- Messages
- 473
- Character Biography
- Link
It was a different experience for her.
Before, she had been privileged and had men and women to take care of her needs, and she had not been required to think if them overtly. Clothes were cleaned and taken to her rooms within the family estate. Her meals were prepared and brought to her as well, purchased by staff she never saw and scarcely thought of. So many people moved behind the scenes of a noble House that were all but invisible to the inhabitants that it could be shocking if one of the Lords or Ladies actually looked beyond the sums of silver they paid for their servants.
And then the bottom had been ripped out of her world, and the entire card castle had collapsed on itself. The machinations of the rich and the powerful, slow and odding as politicking tended to he, had moved with lethal swiftness.
Her father was dead. Mother, missing. Everything she had ever known was left in ruins, cast from the home she was born in. From privilege into squalor, from plenty to destitution in the course of three nights.
And for a year, she had lived the other side of the world,and finally seen the downtrodden whom had been hidden behind manicured lawns and rise gardens, behind well maintained walls. Out here, the poor suffered and fought among themselves for the scraps the elites left behind, while those with deeper purses aped their betters in looking down their noses at the worlds castaways and those too stupid or too poor to rise above their squalid stupor.
Worse, she had remained ignorant of the world she lived in, skulking in the shadows. Paralyzed into inaction, too young and naive to understand the workings of the world she inhabited, only able to curse the bitter circumstance she had found herself in.
And now, here I stand.
The crowded markets were the last place she would have imagined herself being a year before, when there had been scarcely anything to eat and she had been living behind a bunch of musty boxes in some forgotten warehouse down by the river. She carried a basket, not fir the first time wondering at the excitement the banal task if procuring supplies for their meager crew. She was not adept at haggling with the merchant that thronged these streets five blocks up from the river and the stink of the docks, and yet they kept sending her to do these menial tasks.
It is as if they do not consider me a part of the team, she thought to herself bitterly. They called her too young, too inexperienced. As if she had any choice in being involved in the resistance to the High Lord Farron and his meddling. How could she sit idly by after they killed Father? Threw her on the streets, and ruined her entire family name?
The most bitter of pills was that she did not even know why they had done it. A raid on a house used by spies for the Farron's had yielded only more enigmatic answers to questions they did not even have. She had sat and stares at the papers Aleisha had decrypted as long as that worthy had herself, and been no closer to figuring out what all of it meant.
Contracts and promissory notes from Alliria and from Allirian banks and Mercantile enterprises. Alliria was not an enemy of Mericet, but the tension between the two nations sometimes flared, and Allirua was always in a position to put economic pressure on the smaller nation. If Allirua wished to annex Mericet, it would be a bloody but very short war.
She handed a few coppers over to a merchant in exchange for bread, careless of the fact that it was day old and already drying out. Her head was not in the game of merchants.
What did it all mean? Underground storage roo.s in hidden caverns right beneath their very feet, filled with commodities? Bearing the mark of Allirian merchant houses and companies no less?
"Hey! Watch where ya going!" The words were an irritated punctuation to nearly bouncing off of the man in question, and Lyssia's slight form very nearly ended on the ground as a result.
The young woman - more a gangly teenager than and adult- gained her balance, narrowly avoiding dropping her basket with the assorted goods in it. she brushed off the plain, shapeless sack of a dress she was wearing, looking at the man she had run into with a contrite look on her face.
She was a diminutive girl, standing a little more than waist height to the man but only a little taller in comparison to the rest around her. her hair was a vibrant, fiery red, flesh pale and cheeks freckled lightly. like others of her kind, she was willowy and finely boned.
The other wore the livery of one of the Houses. Of average looks, he was nevertheless much larger than she, and looking at her with annoyance that quickly changed to curiosity.
"I apologize profusely," she mumbled in what really was a contrite tone. "My mind was wandering and.."
He snorted, starting to turn back to his haggling. "Yeah, yeah. Damned peasants," he said, then stopped and looked back at her. "Wait...wait a minute. Aren't you that girl?" he asked.
Alarmed, she backed away. "Whatever do you mean," she asked in her high pitched voice. She knew exactly what he meant, and did not like where this was heading.
"Yeah, you're her alright! Daughter of the traitor! Thought they'd executed your whole family," he said in a low snarl. "Try to sell us out to Vel Anir, they say."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you are talking about," she replied shortly, hoping that her panic hadn't bled into her words. "You've mistaken me for someone else, clearly."
"Pssh, that haughty, better-than-thou attitude- hey, where ya think yer going?" He grabbed her arm as she turned away and tried to leave. He yanked on her arm, and the basket she had been carrying spilled onto the muddy street, the food items within hitting the ground. She gasped in pain at his grip, and turned to him.
"Unhand me you oaf," she said in as intimidating a voice as she could. It received laughter, not only from him but from everyone around. People started to back away, interest flaring in their eyes for a bit of 'street theater'.
