no one's child

[Jin-Hwa Mei]

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Gemini Enigma

541 words

Music

Outfit

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you're in the wind [break]







I'm in the water

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Jin-Hwa had never been one to act particularly composed. Never been one to seem all that put together. It felt like an admission, that perception really did build reality. That observers had any power over the system. [break][break]


Matter came from energy and energy came from matter. She had heard it said that they were all starstuff, and no star tried to stop itself burning. In reality, of course, starstuff was just gases and gravity. Starstuff wasn't one thing at all. It was just heat and pressure and strenght. Like how diamonds were made. They weren't starstuff at all. They were frozen energy. [break][break]


I am potential. It was a line in a poem no one had written. It was the opening to a book that would be lead unread. Jin-hwa thought of those words like they were something she had heard before. She tried to sooth herself with that like it was a lullaby, but it felt hollow. It felt empty. And she couldn't waste her time now, because she had to look attentive. Her life might depend on it. Treason was quite the crime. [break][break]

His brother was throwing a support meeting. He was scared, she realized, watching him pace and speak without hearing the words. He was thrown from his throne and he was afraid. His mother watched him like she might lend him courage just through her gaze. She almost mouthed the words as he spoke. Was this her speech, then? [break][break]

Was this what it was like to have a mother who cared, who supported you? or was this just another power grab? Discord was a wonderful time for a coup-- chaos lent itself to shifting tides. Much ado about mothers, it seemed, because Jin-Hwa knew hers would be watching. [break][break]


And still Gemini Enigma was not here. [break][break]


An Enigma he was. She watched him like she was trying to count all the stars in his constellation and break them one by one. She was a Gemini. If she shattered the stars, would fate no longer bind her? Would she break free from the loop she found herself in? Or would she get lost without star charts to direct her? [break][break]


Direct her to what? She had no purpose. There was no winning. There was breaking, and breaking, and everything yielding to her hands like limestone, like they had hollow bones. She wasn't a hurricane. She didn't need to be. She wanted one thing to be difficult to break, but the world was so soft, so fragile. Everything but her mother, but of course, her mother had broken her first. Reminded her that her place was always to be almost good enough. Reminding her that there was no degree of majesty that might make her really matter. She was ordered off the boat or beaten with a statue. She tasted the same blood in her mouth. [break][break]


She was watching for him more than she wanted to be. She was waiting even as she tried to act relaxed. It wasn't working. The rainwater dripped down the windows and she wanted to test it, to drag it down with her, to burn this whole palace to the ground. That was the problem with wanting everything. It felt almost exactly the same as wanting nothing. [break][break]



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[Gemini Enigma]

no one's child

[attr="class","box1"] Gemini should have known better.  He hadn't completely fallen to the ground; He did, at least know better than that. Falling meant wasting resources on arising again. But his jaw radiated pain, which only spiked as he shifted it back and forth to gauge if it had been broken.  As a rule, Gemini did not follow people to second locations— especially not the fiancé of a girl easily swept into his charm. But the longer he dodged said fiancé, the longer he put off simply shaking the pest from his back. Besides, it was a good distraction. Even now, the pain had shaken his thoughts into some temporary clarity.  He should've known he was counting too much on the element of surprise. No one, he'd assumed, would expect him to remember every face he'd drawn close or caressed. Of course, Gemini had an eidetic memory. If he'd been any kind of an artist, he could have drawn her face in perfect detail. He never forgot anything. He still remembered the pattern on the underside of the table where he'd crouched, back when he was small enough to fit there, the day he'd surpassed Ambrose at a move in their fencing practice. He was barely allowed to be there, and the High King had wound himself into a rage that the Crown Prince should be embarrassed so by a mistrusted half-breed. The whorls in the table's grain had looked like a fingerprint. It had borne no cloth or covering, but that wouldn't matter; Gemini knew that the High King never looked down. Anything below him could not possibly matter. Prominence was significance, and insignificance was safety. Not only did Gemini remember everything, he learned fast.  He remembered the sound of the door shutting on the High King and his advisors as they tried to build peace without knowing how to build much of anything, only how to keep it standing. It had been a solid, final knell, the sound at the end of a fall. For the first time in years, Gemini had thought it would be worth trying to enter, trying to speak. He should have known better. Even now, in an open hall beneath a crumbled arch, he chastised himself for wasting his resources to craft something so fragile as hope.  It was raining. The smell woven through the air was the same one that clung to his skin: petrichor. Gemini toyed with the idea that some part of the land was still on his side, raising a subtle flag of allegiance, but he sorely doubted it. He was on his own. He always had been. To take an ally was to matter to someone, and insignificance was safety.  Perhaps Jin-hwa Mei was the exception that tested the rule. Gemini had long grown tired of safety. He needed something to be sharpened against. And she had the strength to do it, the frigid brilliance of a diamond, but as long as she refused to claim what she was, they both remained purposeless. Watching her fall would mean something. The magic of the High Court was creation, and it was Gemini's nature to build. He simply had to build himself something high enough to push her off, with no sea beneath to welcome her home. The land would be the demise of Jin-hwa Mei, even if it took the form of a boy.  Jin-Hwa Mei [newclass=.box1]margin:0px auto; width:300px; height:425px; background: transparent; overflow:auto; padding:8px;[/newclass] [newclass=.box1::-webkit-scrollbar]width:5px;[/newclass] [newclass=.box1::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb]background: #091c3d;[/newclass]

