Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir
To the world would Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir give her service. Not to any god or man, but to the ideals she had believed in all her life; as anyone blessed to be born as a scion of Saknne would.
Appearance
Sitra for all her height was a woman more lanky than lithe, made awkward by her own long limbs and the questionable grace of adolescence. That was not to mean she was unpleasantly out of proportion, though it was plain her body was molded more by an active lifestyle of horse riding and tumbling rather than the intricacies of ballroom dancing.
Not to say she had forsaken the latter by any means, nor did she ever pretend otherwise.
Fancy as she might the pursuits generally enjoyed by men, Sitra was still very much a woman raised under the conservative norms of lower nobility. All girls her age and younger were expected to refine themselves through the practice of courtly skills; the art of ballet, of unerring etiquette, of practiced elocution, and so forth. Sitra knew very well how to conduct herself with an unerring grace regardless of the pursuit she so chose.
Her skin was of warm bronze, inherited from her mother's complexion and largely unmarred by hardship; religiously maintained through the application of cosmetics imported from distant and not so distant lands. Not that they perfectly disguised the subtle hints of acne scarring that still marked her face, try as she might to do away with the blemishes of childhood.
And while her aquiline nose wasn't unseemly, it was most certainly prominent. Dignified in its own particular way.
For all else she remained the image of a young, dignified noblewoman. The length of her neck was rather fetching, and it served further to amplify her expression whenever that downward cant of her chin suggested disapproval, or amusement. Her eyebrows were neatly shaped and trimmed into a high arch, delicately accented with just the faintest hints of paint.
They paired rather well with the contents of the young noblewoman's eyes, almond in shape and in coloring, often carrying that same indeterminate look of... what precisely? Amusement married to a constant, vague disapproval? Whatever else that can be reasonably said about her eyes was up to the individual, but few could deny how their size made for a piercing, if somewhat wide gaze. So often filled with an ennui so vast one might fear to drown in it.
To be fair, the life of unaccomplished, minor nobility could cause anyone's eyes to glaze over with enough time. Try as she might to vanquish it through the excitement found in shattering such carefully cultivated societal norms.
Or perhaps it had nothing to do with that and she simply preferred to express herself through other means.
Who was to say?
As for her choice of accoutrement, it was rather difficult to pinpoint. Sitra possessed the virtue shared by most aristocracy, that of easy aesthetic flexibility; there were rather few occasions where she had difficulty in managing her outfit into something that couldn't appear refined regardless of its utility, if not necessarily fashionable.
To some extent, at least. There was very little to be done with an unwashed fur cloak as opposed to a capelet or a fine cloak of linen; similarly she suffered less when given the opportunity to excel under the auspices of haute couture and tailor fitted clothing rather than having to desperately fish on the fly for whatever woolen shirts and trousers that could fit her dimensions.
What ultimately mattered was her extraordinarily rare ability of being well-off, and so long as she had the time and the coin she could choose between a gown with a daringly low décolletage or a riding cloak fit for long travel.
To then wear either without so much as a murmur of complaint.
There was little to say regarding her raven-black hair, for she did all that was expected of her and more in grooming and maintaining it without going the additional mile of simply lopping it off and being done with it entirely. So often tied up and concealed beneath a caul and decorative kerchief in order to reduce maintenance as much as humanly possible.
Skills and Abilities
***
Personality
Sitra is a deeply self-possessed young woman.
And in her determination one could very well find both flaw and virtue, in equal measure.
There was a reason for this, of course. It was the product of a confidence not merely gained by the dint of being a sheltered member of aristocracy, but also from a stable childhood where she was permitted to prosper from an age younger than most, no doubt to the eventual woe of her family and caretakers.
For there would be no task nor calling too daunting for a woman whose confidence eroded all around her; the way a steady drip of water might eventually cleave its way through any opposition.
