the dragon's new girl
Dec. 12th, 2009 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nekokoban posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
synchronicalThe dragon's new girl is a small stick-thin thing with eyes that are too large and a mouth that is too small: She looks like a good strong breeze might knock her over; she has dirty pale skin and stares at everything like she's never seen buildings or people before. The guard introduces her by name. Luka promptly forgets it. There's never a point in remembering, anyway: the longest a girl for the dragon has ever lasted is six months. Another will come in her place soon enough.
Luka's mother bathes the girl with her own hands and makes Luka stay with towels. It takes three changes of water before all the grime is gone and her long mop of hair brushes clean. She still smells like sour hunger, though, and being clean just means that her ribs stand out as dark shadows under her white skin. Luka expects her to eat like a starving beast, but she barely manages to finish her soup over the course of three hours of dinner. Luka's mother is the one who talks the whole time, gently, as if the half-wild thing hunched in her chair actually matters. The girl never once talks. Luka thinks: this is why there's no point in trying to remember her name, though it keeps coming up in conversation.
After the meal, the girl is bathed again, this time in water that is scented with lavender and lilac. Luka's mother again bathes the girl herself, and now she is telling the girl to be brave, to be strong, to be proud of the honor that has been bestowed upon her and her family, to be chosen to sing for the great dragon. Her family will be paid handsomely. They will be as nobility in the eyes of the kingdom. Every wish they have will be granted. All she has to do is to be brave and sing.
In the mirror, the girl's face changes finally from its blank face. For just a moment, Luka sees life in those huge staring eyes, and it is full of anger, hot enough to match the breath of the dragon itself. She blinks and it's gone. She wonders if she imagined it.
Luka has to give up her own bed for the girl, as she always does; she sleeps with her mother, and is roused at dawn, just as the sky is pale steel-gray and faint rose-pink. They all dress in white: her mother, the girl, herself. Her mother braids snow-flowers into the girl's long hair and lays a crown of them upon her brow, and when the gates open, dark and stinking of wet animal sulphur, she puts her hands on the girl's back and pushes.
"Sing," her mother says. Luka says nothing.
The girl goes without ever looking back, the white of her dress and her flowers slowly swallowed up, and the two dragon knights close the gates and lock them. Luka walks back to her room with her mother and strips all the blankets off her bed: everything that smells of lilac and lavender and sour hunger.
Then she sleeps, and she doesn't dream.
Luka's mother bathes the girl with her own hands and makes Luka stay with towels. It takes three changes of water before all the grime is gone and her long mop of hair brushes clean. She still smells like sour hunger, though, and being clean just means that her ribs stand out as dark shadows under her white skin. Luka expects her to eat like a starving beast, but she barely manages to finish her soup over the course of three hours of dinner. Luka's mother is the one who talks the whole time, gently, as if the half-wild thing hunched in her chair actually matters. The girl never once talks. Luka thinks: this is why there's no point in trying to remember her name, though it keeps coming up in conversation.
After the meal, the girl is bathed again, this time in water that is scented with lavender and lilac. Luka's mother again bathes the girl herself, and now she is telling the girl to be brave, to be strong, to be proud of the honor that has been bestowed upon her and her family, to be chosen to sing for the great dragon. Her family will be paid handsomely. They will be as nobility in the eyes of the kingdom. Every wish they have will be granted. All she has to do is to be brave and sing.
In the mirror, the girl's face changes finally from its blank face. For just a moment, Luka sees life in those huge staring eyes, and it is full of anger, hot enough to match the breath of the dragon itself. She blinks and it's gone. She wonders if she imagined it.
Luka has to give up her own bed for the girl, as she always does; she sleeps with her mother, and is roused at dawn, just as the sky is pale steel-gray and faint rose-pink. They all dress in white: her mother, the girl, herself. Her mother braids snow-flowers into the girl's long hair and lays a crown of them upon her brow, and when the gates open, dark and stinking of wet animal sulphur, she puts her hands on the girl's back and pushes.
"Sing," her mother says. Luka says nothing.
The girl goes without ever looking back, the white of her dress and her flowers slowly swallowed up, and the two dragon knights close the gates and lock them. Luka walks back to her room with her mother and strips all the blankets off her bed: everything that smells of lilac and lavender and sour hunger.
Then she sleeps, and she doesn't dream.