Music Word count: 563 Notes: Gemini has just gotten punched by Albert.

credit to Laura of Adox

[Jin-Hwa Mei]

[nospaces]

[attr="class","Lost"]

[break]

Gemini Enigma

526 words

Music

Outfit

[break][break]

you're in the wind [break]







I'm in the water

[break]







Jin-Hwa had wondered at something again and again. If it was just the forces of nature, just seas and storms versus land and nature, who would win? Would the land be drowned or the sea stripped dry. There were stories of dragons, massive creatures that lurked in the air and beneath the waves, that could flatten cities. Nature would always beat the fae, but what about when it was twisted against itself? Her mother seemed sure they would win. Now this not-prince stood shrouded in candlelight, telling her that he would win, that he would bring stability to the land. Not just her.  All these people who knew he couldn't lie and yet looked like they still didn't believe it. Maybe he believed himself. Maybe that was the real tragedy here, that he believed himself and no one else did. She would rather have faith in herself than anything, but there was belief and there was logic and then there was fire. The true test of faith. [break][break]

Her name meant golden-fire. In the old mythologies, that was the name used to describe dragonfire. Rain from the heavens. Like the sun itself started weeping. That was what she was born to be, the heir to the throne, rain from the heavens, fire and water, the ultimate paradox. But her mother had sent her away and that felt like the sounds of a funeral bell. That felt like a failing grade on a test she didn't know what she was taking. Would her mother then pass the crown to Hai? That child wanted nothing less. And Jin-Hwa knew-- knew as surely as she knew her own name-- that putting that girl on the throne would end only in destruction. Dragonfire. Ruination. [break][break]

Jin-Hwa would burn her enemies. Someday everyone would forget that she had ever been nothing, that she had ever stood on the deck of a boat and been ordered off, that she had ever failed to finish the job and left that little bird breathing. Someday everyone would forget that her mother had ever hit her, that Gemini Enigma had ever insulted her, that she had ever been anything but strong. Maybe then she could forget to. Maybe then that fire would be a test-- a test of faith in herself. Maybe then it would be cleansing, not a pyre but the ashes a phoenix rose from. [break][break]

Fire meant many things to many different people. To her it was a way home. It was the map and she was the legend. She would be a legend some day, torching her enemies villages. For a girl who lived so long underwater, she had such a fondness for a blaze. It ruined everything. It started over. It cleared the slate. [break][break]

Gemini watched her like he was watching a book. Watching a narrative unfurl. She hated it. She wanted him to forget-- she wanted them all to forget-- her past. She wanted not to be potential, not be a story, but to be secure. To be strong and safe and wanted. She was standing in this room. It was raining. She was none of those things. Gemini was not here.[break][break]




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