For even the mightiest of mountains may find an inevitable downfall when confronted with the ravages of time and perseverance. Unpracticed as she might be in getting her way with anyone other than the soft, compromising servants of her household who doted on the precocious child.
This detail more than anything to come would go a great deal in establishing the foundation of who Sitra Vene Tanyakoettir is, and would become. Her determination even at times uncomfortably bordering on neuroticism. As to whether it was always a flaw in Sitra's essential character, or was instead a direct consequence of a self-imposed starvation in her childhood, nobody could say.
Not in all certainty, anyway.
While she might appear haughty, often at times arrogant, it was rarely a demonstration of disrespect to those around her. As equally unable a cat might change its stripes, so too would she find herself unable to evolve from the cast she molded herself from at a young age. Never was she less than someone entirely confident in her own ability and talent, unafraid to display it for all the world to see.
Her mother and her father had their own share of guilt in this.
They doted on her, of course. How could they not? They doted on all of their children in the way only a family softened by so many long years of peace could. That in turn meant she was rarely denied the opportunity to learn, to continue learning, and to seek her own passions under the custody of two parents who were both endearingly (if not surprisingly) open-handed in the freedom afforded to a daughter of a relatively minor off-branch of a more notable political dynasty.
While her determination was an important detail to note, this last fact was what helped sharpen it; the catalyst for a young woman who wished for so much in life; to strive beyond societal expectations. Even as their family struggled with funds and political capital, it was no less a family where the daughters were indulged and the sons pampered.
Sitra could only think to weep with guilt, thinking of how they treated this gift.
For no matter how it might have harmed future prospects or made her peers judge them with their careful eyes, she could not help but appreciate and take advantage of such a gift. If this was a selfish act, then it was a selfishness she could not have thanked them enough for allowing her. Even as it became clear to her how their fortunes dwindled in almost direct proportion to the progressive latitude afforded to the descendants of Vené Tanyakoettir.
As for everyone else she was often reserved. If not prone to the occasional hint of dry humour, well hidden behind the mask she so studiously maintained. The more one got to know the young woman, the more this attribute would peek from behind the veil. She enjoyed laughing, even as she did so little of it.
About herself as much as the world around her.
Biography & Lore
How many imperceptible twists of fate went into making it possible for someone like Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir to emerge from the crucible of blind circumstance?
How many for anyone, really? How many events, so small as to pass unnoticed by all who might look until each constituent part finally came together, piece by piece, into what would culminate into a fully realized person. Complex and irrevocably individualistic in their own right. Someone with her own principles, her own personality, her own merits and her own failings. All those little details that might endear her to some even as it left others frustrated.
Sitra wouldn't have known, she had just been born.
To a pair of doting parents who counted her as merely another child amongst a veritable litter of siblings; while she possessed the unenviable role of a middle child, she also came to accept it in time. There were certainly worse places to be in a family so large.
The oldest suffered the brunt of familial responsibilities while the youngest were oft the targets for all manner of jealousies and misplaced frustrations.
It didn't help that there was a veritable gap between the children and their two mothers, opening the youngest up to the resentment of the oldest who saw the former as interlopers. Such is the way of things. Such was her role as meditator between the two age groups from early on, something she both resented and took a perverse pleasure in, depending on the day.
Let's see. There were her two eldest brothers as well as an elder sister. Then arriving at the rear were two younger sisters and a younger brother. While she certainly enjoyed the symmetry on a purely theoretical level, it was decidedly less endearing in reality. And try as she might to keep the peace, Sitra quickly discovered that there was never to be a lasting truce beyond the occasional prickly ceasefire.
It was certainly far easier said than done to play the intermediary.
At least it taught her well to navigate social conflict without any undue scarring.
The Vené Tanyakoettir family was one of many aristocratic houses of the trade city of Saknne, situated on the river bordering the Allir reach and the Spine. For all the claims of noble birth they maintained their titles in much the same way as their peers had: through lucrative trade between the two continents. The fertile yields of the Allir Reach on one hand, with the mineral and salt deposits of The Spine on another.
