A maiden's taleIntoyouloveSummary:
Nights could be less darker for someone as feeble as Arianne, but fate decided otherwise.
Notes:For Myself.
I don't know what i'm doing, i'm keeping it short cuz i'm writing on my phone, i'll publish it into a poem series actually, like an actual book, so this is like a fanfictions of my own book.
Idk, i'm high and i'm a psychology major.
And i scammed you all into reading it
Work Text:
What is comfort?
A person perhaps, a place, or a feeling.
Something or someone that we long to reach and grasp with those aching hands, fingers twisting and digging for the warmth.
Ah the warmth...
The summer after the never ending winter, the sun that lights the world after the clouds had emerge it into a saddening darkness, when grief finally takes a leaving and acceptance rests in it rightful place.
Comfort.
A human expression that Arianne Of Ward had lacked for three infinite years since she had been taken to this strange keep as a hostage, or a ward as they so like to insinuate.
The walls were high and thick, old stone on old stone, unmoving and indestructible, so familiar to touch and to sight, warm only when the fire of the chimney heats up her chamber.
The mattress were soft as for her cover, white and clean. A full desk beside the bench under her window, dark ink on the wooden surface and on her fingers, a melting candle dancing with every breath she took and every move she made, a flame as sensitive as the maid's heart.
Her long brown waves were freshly braided by a girl, sleeping on the bed, snorting softly against Arianne's own feather pillows. The sun has long been gone in the sky, but in her room it was still.
A letter was what Arianne wrote on that night, one like others that shall never reach the destinataires; a congratulations to the birth of her brother, an heir for her father after her mother bore four healthy girls, she asked for their well being, prayed for their happiness, and demanded once again for her lord father to pay the debts and make her return safely home.
(Home for Arianne is a far vision of three little girls spinning around her, grins full of teeth and vivid red cheeks, and of course a far more comforting keep).
"it is late..." the soft voice and green eyes of the girl grasped her attention, "come Anne, letters can be wrote at any time"
"but not one like this" Arianne insisted, "will you pray with me tomorrow for the safe fly of the raven to north, Isa?"
"aghh tomorrow, now come" Isabella patted the place beside her "or you shall transform into one of those terrible creatures". An Oger, Isabella meant, she believed the the word only can turn a man to one, so she never dared to say it put loud.
Arianne, left with no choice, stands and jumps into the bed with her companion, the last brought her arms around her, nuzzling her face against her shoulder, emitting the only comfort that Arianne lacked in her life.
"an Ogre, it is" Arianne teased, a grin on her lips.
Hurried prayers leaving her quickening red lips and squeezed eyes were Isabella's answers.
"great lord! Would you cease?!" the girl shifted her body away, her back facing Arianne, a long silence followed before giggles cracked it "are you still...?"
Arianne was entertained by the hesitating and almost fearful tone of her companion's voice and began to laugh "no".
"i am immensely disappointed" Isabella maintains, "i would have enjoyed the sight of you fat and green skinned, but for the smell it will not be shocking to have it unchanged... "
Arianne scoffs amusingly at the last statement "i would have enjoyed growling at you and making your bony suitors' legs tremble at my form"
"do not, i beg" Isabella turned to face Arianne once again, whispering at each other in the mighty night "you may get angry..."
"never" Arianne murmured back.
"i know you will"
"i shall not"
"fairly..." she began "i do enjoy their attention, their poems and gazes, it tickles my gut"
Arianne made a face at Isabella's confessions, enjoy? She thought, How could someone enjoy this?
"may the lord save your soul"
"do not tease me" Isabella's smile widened.
"i am truly horrified! Is it... By any chance, the doing of that fopdoodle-"
"here you do not have to insult the man" Isabella protested, of course she would.
Edmund Grass, the magnificent young knight with his long blond hair, resembling mostly cat pee instead of gold, tall, alluring, the winner of every late tourney, the son of lord Hamilton Grass, the perfect man that had mistakenly fallen from the heavens to the earth, the man that stole her friend's heart.
"is it a sin to name his flaws?" Arianne asked in vain.
"let the talk cease and sleep, Anne" Isabella insisted, "or i will have to tickle you"
Arianne's cheeks had became all red due to the reminder of those tickles, the soft fingers reaching for her and teasing her "do not dare, Sister Marian had forbidden them". They were sinful, it may feel like heaven but the touch alone comes from hell or so the woman told them after discovering Isa's hand under Arianne's skirts.
