“She would!” She sets her chin on her hand, smiles wistfully. “Were she a Lion, she’d cut payment from their hides.” “At her age, to be told you’re meant to rule a country but that everyone else will do it for you, and to then have those men make foolish decisions.” he huffs a laugh. To be Empress of Begnion and have as much control over your country as you do over the weather.” “In some small way, that’s why we’re at war. Her thumbs trace its rim in slow, reliable patterns, feeling the rough shifts of the ceramic. “I suppose I can’t blame her,” Sigrun admits, turning to face him, wrapping both her hands around her cup. Had she claws and teeth, however, Giffca is of no doubt that she would loose those as well. He’d pace back and forth, tail lashing, snarling and starting fights with me for the sole purpose of having a fight.” Sanaki’s cruel words, which she has turned oft of late on anyone near enough to be in range, leave marks that fade quicker than do claws and teeth. “He used to do the same thing when he was frustrated, with no way to solve the problems. She hesitates, unsure where he’s taking her. The tension binding her shoulders is trembling, like it wants to release but doesn’t know where it’s going. “Sanaki reminds me of Skrimir,” Giffca says, then adds, “Like Caineghis, when we were young.” Giffca can’t put a name to the thing that he has not yet seen, but he knows it, with a deep, sure-sense foreboding, in the same way that he can tell the sun will rise and set. The tower looms in all their futures, although they don’t yet know it. But now they are allies, united unquestionably in their desires to see these two great wars come to an end. Giffca is a Lion, older by far than Sigrun, and he and his have at turns been enemies at war and barely-trustworthy friends at peace. “You looked as if there was a weight upon your mind.” Sigrun hesitates: they do not know each other well. It takes Sigrun a moment to notice him, and then she starts, a moment of processing as she takes in the cup, her companion, the bloody great Lion watching her as patiently as he might watch a distant deer, but with much less malice.
His tail drapes over the other side of the bench where he sits, tip twitching, patiently. Giffca comes to join her at the table where she sits in the bustling camp, sets down two cups of weak drinking beer, and sits down across from her. She doesn’t move, but she paces internally like a caged lion.
Her face is still, but her eyes speak volumes, a worry etched between her brows and anxiety in the way she bites at her nails. He catches Sigrun staring at her, eyes far away, expression unreadable. If she was a Laguz, she’d be puffed up, her fur on-end, her tail bottle-brush and her back ridged. It leaves Sanaki deeply out of sorts, a haunting fear that makes her-well, not so much skittish, but Giffca can tell her hackles are raised. Even being nearly toppled in a coup, almost arrested, several varying assassination attempts, your country falling, and the end of the world.
As all adolescents, she is too quick to speak, too quick to start fights, too quick to rush headlong into trouble.įor headstrong children born to rule, this recklessness can be a double-edged sword: they will never listen to their elders as they ought, but also nothing puts them out of commission for long. She’s still a child, and although she can school her face to neutrality and speak with a deeper register, learn the complexities of court language and cadences of speech, hide her height with high-heeled shoes and the voluminous folds of her stately robes, beneath it she is still an adolescent. Up close, the aura she gives off falls, and the Empress Sanaki becomes that which she truly is: a young woman with the weight of the world upon her shoulders.
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