Growing up under such circumstances meant that even the girls of the family were subjected to an exhaustive education that tended to focus on more… practical subjects, and with the careful tutelage of pedagogues they learned as much about mathematics as they did about etiquette. Most study sessions were focused instead on the basics of how to balance taxes and ledgers, rather than the study and observance of religious texts.
And for all Saknne’s trend towards conservatism, they took full advantage of the ungendered ability to operate an abacus, opening up avenues of learning so oft denied to the rest of the world. To some degree the disparity would always remain, but at the very least one could say that the Vené Tanyakoettir children were treated as equal under their family banner.
All of this to say that Sitra was granted a rather well rounded education as the years passed. It was not something to take for granted. Nor did she, utilizing every advantage learned from dusty old tomes on politics, economy, geography and so on to ensure that she might cultivate that very confidence she grew to discover she had.
As well as to further her ultimate goal of acceptance into an inquisitorial or justiciar order.
If not as a precocious child, then at the very least as a woman now matured, capable of speaking on her own behalf and making her own decisions. That too was a gift she could only thank her parents for, as all children in their household were afforded the respect of speaking and being heard. For better or for worse, she was thus shaped as a young woman with a mind of her own and a voice with which to use it.
And use it she did. For instead of entertaining marriage prospects at an age where most girls were at least contemplating it, she sought the tutelage of masters who would shape her body and discipline her spirit into becoming an instrument wholly contrary to the domestic hearth that produced so many proud matriarchs of their society.
To one tutor in particular did she cling; a retainer of her mother, both of whom hailed from their homeland in the northernmost reaches of Amol-Kalit. Her name was Ayl-Maltene Ranna Anakanos. Ranna the Stalwart, Ranna the Twisted Spear, Ranna the Immovable.
She was a woman older in years, at least to the desperately young Sitra, and was more than willing to indulge the middle child of the house in which she served. To the girl did she impart lessons both on the martial and on the academic; of worldly and not so worldly things. At first it was merely a distraction from the tediousness of Sitra's studies, and yet she found the more she devoted herself to it, the more it became a passion that ended in defining the greater part of her young life.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of all was unintentional in its teaching; of what it meant to live and pursue the traditions of a warrior rather than that of a trader, or that of a young noblewoman in waiting. While it was not what ultimately sparked her rebellion, it certainly provided her the perspective necessary for the seed to be planted.
***
When her grandmother passed away, only then did that spark ignite into a conflagration that would end up consuming all the carefully laid plans of her family.
Where once the rest of her life seemed so certain, mapped out in excruciating detail and meticulously crafted with the careful hand of those privileged through aristocracy, it was here that Sitra might demonstrate just how singular she could be.When her grandmother passed away, only then did that spark ignite into a conflagration that would end up consuming all the carefully laid plans of her family.
Lucienne Vené Alfsonne, of her father's blood and Saknne heritage, was dead.
The woman whom she had so long looked up to and admired in a way, wanting like so many other girls of her age to emulate the grace, the humility, the unyielding faith of her paternal grandmother. The woman with whom she shared so many confidences and idle hopes, a companion that occupied that strange liminal area between the sheltered household of childhood and the distant world of adulthood.
Her idol in some ways and her hero in others, as it had been for so many of her generation.
Not that her death truly came as a surprise, even had Sitra dared not contemplate it before.
What came of it after, in the tombs of her father's ancestors, was the event that would shatter any illusion that she would go on to live the comfortable life that had been planned for her since the beginning. She sat in observance of the rites of her family, waited out the night vigil for the deceased that many children had done before; the vigor of their youth acting as a bulwark against all things attracted to any death brought on by advanced age and sickness.