"she is not here to see, or to hear" Isa pressed herself against the girl, her teeth digging at her own lip, her pupils dancing, "and beside i made you sing"
The words spread a warmth within her, one that she decided to ignore "it was no singing, i felt death coming, that is. Now let me sleep you wicked girl".
Arianne knew what it was, a pleasurable act that a lower man and woman fall into in the marital bed or in brothels. For certain, she had been curious enough to let her eyes wonder once with Isabella at a cook and another servant, and succumbed at the pleading of her companion, but Arianne, at eight and ten, knew better.
She weakly hit Isabella's hands away from her waist and turned to rest, enjoying the soft breathe and the cracking wooden that burns under the fire.
"Ogre..." Isabella randomly worded in a low tone, making them puff from laugher.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sun lightened up the room from the lancet arched window, the young voices filled every corner of the occupied space, hands reaching for the ceiling as gowns fell to fit the forms of the young ladies.
Their hair was half braided on each side of their head then twisted to form goat horns above their ears. Isabella wore a thin red hair band around her head, a pearl falling on the middle of her forehead and mimicking her glowing green eyes.
Those eyes that Arianne prayed once to wake up from her slumber with the same pair of color instead of her boring brown that stared at her back in the mirror.
"my lasses are growing like flower,"
the round woman with flushed cheeks sighed at the sight of the two, her dress was plain with a veil that covered her head and her under double chin. Sister Marian was no real sister of the convent, only an old woman that no one dares to know her real age at risk of being beaten by the belt around her thick waist.
"one day i will be no more when the both of you will be gone with a husband at your side" she continued until Isabella left a silent cough of mockery at the sincerity of the woman's feeling, one that Arianne found fairly laughable.
"well, for now you are still here, young mistress," she tugged at Isa's long raven hair "shift yourself and get into your shoes for the morning prayer"
Her friend gasped and ignored the woman "we have chosen, me and Anne" she grasped her hand "to take a walk in the gardens instead of praying this morrow, Sister Marian" she confessed her thoughts, those she did not share with Arianne "for a change".
"a change?" Marian spoke, stunned by the boldness of the young lady "one day you will tell me that there is no need to prayers. Worship, my daughter, is what keeps faith-"
"-and faith is what keeps men alive" Arianne finished without any hold of her tongue, she could see the disdain that the old woman held into her, she never loved me anyway.
"We shall pray later," Isa took a step backward, closing the distance between her and Arianne "i swear it on the name of my ill lord father, sister" she held her hand slowly, hiding it behind their skirts "beside, much important things await"
Before the old woman got the chance to speak her mind, Isabella took Arianne into a race out of the room, followed by the shouting of the woman. At first Arianne nearly fell after stepping on the end of her dark blue dress, but then she rapidly got used to the speed Isa set for them.
Their feet clapped on the old stone under their shoes, their giggles echoing in the tight corridors. It was strange how Isabella always knew how to make her smile and forget who she was for even a short delightful moment.
Until
Until Arianne hit a wall so strongly that it made it move, her head fell back as she left a loud gasp from her mouth, her eyes squeezing from the pain that caused her nose "god above..."
"stupid cow-" the voice was not Isabella's, not even sister Marian's it was...
"brother..." Isa bowed for the man, his hand on his chest twisted around the dark velvet clothing. Her eyes raised up from the sharpness of his mouth and the wrinkle around his lips to meet his gaze, cold and judging (she knew well that he despised her more than anyone in this strange place).
Isabella kissed his cheek, muttered something apologetic into his ear that left him smiling for a blink
"i accept them, only tell those shameless creature that serve as your companion to keep her sight on her path instead on the clouds"
"that creature has a name" The words escaped her mouth too fast, too loud, damn me god for the sin of speaking my mind.
Isabella's eyes widen "indeed, Arianne, my dear brother did not mean any offence -"
"-i meant to hear proper apologies from the stupid cow" he cut his sister off, his eyes were like Isabella's, green, only his had a warmer color, she would have like them if they were not so hard on her.
"tell your brother that i do not tolerate such words on my behalf" she freed her arm from the grip of his strong hand and stepped aside to continue her path.
But the man was rapid, he took again hold of her "what do you think you are" he asked in a lower tone, the smell of wine strong from his mouth, he has been drunk. "talk to me that way and i assure yo-"
"Nothing!" Isabella stands between them please, Arthur... " he let her go.