Before, she had been privileged and had men and women to take care of her needs, and she had not been required to think if them overtly. Clothes were cleaned and taken to her rooms within the family estate. Her meals were prepared and brought to her as well, purchased by staff she never saw and scarcely thought of. So many people moved behind the scenes of a noble House that were all but invisible to the inhabitants that it could be shocking if one of the Lords or Ladies actually looked beyond the sums of silver they paid for their servants.
And then the bottom had been ripped out of her world, and the entire card castle had collapsed on itself. The machinations of the rich and the powerful, slow and odding as politicking tended to he, had moved with lethal swiftness.
Her father was dead. Mother, missing. Everything she had ever known was left in ruins, cast from the home she was born in. From privilege into squalor, from plenty to destitution in the course of three nights.
And for a year, she had lived the other side of the world,and finally seen the downtrodden whom had been hidden behind manicured lawns and rise gardens, behind well maintained walls. Out here, the poor suffered and fought among themselves for the scraps the elites left behind, while those with deeper purses aped their betters in looking down their noses at the worlds castaways and those too stupid or too poor to rise above their squalid stupor.
Worse, she had remained ignorant of the world she lived in, skulking in the shadows. Paralyzed into inaction, too young and naive to understand the workings of the world she inhabited, only able to curse the bitter circumstance she had found herself in.
And now, here I stand.
The crowded markets were the last place she would have imagined herself being a year before, when there had been scarcely anything to eat and she had been living behind a bunch of musty boxes in some forgotten warehouse down by the river. She carried a basket, not fir the first time wondering at the excitement the banal task if procuring supplies for their meager crew. She was not adept at haggling with the merchant that thronged these streets five blocks up from the river and the stink of the docks, and yet they kept sending her to do these menial tasks.
It is as if they do not consider me a part of the team, she thought to herself bitterly. They called her too young, too inexperienced. As if she had any choice in being involved in the resistance to the High Lord Farron and his meddling. How could she sit idly by after they killed Father? Threw her on the streets, and ruined her entire family name?
The most bitter of pills was that she did not even know why they had done it. A raid on a house used by spies for the Farron's had yielded only more enigmatic answers to questions they did not even have. She had sat and stares at the papers Aleisha had decrypted as long as that worthy had herself, and been no closer to figuring out what all of it meant.
Contracts and promissory notes from Alliria and from Allirian banks and Mercantile enterprises. Alliria was not an enemy of Mericet, but the tension between the two nations sometimes flared, and Allirua was always in a position to put economic pressure on the smaller nation. If Allirua wished to annex Mericet, it would be a bloody but very short war.
She handed a few coppers over to a merchant in exchange for bread, careless of the fact that it was day old and already drying out. Her head was not in the game of merchants.
What did it all mean? Underground storage roo.s in hidden caverns right beneath their very feet, filled with commodities? Bearing the mark of Allirian merchant houses and companies no less?
"Hey! Watch where ya going!" The words were an irritated punctuation to nearly bouncing off of the man in question, and Lyssia's slight form very nearly ended on the ground as a result.
The young woman - more a gangly teenager than and adult- gained her balance, narrowly avoiding dropping her basket with the assorted goods in it. she brushed off the plain, shapeless sack of a dress she was wearing, looking at the man she had run into with a contrite look on her face.
She was a diminutive girl, standing a little more than waist height to the man but only a little taller in comparison to the rest around her. her hair was a vibrant, fiery red, flesh pale and cheeks freckled lightly. like others of her kind, she was willowy and finely boned.
The other wore the livery of one of the Houses. Of average looks, he was nevertheless much larger than she, and looking at her with annoyance that quickly changed to curiosity.
"I apologize profusely," she mumbled in what really was a contrite tone. "My mind was wandering and.."
He snorted, starting to turn back to his haggling. "Yeah, yeah. Damned peasants," he said, then stopped and looked back at her. "Wait...wait a minute. Aren't you that girl?" he asked.
Alarmed, she backed away. "Whatever do you mean," she asked in her high pitched voice. She knew exactly what he meant, and did not like where this was heading.
"Yeah, you're her alright! Daughter of the traitor! Thought they'd executed your whole family," he said in a low snarl. "Try to sell us out to Vel Anir, they say."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you are talking about," she replied shortly, hoping that her panic hadn't bled into her words. "You've mistaken me for someone else, clearly."
"Pssh, that haughty, better-than-thou attitude- hey, where ya think yer going?" He grabbed her arm as she turned away and tried to leave. He yanked on her arm, and the basket she had been carrying spilled onto the muddy street, the food items within hitting the ground. She gasped in pain at his grip, and turned to him.
"Unhand me you oaf," she said in as intimidating a voice as she could. It received laughter, not only from him but from everyone around. People started to back away, interest flaring in their eyes for a bit of 'street theater'.