For Lucienne Vené Alfsonne did they sing the hymns and spoke of their venerable ancestors, as did they pray the litanies and ask for repose of Lucienne's immortal soul. Only then was the tomb closed and sealed, not only on the matriarch, but the young Sitra as well. No longer was she the little girl, or the child on a grandmother's lap, but instead a guardian to watch over a matriarch's long night.
Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir had just turned seventeen.
As with most traditions, there were stories that were told alongside them. Sitra knew them all, and listened to them like so many other attentive ears that sat around a storyteller's circle. The only difference was that she didn't think them to be true; not in the way in which she saw story turn to reality, that night.
It was a complete severance of everything she thought she had understood to be real and true. Her perception of the world, and her place in it. No longer did she find innocence in the complacency brought on by human civilization and their assumptions that they could protect themselves with walls, and traditions, and prayer.
How could she ever marry and have pretty little children like they had wanted her to do, with this realization?
Again, it is to be said that there wasn't just one rationale as to why Sitra turned out the way she had. To understand why she abandoned the life planned out for her, in simple terms, was to search in vain. To try and ascribe only one reason would be a simplistic answer to a complex person; the sort of simplification that left her family in confusion and heartbreak one event after another.
Like the mightiest of mountains, the slow drip that eroded it was a lifetime of experiences.
***
Sitra was as immovable as the great Ranna, in so many ways.
After having turned seventeen, then eighteen, then finally nineteen, her parents - in particular her father Arlane - had begun to consider the possibility of arranging a marriage to ensure their daughter's future. They should have known better at this point, for they were just as guilty as she was in fostering what came next.
The Vené Tanyakoettirs were a stubborn people and Sitra was stubborner still, perhaps more so than they realized, at first. As the years wore on her refusal to answer to their demands was to be met with their parent's own brand of tenacity, even in the face of disappointment for both parties involved. It was a cruel thing to be at war with your own children, but this was a cruel world and their child was by no means exempt by it.
Had it gone on for too much longer, perhaps Sitra would have buckled underneath the weight of both her familial and societal duties. Even she wasn't bullheaded enough to believe that her decision was unquestionably right. But as it was said, she was stubborn. Not only stubborn, but calculating. With a maturity far beyond her years.
At least for some things. Not so much for others.
Therefore she did what any sane, sensible young woman of eighteen in the throes of teenage rebellion would do with the mounting pressure she suffered; she stopped eating.
Not a proper hunger strike, not at first. She knew better than that, and so had started her campaign with infinitesimal skirmishes. It was rather simple, really. Eating less and less was seen as no more than an act of fasting, not exactly an uncommon practice in her culture, certainly no more unsurprising than the resistance against carbohydrates and other such sources of calories. Few noticed her gradual changes, until it became rather apparent it was anything but casual abstinence.
They most certainly noticed when she escalated. Each successive step came from a... frightfully logical calculation of cost versus benefit. Even stranger still was how it became easier to eat less and less, though looking back on it was another thing entirely. At the time she hardly even noticed just how little her body asked of her to survive. Her appetite, once prodigious, was seemingly eating itself in its confusion.
After a point the doctors and physicians were summoned to the household.
How they talked and poked and prodded.
Every one of them had a different diagnosis, no two explanations alike as to what afflicted the poor girl. As for the young Vené Tanyakoettir, she put on a pitiable mask - not entirely doctored - and listened helpfully to the wisdom eschewed by each successive visit. Every one of them had not only a different diagnosis, but a different perspective on treatment as well. All of it to little success.
When she was naught but a ghostly visage, they had worried for her life in earnest.
As did she, though little did she realize it at the time. Her body's increasingly plaintive cries fell on deaf ears for she could no longer hear them as loudly as she might in a healthier space of mind. Only now, looking at her body sculpted by obsessive regiment, did Sitra realize how dangerous her predicament truly was, then.
As simple an answer to the question as it was, nobody had thought to seriously ask it.
Not of their daughter, not of the girl who oft looked to the wise Matriarch Lucienne for counsel and guidance. Only did Ranna ask it. Ranna the stalwart; her betrayer. Who else knew the young woman better but the one she had looked up to after the former's passing?
