Passionate Ambivalence

"May I cut a lock or your hair?"

"I suppose. What for?"

Viren frowns slightly, cutting the hair and stroking it between his fingers as he answers.

"My grandmother - not Claudia, the other one - was a wild mage in the mountains. One of her stocks in trade was protection charms. There's one for childbirth, with a braid of all the family's hair. I've already got mine, and Soren's... A bit foolish, perhaps, but I've had terrible dreams..."

Silvis shakes his head.

"It doesn't sound foolish to me. I've got no reason to be snobby about types of magic." He peers at the hair in Viren's other hand. "But yours are so short, how can you make a braid?"

"Maybe... spin it first?" Viren's tone indicates he knows precisely nothing about spinning.

"That works with wool and... flax?" Silvis doesn't know much more. "But I don't think you'd get the same results with human hair. It's so... slippery."

In the end the hair is sort of twisted together, around braided thread, and placed in a pouch embroidered with runes for health and protection. He's wearing it over his heart, and it's certainly imbued with love and care, which ought to be enough.

*

Storms on the road from Camboria keep the birth priest delayed. Labor starts sooner this time, and drags on. Viren talks, at times with nervous energy, and Silvis mostly naps. He does find the energy to grumble in response to musing about names, "if the child is a girl."

"We won't know that," he says tiredly, "Until she tells us."

Viren nods quickly. "Right, yes, sorry. If we'd adopted your people's approach it would have saved Harrow some grief... But we haven't, and we won't. I thought we agreed to bestow a name on the seventh day again."

"Yes, that's fine. That's different from claiming we know what we can't."

He's expecting to be part of the ceremony, but fate has other plans.

Fandom: The Dragon Prince
Raiting: General audiences
Characters: Original characters, Harrow, Viren, Ahling, (they are tweens)
Tags: commoner OCs, Harrow + pets, other human kingdoms, not everyone likes jelly tarts, Viren being Viren
Summary: Pets are not permitted in Pentarchy accomodations. 



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King Siskan: High Mage, in addition to the portrait, I will have the chronicler record the important facts of your life. I'm not as educated as I could be... I know here in Katolis we only have two genders, but in other places it's different, and in your homeland of Camboria they have five. What should we put in the chronicle?

High Mage Prime Ziyali: I don't have a gender.

Chronicler: Ok.

Ziyali: Wait, wait, maybe I do. My gender is called, "Fuck You, I Do What I Want, and Also Fuck My Homeland of Camboria, and Every Single Pious Bitch in That Boring-Ass Country."

King, War Queen, Country Mother, chronicler, servants: (facepalm)


(six hundred years later...)

(in the Hall of Portraits in Katolis Castle, telling Claudia about important mages in history)

Viren: It's possible they did have some gender identity our modern culture doesn't fully grasp, but like many details of ancient Katolis, this is now lost to history.



Tune in next week, when Ziyali perfects primal stone technology and invents medieval Rogaine to flex on King Siskan by growing the sexiest mustache.