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femslashficlets2016-08-04 02:01 am
rosage) wrote in femslashficlets2016-08-04 02:01 am
Entry tags:
#070 - remainder
Title: The Only Heaven I'll Be Sent To
Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates
Pairing: Beruka/Camilla
Rating: G
Word Count: 779
Prompt: #042 - weather
Summary: Beruka's routine patrol becomes anything but.
Note: Set pre-canon, so no specific route or plot spoilers.
The air feels muggy on Beruka’s triangle of exposed skin. The first stretch of flight provided a pleasant breeze, though the wind has sharpened on and off without warning, like the careless crack of a whip. Now the group is flying under thickening clouds that darken in the distance, black as their armor along the horizon.
Beruka’s wyvern tosses its head, clearly wary of the coming storm. She tugs on the reins to steady it. She’s finally getting used to the wyvern’s habits, no longer assuming it will drop her onto the rocks below every time it gives warning. Owning the wyvern is another matter. The room and board made her suspicious enough, and the axe and armor convinced her that Camilla was trying to make Beruka indebted to her, to force her into permanent service as penance for Beruka’s attempt on her life. It won’t work; Beruka’s services have always been as impermanent as her homes, just a part of day-to-day survival.
The wyvern baffled her. Suddenly Beruka was responsible for a rare, breathing creature.
She’d never been asked to keep something alive.
But the weeks have added up, and the routines of training, feeding, and riding have helped her avoid thinking about her situation. Usually while patrolling the only things on her mind are control of her mount and thorough surveillance, but today she’s distracted by Camilla flying ahead of her. There’s no reason for the princess to join a routine patrol, though she told Beruka she loves flight. Perhaps it has something to do with Nohr being below ground, or the way Camilla strokes her wyvern’s neck at every opportunity. Then again, it doesn’t matter what Camilla loves or why. What matters is the mission Beruka has been given: to report on any anomalies in the area, and to engage any enemy she’s ordered to engage.
There’s no movement on the ground, which doesn’t have enough foliage to hide anyone. Beruka’s attention turns ahead. Rumbling has joined the sound of flapping wings, but Camilla flies onward, and Beruka’s orders are to follow.
At first, Beruka doesn’t notice the hazy sky or the distant sound of rain hitting stone. She realizes it’s because it stays in the distance—it’s always a set amount of leagues away from the group, as if they’re flying within some invisible shield. The rain would cut through the mugginess and, perhaps, allow the plants below a fighting chance, but given her wyvern’s aversion to water it’s just as well.
The first lightning doesn’t strike in the backdrop where the clouds are dark smoke. It strikes a tail’s-width to the right of Camilla, making Beruka jerk her wyvern. The other, older wyvern riders are giving Camilla a wide berth, otherwise flying on as if nothing is unusual, and it finally hits Beruka that’s she serving a madwoman. Nothing accounts for the pounding of Beruka’s heart, which her wyvern at least seems to understand, its growl matching the sky’s rumble.
A second strike, this time on Camilla’s left. Beruka breaks out of her spell, spurring her wyvern forward. She wasn’t ordered to approach, but protecting Camilla is her primary duty, and her lady is going to get herself killed. She pulls up beside Camilla so that her voice will carry. Living in the slums and attacking from the shadows taught her to remain quiet. Now her throat feels unnaturally hoarse as she shouts that they need to retreat.
Illuminated by a flash, Camilla shakes her bangs out of her eye, her hair seeming to float around the horns of her crown, and tilts her face with a serene smile. “You came for a front-row seat, darling?”
Beruka’s protest that patrolling isn’t a show dies in her throat. The sky’s next assault strikes from directly overhead—but a length above their heads it splits, curving around an imaginary sphere like cracks in a glass orb. The sky flashes Camilla’s shade of purple, making Beruka feel trapped beneath, beside, within her. The woman who, just that morning, adjusted Beruka’s headband with excruciatingly soft fingers extends those same hands toward the charcoal sky and calls down lightning.