They could think of no better confidant and therefore cherished her opinion on the matter dearly.
Her sister Syelene ultimately made the decision to be the one to sit the other girl down, and ask. Sitra wasn't entirely certain as to why she answered with any honesty; the same thing had been done before and she had simply lied rather than permit the eldest sister within her confidence. Had she done so from the beginning, all of it might have been avoided. Far too late now.
To this day she remained deeply embarrassed of it. Such a trivial truth.
Syelene asked if there was a specific boy.
No, was the response.
Did she wish to die?
No, again. It was never her intention, but it was a small solace.
What was it that she desired, that would make her happy?
Syelene for her part had sat and listened as patiently as any saint. She was a gentle woman, more understanding than anyone else except perhaps for their mutual grandmother. And so Sitra finally spoke, for a good while, out of fatigue and perhaps out of fear as well. She had not meant it to be this way. She found herself increasingly worried of the danger her body was in.
Syelene didn't interrupt her, lest any interruption cause her to stop altogether.
Oh, the reasons were as numerous as the days in a year. But only one thing in particular drove the logic behind such an irrational action. She didn't want any boy in particular - indeed, she had a great deal of suitors - nor did she want to die as that would be a bit of a waste considering how bloody difficult she made things for everyone. Herself included.
Would it make her happy?
Asked only once, with all seriousness. Sitra said it probably wouldn't, though she needed to try all the same. Would it hurt her? Was it worth it? She wished she knew all the answers, but she did not, and accepted the fact of her innocence all the same.
It might have been a fool's gambit, but it was hers alone to make.
***
After that, the House of Vené Tanyakoettir was not a particularly happy one.
After that, the House of Vené Tanyakoettir was not a particularly happy one.
The mayhem that wracked the house in the subsequent weeks could have filled books, perhaps even an entire shelf in their family library. Hopefully enough pages in each volume to accurately express the drama that ensued.
With Syelene's interference came a series of increasingly volatile attempts to dissuade the other girl by all manner of healers, spiritualists, family - and an actual diplomat, to boot. Eventually it found its culmination in that time where her father's ire boiled over enough for him to utter the words to Sitra's face. It was to be death if she did not desist in shaming their dynasty.
By an executioner's hands rather than that of her "affliction".
At that point it became evident to both parties that she would not bend, nor was anyone particularly thrilled to break the girl. It was enough for a ceasefire. There would be no more of this theatre in the household; Sitra would eat again, and in turn there would be no more talk of marriage.
The thing about time is that it cannot help but wear down anything that passes it by.
Sitra had not yet turned twenty, yet she had earned her freedom for the rest of her life after six grueling months of torture, for everyone involved. She was not proud of it, neither did she or others speak of it but in hushed whispers and careless comments after frustrated arguments. Sitra hadn't meant it to be such a cruel war. Rather it had been to make a point. Despite it all, she still hated hurting her family so, as they naturally hated being hurt.
Thus with her freedom won did she embark upon the journey so long sought after. Not that she went into self-imposed exile alone, nor would anyone seriously let her, despite the concessions made. Ayl-Maltene Ranna Anakanos was more than a retainer in the traditional sense of the word.
She was first and foremost a knight of her order, and often left for months on end to pursue her duties to the order. The only difference this time was that she did it with an odd squire in tow, to learn all she hadn't had the chance to when the lessons were only conducted in half-seriousness.
As the months passed, so too did her affliction, and her heavy heart.
Nobody could accuse Sitra of being slow to learn, and so she did; the process of being taught in most orders was done from a young and tender age, and she was no longer any of those things. Therefore were she to learn, she was compelled to learn far more quickly than most pupils would.
Oh, were there mistakes. Nobody could deny that either.
