against the warm glass of the window.
“No, and also yes.” Sado brushed back his sweaty hair, “I came to Pas’en sometimes, and we have met on neutral ground in sacred Da’nak. But except for a few trips when I was very young, no. I never traveled much to other places.”
“Right… right… I’d forgotten that.” Diana said, curling a finger around hair that blew near the small of her back from the partially opened window behind her.
“Forgotten that?” Sado asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Right, back when I was the property of Lady Kaiji, she sometimes used to complain about your stubborn refusal to leave your city.” Diana managed a mild laugh and tried to imitate Kaiji’s voice, “...If that stubborn oaf doesn’t travel outside these damn walls, he’ll think he rules the whole damn world because he’ll forget the world is bigger than what’s in them.”
Sado managed a bitter laugh at the not half bad impression. “She wasn’t wrong. No, no she was not.”
“How much have you done?” Diana asked, waving to the blank book that Sado was slowly filling up.
“For this attempt? I’m on my fourth one and I’m about halfway through it.” Sado answered with a somewhat glum expression on his hangdog face.
“Well, you can always work on it while we’re gone.” She gave him an indulgent smile and somehow a faint blush rose on her cheeks that he felt sure hadn’t happened on its own.
“So what’s your job in all this?” Sado asked, sitting back and setting down the will.
“Whatever do you mean, Prince of Chains?” She hid her lips behind her hands and tittered like an imbecile.
He rolled his eyes, “You were always a weapon, Diana, you don’t send a weapon into a city without a target in mind.”
“A wiser Prince would already have worked that out.” She said in a dusky tone of seduction.
He clenched his fist tightly enough to snap the quill, “I’m not a prince anymore. Is that why you came to see me? To remind me of that?”
“You might say that, Sado. Kaiji might have killed my mother and father and the rest of my family, but she was protecting yours, starting with your grandfather and ending with you. Maybe that doesn’t bother me as much as it should, but you cost the only mother I ever did know, her freedom. Maybe Kaiji is happy where she is, but you have nothing to do with that. Everyone I ever should have loved, everyone I ever did love, you and your family ruined or ended their lives. So maybe reminding you not to step outside your place now, isn’t such a bad idea.” Diana said, folding her arms in front of her ample breasts, she didn’t meet his eyes when she spoke, and he didn’t look to see if she tried.
“You’re not wrong. But if it helps…” He said and reached up to tug pointedly at his golden collar. “I can’t do that anymore, and I know it. Now why don’t you leave me alone, Diana, if you’re wondering, we leave tomorrow, and I want to prepare just a little bit more before we do.”
“Fine, Prince of Chains.” Diana replied, and went to the door, then looking back at him, “Just don’t forget, I’ll be watching you. If you step out of line and threaten what little we’ve just begun to get back? I’ll do everything I can to destroy you, even if it costs me my life.”
Sado ignored the barb and the slam of the door, then bent back over his book with a fresh quill to try his hand at another blank page.
----------------------------------------
Sobella shook so violently that she could not even control her tongue, and Nua asked no words of her. When they were alone again, Nua sat with her back against the wall and pulled the frail courtesan into her arms. The demon-elf was clearly grateful, seeking any comfort she could as soon as the hood was torn off her head and cast into a far corner with the one Nua removed and cast aside a moment before.
The feast was still ongoing outside, they could hear no wailing, but cracking bones and the sound of walking beastman snacking outside still filtered into the open window to reach their ears.
It was not until the night was well and deeply on them that Sobella said a single word. She lay with her head in Nua’s lap, and looked up through cracked red eyes, a hand came up to caress the sharp featured, but soft cheek of the curiosity that was her escort.
“Make love to me.” Sobella asked with a plaintive, shaking voice.
Nua’s eyes were not down at the time, but the request caught her off guard and she snapped her eyes to the demon-elf. Sobella felt the sudden tension in the woman’s legs that were stretched out beneath her head.
“Make love to me. I don’t want to think about what we heard… and that… that helps me feel good, and forget for a little while at least.” Sobella stroked Nua’s cheek, and the wood elf took the caressing hand at the wrist into a firm but not overly tight grip.
“I’m sorry. I… I can’t do that.” Nua looked over to the window, her body slowly relaxing after the sudden, initial tension.
“You’ve never been with a woman before?” Sobella asked with curiosity welling up, and it hit her, ‘I really barely know anything of this one, despite all our investigations, she plays everything very close to the chest.’
Nua shook her head, “It’s not that. I’m not… innocent, if that’s what you’re asking. Some things I…”
“What if it’s my dying wish…?” Sobella asked weakly, managing a tiny little smile as she spoke that might have been ‘meant’ to be seductive, but instead came across only as ‘sad’.
Nua’s head slowly turned to the demon-elf. “If you’re really my friend,” she brought the woman’s hand down away from herself, and slowly laid Sobella’s palm down atop her other hand, “you won’t try to manipulate me like that. You won’t try to guilt me into that…”
Sobella closed her eyes in shame. “I’m… I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m being selfish… I just don’t want to think anymore, I just want to feel something other than fear…”
“Maybe you’re not the only selfish one… maybe it’s OK if we’re both being a little selfish… I just… I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t… forgive me.” Nua shook her head and clenched her eyes tighter than Sobella had ever seen them go.
‘She doesn’t flinch even a little while slaughter and screams flow around her but that… that makes her tense and withdraw?’ Sobella rolled onto her side so that her face was towards Nua’s armored belly. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… I didn’t think that would get to you. Nothing else seems to, so… whatever I said, whatever it was… you’ve already been kinder to me than I deserved out of you.”
Nua lowered her hand over Sobella’s face, “It’s alright, you don’t need to worry about me, I should be the last worry on your mind. And I really, I am really sorry, I just… I can’t.”
Sobella gave a short, bitter laugh, “I’ve never been turned down before, by anyone, so I’m not going to say that exactly feels great, especially now. But… you have your reasons. Can I ask you to sing something then, and maybe let me stay like this at least, until I fall asleep.”
Nua gave a tiny nod, “That… I can do for you.” And her rich melodic voice, low, soft, and yet somehow soaring through the otherwise empty, musty room, turned their stale existence into a vibrant place of music.
Notes of a song Nua hadn’t ever sung, but only recalled from the lips of a mother she’d long forgotten, rang from one wall to the next out to the window beyond. Her voice built and built as she lost herself in the music of her own homeland, filling the quiet air of the sound of Silence, with her defiance, drowning out the crunch of bone and the squelching flesh and dripping blood.
Another, and another, and another, she cast her hymns of happiness and cheer into the dark town, sure that even Sobella’s demon-elf ears could pick up not a single sound of the hellscape beyond, and faint breathing told Nua that her charge had gone to sleep.
Beyond the walls of thick stone blocks, out in the town of Silence, observant, sharp eared beastmen heard the music and wondered which of their numbers could sing like that. One however, did not wonder. The hyenawoman walked with the bone in between her teeth at first, but when the music hit, she stopped dead and cocked her spotted ear, her long jaw held tight against the human leg bone with its tasty, tasty marrow still not all the way removed.
She caught every word of the soaring musical voice, ‘The elf woman, the escort? Meat can sing like that?’ Her dark brows furrowed when her eyes closed and she savored the music coming out the window, until the last note faded, and the town of Silence began to get its namesake back.
When it was done, the mayor of Silence took the bone from between her teeth, and suddenly was not hungry anymore. She dropped the bone into the dust, and went back to her home instead, no longer in the mood for feasting.