Even growing up on the streets, Beruka heard about the Dragon Veins the royal family was fabled to use. She assumed it was a wives’ tale to justify their legitimacy. As it turns out, Camilla is no madwoman—she’s not even entirely human.
As ungrounded as the moment is, Beruka thinks about the stables she’ll settle her wyvern into, and the bedroom to which she’ll return, her rations waiting on a tray, and she realizes there’s no turning back.
She shivers, though nothing has cut the hot and humid air.
Title: Royal Matchmaking
Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates
Pairing: Reina/Mikoto
Rating: G
Word Count: 659
Prompt: #045 – clue
Summary: Orochi's snooping uncovers only a partial truth.
Note: Set pre-canon, so no specific route or plot spoilers.
When Reina entered Mikoto’s chambers, her lady’s handmaidens had just finished helping her into her evening kimono. Never one for domestic skills, Reina delegated such honors in exchange for extra training time. She’d just changed out of her own stained clothes, so the handmaidens bowed to her as they left without giving her frightful looks, as they did when she came straight from the field. Mikoto was kneeling as elegantly arranged as she’d been left, but with a somber bearing that dulled the glow the candlelight could have given her usual smile. She lifted her eyes when Reina knelt beside her.
“If it pleases you, my lady, I bring amusing news to brighten your evening.”
“As your presence already does, but what is it? I am not yet in the mood for a night of weeping.”
Reina was unable to keep her mouth from twitching as she recalled her encounter earlier that day: Orochi, who was quite sure Reina needed her fortune divined. She’d spent enough time working beside Orochi to know when the girl was working a genuine fortune and when her gestures were only theatrics. It wasn’t that the latter style was fake, per se, but there was always a grander design, with the gifts rarely divine in nature.
This time, after a fair amount of wiggly hand gestures and sprays of Mikoto’s favorite cherry blossom perfume, Orochi pronounced that it was fate that Reina reached her age without marrying. “People are gossiping,” she’d said with a slight drop from the lilt she used while ‘divining.’ “But fate works in peculiar ways. Your truest love has been nearby, yet out of reach, so the spirits kept your hand ready for when the time came.”
Orochi proceeded to drop clues as to whom she meant: a foreign folktale about an arrow that struck with love, a lifetime of duty, and as much plays on the word ‘sweet’ as could fit in one phrase. To her obvious frustration, Reina had politely thanked her for the advice before excusing herself to tend to her weapons, which she reminded Orochi were of greater help in brutalizing her enemies than a lover would be. By the end of Reina’s story, Mikoto was hiding a smile behind her hand.
“Such a perceptive child, and yet…” Mikoto sighed. “Still, if it can be guessed, then word may yet get out. If it’s going to cause trouble, we can make our relationship public. I am not ashamed of it, like hiding it makes it seem.”
Losing Lord Sumeragi and her child had caused Mikoto to turn to her retainer for comfort, as she didn’t want to burden her children and the public with her mourning—but nor did she want to complicate things for them with the new relationship. Besides, word had not gotten back to Reina’s parents that she’d become a knight at all, let alone a kinshi knight with the direct privilege of serving the queen. An announcement that she was Mikoto’s beloved would be a loaded pile of revelations.
“No, your decision stems from your wisdom and compassion,” Reina said. “I already have the honor of standing beside you each day, so we needn’t fret over the specifics.”
“Should we tell Orochi, at least?”
“You want to let her think her little scheme worked?”
“She’d think it was such fun. She’s been down ever since her last failed fortune telling.”
“Considerate as always. I’ll make sure that ‘shadow’ of hers isn’t skulking about when the time comes.”
That was what finally made Mikoto laugh—not the wind chime with which Reina associated her voice, but a snort she reserved for private. “Of course. I’m glad you know and care for her as I do. There is no substitute for a lost love and child, but…”
“Neither she nor I expects to be a substitution, but we are all the better for your affection,” Reina promised, laying a bandaged palm over Mikoto’s hand.
Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates
Pairing: Beruka/Camilla
Rating: G
Word Count: 779
Prompt: #042 - weather
Summary: Beruka's routine patrol becomes anything but.
Note: Set pre-canon, so no specific route or plot spoilers.
The air feels muggy on Beruka’s triangle of exposed skin. The first stretch of flight provided a pleasant breeze, though the wind has sharpened on and off without warning, like the careless crack of a whip. Now the group is flying under thickening clouds that darken in the distance, black as their armor along the horizon.
Beruka’s wyvern tosses its head, clearly wary of the coming storm. She tugs on the reins to steady it. She’s finally getting used to the wyvern’s habits, no longer assuming it will drop her onto the rocks below every time it gives warning. Owning the wyvern is another matter. The room and board made her suspicious enough, and the axe and armor convinced her that Camilla was trying to make Beruka indebted to her, to force her into permanent service as penance for Beruka’s attempt on her life. It won’t work; Beruka’s services have always been as impermanent as her homes, just a part of day-to-day survival.
The wyvern baffled her. Suddenly Beruka was responsible for a rare, breathing creature.
She’d never been asked to keep something alive.
But the weeks have added up, and the routines of training, feeding, and riding have helped her avoid thinking about her situation. Usually while patrolling the only things on her mind are control of her mount and thorough surveillance, but today she’s distracted by Camilla flying ahead of her. There’s no reason for the princess to join a routine patrol, though she told Beruka she loves flight. Perhaps it has something to do with Nohr being below ground, or the way Camilla strokes her wyvern’s neck at every opportunity. Then again, it doesn’t matter what Camilla loves or why. What matters is the mission Beruka has been given: to report on any anomalies in the area, and to engage any enemy she’s ordered to engage.
There’s no movement on the ground, which doesn’t have enough foliage to hide anyone. Beruka’s attention turns ahead. Rumbling has joined the sound of flapping wings, but Camilla flies onward, and Beruka’s orders are to follow.
At first, Beruka doesn’t notice the hazy sky or the distant sound of rain hitting stone. She realizes it’s because it stays in the distance—it’s always a set amount of leagues away from the group, as if they’re flying within some invisible shield. The rain would cut through the mugginess and, perhaps, allow the plants below a fighting chance, but given her wyvern’s aversion to water it’s just as well.
The first lightning doesn’t strike in the backdrop where the clouds are dark smoke. It strikes a tail’s-width to the right of Camilla, making Beruka jerk her wyvern. The other, older wyvern riders are giving Camilla a wide berth, otherwise flying on as if nothing is unusual, and it finally hits Beruka that’s she serving a madwoman. Nothing accounts for the pounding of Beruka’s heart, which her wyvern at least seems to understand, its growl matching the sky’s rumble.
A second strike, this time on Camilla’s left. Beruka breaks out of her spell, spurring her wyvern forward. She wasn’t ordered to approach, but protecting Camilla is her primary duty, and her lady is going to get herself killed. She pulls up beside Camilla so that her voice will carry. Living in the slums and attacking from the shadows taught her to remain quiet. Now her throat feels unnaturally hoarse as she shouts that they need to retreat.
Illuminated by a flash, Camilla shakes her bangs out of her eye, her hair seeming to float around the horns of her crown, and tilts her face with a serene smile. “You came for a front-row seat, darling?”
Beruka’s protest that patrolling isn’t a show dies in her throat. The sky’s next assault strikes from directly overhead—but a length above their heads it splits, curving around an imaginary sphere like cracks in a glass orb. The sky flashes Camilla’s shade of purple, making Beruka feel trapped beneath, beside, within her. The woman who, just that morning, adjusted Beruka’s headband with excruciatingly soft fingers extends those same hands toward the charcoal sky and calls down lightning.