There were successes, too. Even her family could not deny as much on the rare occasion they returned to her Saknne estates, permitting her the opportunity to account them all with an almost childish happiness of those successes. More often than not however they were in written format, as letter writing did not require that their journeys return them to her birthplace after every hallmark moment.
It was only after she was almost to turn twenty-one did she realize the trap so carefully set, after she had long assumed herself free and clear of all consequences caused by her rebellion. Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir was to finish the bulk of her squiring under the guidance of the Knights of Anatheum, the literal nobodies of this day and age. So worn down by the cruelness of time as the oldest of statues in Saknne.
Her only attachment to the order was the long history of sponsorship by the House of Vené Tanyakoettir, though it had somewhat waned as the years went by. Less and less money did the order see as less noble sons and daughters graced their halls, until none remained.
Aside from her distant cousin Bebin Theros, that was. A man she met only once.
To say she was happy about this unexpected revelation was... questionable.
Sitra may have been a stubborn soul in her youth, but she also saw herself as dutiful. Her duty to her family's prospects simply diverged a little more radically than anticipated.
She might not have had the intention of serving by wearing a gown, yet she would serve all the same.
If her father meant to exile her to a band of hedge knights to complete her training, then she would go. Her own happiness was always a vague, obscure thing that was oft overshadowed by a passion she held - heedless of anything except her own pursuits. Enjoy as she might her freedom; the choice made to carry a blade was not out of anything that might be construed as enthusiasm.
Whatever Sitra ever decided to do, she put all of herself into.
Her passion was to serve, to cut away at the blight in this world, and so she would serve.
Knights of Anatheum or not.
The clatter of hoofs was all that broke up the monotony of daybreak, the morning mist swirling over the old cobblestone of the roads in lazy tendrils.
All else was silent save for the occasional crackle of leaves underfoot, perhaps so often an occasional bird call to change things up a bit. All of it had a way of echoing forebodingly off of the trunks of moss covered trees that had flanked the two women on horseback.
Everything else was frightfully quiet, and the silence soon became a sound of its own.
Sitra spoke then, finding that the silence carried her voice; making it spin back and forth betwixt the trees before bouncing right back into her skull, making it seem for all the world that it had come from another's lips. But there was nobody else there, save for herself and her knightly companion.
Ranna the Twisted Spear. Ranna the Immovable. Ranna the Betrayer.
"Must it be the Knights of Anatheum?"
It was a question asked not just once, but many times. It was also one she already long knew the answer to, yet couldn't help to ask all the same. For it was meant in a way to be a punishment, perhaps well deserved, though no less of a wound to her pride. So she asked, knowing the answer.
And an answer that wouldn't be so forthcoming this time around, at least not aloud. Sitra knew as well as Ranna did that there was no acting in defiance to her father's wishes, at least not if she yet carried any hope of an amiable mending of the rift in the Vené Tanyakoettir clan.
Still she could not help but preen a little with her next words, despite knowing how they'd be received. "I have received letters of recommendation from other organizations, many that would have been more than ideal to further my tutelage. Certainly none quite so famous as one of the oldest orders in the realm, that is true."
She knew that the other women knew, for they were rarely apart these days. It was only a few weeks prior that she received one of those recommendations on behalf of Etiennete's Order of Nine Litanies - justiciars of one denomination or another, and more than happy to entertain a young noblewoman's fancies for further studies.
No doubt that their magnanimous offer was mostly out of canny desire to foster a relationship with Saknne nobility, that she knew to be true, yet it was a good offer all the same. To be turned down like all the rest before. The young Sitra was still very much within the clutches of her familial obligation.
Had she not been, she would've taken the offer.
"I am well aware, Lady Sitra. Must you harm your father even more than you have?"
Instantly the knight was met with a flushed face, more in anger than in embarrassment, though there was plenty of the latter as well. Ranna had nearly forgotten that this one had a temper. Oftentimes a petulant, indignant kind of temper, but a temper nonetheless. If only for a passing moment, before disappearing again beneath a pensive mask.