Even growing up on the streets, Beruka heard about the Dragon Veins the royal family was fabled to use. She assumed it was a wives’ tale to justify their legitimacy. As it turns out, Camilla is no madwoman—she’s not even entirely human.
As ungrounded as the moment is, Beruka thinks about the stables she’ll settle her wyvern into, and the bedroom to which she’ll return, her rations waiting on a tray, and she realizes there’s no turning back.
She shivers, though nothing has cut the hot and humid air.
Title: Royal Matchmaking
Fandom: Fire Emblem Fates
Pairing: Reina/Mikoto
Rating: G
Word Count: 659
Prompt: #045 – clue
Summary: Orochi's snooping uncovers only a partial truth.
Note: Set pre-canon, so no specific route or plot spoilers.
When Reina entered Mikoto’s chambers, her lady’s handmaidens had just finished helping her into her evening kimono. Never one for domestic skills, Reina delegated such honors in exchange for extra training time. She’d just changed out of her own stained clothes, so the handmaidens bowed to her as they left without giving her frightful looks, as they did when she came straight from the field. Mikoto was kneeling as elegantly arranged as she’d been left, but with a somber bearing that dulled the glow the candlelight could have given her usual smile. She lifted her eyes when Reina knelt beside her.
“If it pleases you, my lady, I bring amusing news to brighten your evening.”
“As your presence already does, but what is it? I am not yet in the mood for a night of weeping.”
Reina was unable to keep her mouth from twitching as she recalled her encounter earlier that day: Orochi, who was quite sure Reina needed her fortune divined. She’d spent enough time working beside Orochi to know when the girl was working a genuine fortune and when her gestures were only theatrics. It wasn’t that the latter style was fake, per se, but there was always a grander design, with the gifts rarely divine in nature.
This time, after a fair amount of wiggly hand gestures and sprays of Mikoto’s favorite cherry blossom perfume, Orochi pronounced that it was fate that Reina reached her age without marrying. “People are gossiping,” she’d said with a slight drop from the lilt she used while ‘divining.’ “But fate works in peculiar ways. Your truest love has been nearby, yet out of reach, so the spirits kept your hand ready for when the time came.”
Orochi proceeded to drop clues as to whom she meant: a foreign folktale about an arrow that struck with love, a lifetime of duty, and as much plays on the word ‘sweet’ as could fit in one phrase. To her obvious frustration, Reina had politely thanked her for the advice before excusing herself to tend to her weapons, which she reminded Orochi were of greater help in brutalizing her enemies than a lover would be. By the end of Reina’s story, Mikoto was hiding a smile behind her hand.
“Such a perceptive child, and yet…” Mikoto sighed. “Still, if it can be guessed, then word may yet get out. If it’s going to cause trouble, we can make our relationship public. I am not ashamed of it, like hiding it makes it seem.”
Losing Lord Sumeragi and her child had caused Mikoto to turn to her retainer for comfort, as she didn’t want to burden her children and the public with her mourning—but nor did she want to complicate things for them with the new relationship. Besides, word had not gotten back to Reina’s parents that she’d become a knight at all, let alone a kinshi knight with the direct privilege of serving the queen. An announcement that she was Mikoto’s beloved would be a loaded pile of revelations.
“No, your decision stems from your wisdom and compassion,” Reina said. “I already have the honor of standing beside you each day, so we needn’t fret over the specifics.”
“Should we tell Orochi, at least?”
“You want to let her think her little scheme worked?”
“She’d think it was such fun. She’s been down ever since her last failed fortune telling.”
“Considerate as always. I’ll make sure that ‘shadow’ of hers isn’t skulking about when the time comes.”
That was what finally made Mikoto laugh—not the wind chime with which Reina associated her voice, but a snort she reserved for private. “Of course. I’m glad you know and care for her as I do. There is no substitute for a lost love and child, but…”
“Neither she nor I expects to be a substitution, but we are all the better for your affection,” Reina promised, laying a bandaged palm over Mikoto’s hand.