"I never meant to harm them, don't act like I had."
"No, you meant to get your way. You made a choice and choices have consequences. This is one of them."
"What if I return in failure? Does he expect me then to play the role of a dutiful daughter?" Sitra recovered quickly, she had a knack for it. "He does realize the boon I handed him, does he not? Finding dowries for four daughters is hardly any patrician's notion of ideal."
Ranna found herself worrying for the girl at times, for she so often acted the teenager when she was now anything but. She worried too that the trials that were endured had irrevocably damaged the girl in some ways, and it didn't help that Sitra had all but exiled herself for the past year; where once it was a thing to be done in leisure, the young squire now took to it with a deadly seriousness.
But she had told the father as much, that the girl would break before she ever bent in defeat. Ranna hoped they realized that the choices they made had as many consequences as it had for their daughter consigned to her custody for safekeeping.
"No, he doesn't expect that. Only that you try, seriously try, to prove yourself worthy of the path."
To discover some humility too, perhaps. Though she did not say as much.
Sitra once again felt the creeping dread as it threatened to consume her, piece and parcel, while she was too paralyzed to dispel the numbness travelling up her legs. Her arms. Her stomach. As she hadn't expected her rebellion to go the way she had, neither had she expected the fears of going to this strange place would weigh on her so heavily. She said so, with as much dignity as she could muster.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"You won't be."
"I think I might die, must they know who I am? I hardly imagine they'll know the distinction."
Ranna rolled her eyes good-humoredly at that. "Now you're simply being dramatic. And yes, child, we are not abandoning you on the doorstep like an unwanted child. Moreover you have family in residence there."
"Yes, my cousin. My cousin is rather old. I don't believe we've even met."
"You have," Ranna had to think on it a little while; not entirely certain of the timeline, indeed it might have been as if he'd never visited at all. There were reasons for it, but she was not entirely privy to them beyond an occasional rumor, and neither did she ask. "When you were very young, and not again, I think."
Now it was Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir's turn to think, for she possessed the aristocratic tendency to remember the confusing, hopelessly obscure tendrils of family lineage. Bebin Theros was his name, and he was the brother of her mother, born of a grandfather who was rather... indiscriminate with regards to certain aspects of family planning. That was to say, he had none.
"I cannot confess to remembering his visit, although I do recall that his mother was a Seret woman, perhaps Kaliti? I haven't the faintest clue whether she was high or low born, only that she was-"
"If you must be asking those questions, I would ask them of your cousin. Though with some more tact. Both for his sake and that of your grandfather's."
"You know, I also remember my grandmother being around my age when they wed."
Most assuredly there was love involved, but not perhaps the kind of love that would inspire poets. She shuddered to think of what any storyteller would think to do with it. And it appeared as if her custodian had the same thought and so, mercifully, did not press the matter further in regards to the giving of respect.
After that, there was little else to say. Both of the women had awakened before the break of dawn, had saddled and lathered down the legs of their horses before the sun had even properly come over the horizon. The cool chill of night's retreat still dogged their steps, even as the light began to gradually reveal more and more of the world around them.
As well as what lay ahead, an imprisonment and tutelage in equal measure.
For now it was only the two of them on a silent road, save for the clatter of their horse's hoofs. Not precisely a usual sight; where they were both tall was the only thing they shared in common. Ranna stood as her titles might have suggested, as a giant who wore her suit of armor as if she were born to it; bronze-gilded pauldron's catching the sun's gaze.
Sitra in turn wore no armour, but instead fine riding breeches tucked into boots with equally fine linen cuffs and spats, reaching nearly to her knees. The rest of her was a little more conspicuous, with a lush blouse serving as an undershirt underneath an elegant doublet with skirts that dipped just above the top of her knees.
Quite a contrast, yet both women were content with one another's company. Even as the road stretched ahead, silence once again becoming their third companion.