Blushing Bride

August 2025 DWC

Day 6: Celebrate/Reactionary

TW: language, mind control

The paper was a couple of days old when Lillandyr looked at it in bed, sipping champagne before noon. She peered at the society page through a haze of blood thistle smoke. A familiar face made her sit up straighter, eyes narrowing.

Corinne awoke in an empty bed, and for a brief and blissful moment, it was as if she’d never married. Today was her birthday, and her husband was gone. His absence was her gift. She considered how to spend her day, alone save for her overqualified nanny. It was flattering, in a way: she had become so unmanageable to her husband that he had hired not just any man, but a highly decorated, elite soldier to keep her in line. Family friend or no, Corinne found Rynathil’s qualifications personally validating. Lorien claimed that this arrangement was “for her protection”, but she was his wife for months without any guard. It was only when the rumors began that he became so concerned with her safety:

“My son saw the magister’s wife in the woods, bowhunting on a hawkstrider, wearing trousers!” 

“The courier saw Lady Phoenixsong in a tavern in the village down the road! Dressed like a peasant!”

“What kind of lady does her own sundry shopping? Can Magister Phoenixsong not afford staff?”

His reputation, her safety - they were one and the same. In her defense, her intent was not to harm his reputation; she simply wanted to experience freedom, fun - a life worth living! Afternoon tea was all well and good, but why couldn’t a lady ride her hawkstrider through the woods, or shop in the market unattended? It all felt… silly.

Master Rynathil (so-called by the household) had become a near-constant presence for her. He was quiet, as unobtrusive as a shadow could be, and yet he was present. He took no more space than he needed, yet he occupied it with unspoken confidence. He was cordial, highly observant, and far more tolerant of her than would please Lorien to know. It was a funny thing, how some of the same behaviors that previously sparked rumors were suddenly unconcerning when performed in the company of a respectable man. He was her cover, and there was comfort in that.

She made him escort her to the market.

-

Corinne could have worn the ribbon to dinner - her husband wouldn’t ask her about it - but she instead did what she did not want to: she removed it, moments after Rynathil had gone. Then, with greater care than she gave most things, she hid it. 

Rynathil saw her in a way that she had so desperately longed to be seen, and yet - in spite of all that longing - her heart had not been prepared for it. She stared at the mirror, eyes hazy and unfocused, heedless of her own reflection, and wondered if he also wanted to be seen - if he even thought she could see him. 

When the master of the house returned home, Corinne refused dinner. She was tired, perhaps even ill. Lorien didn’t press her any further, not today. 

The ribbon would not be seen again.

@daily-writing-challenge

@gentle-undoing

It was her birthday, and the house did not notice.

Morning came with pale sun. Soft light spilled across marble floors and high windows, as if it had something gentle to say. Corinne woke to a ribboned parcel left upon the escritoire in her sitting room, and beside it a vase—tall, faultless—containing a host of lilies. They were lovely. For a long moment she stood before them, wanting very much to be moved. She imagined feeling grateful.

The card was brisk and elegant, her husband’s hand neat and official. “My dearest,” wrote Lorien, “the Council was unavoidable. I mean to be home before the sixth bell. I hope you understand.”

She did understand. Understanding had worn a path through her.

Rynathil, who stood with the patience of a coat on its peg, waited at the door. He had the air of a man determined to be useful in precisely the required measure, and not a degree more. His salute was very proper; his silence even more so.

“It is my birthday, Rynathil,” said Corinne, with the half-smile of a woman accustomed to making her own amusement out of very small materials.

“Then we will be careful with it, my lady,” he returned.

She found herself studying him with an attention that felt dangerous, noting the way the morning light from the tall windows caught the amber of his eyes and turned them molten, the slight dishevelment of his dark hair as if he'd run his fingers through it while waiting—a habit she recognized now in quiet moments when he thought himself unobserved. There were many such small intimacies she had no business noticing. The way his jaw tightened when he disagreed but held his tongue. How precisely he adjusted his sword belt. And then—oh, how her breath caught—when some secret thought drew him inward and his thumb would seek the pale scar that marked his lower lip, tracing its path with absent tenderness. She found herself wondering with shameful intensity what that imperfection might feel like beneath her own thumb.

“I find myself in need of… something,” she said suddenly, surprised by her own honesty. “I cannot tell what; perhaps the market will suggest it. Give me a moment to dress.” She went to the wardrobe and chose a green plissé—the simplest she owned, which favored her eyes and spared her the trouble of a maid to assist with the lacings.

When she emerged, he was waiting in the corridor, hands clasped behind his back in that way that spoke of military habit. His voice carried that low, careful cadence she'd grown accustomed to over the past weeks when he asked, "The market, then?"

She nodded, pulling her cloak around her shoulders, and found herself thinking that perhaps being careful with her birthday might not be such a terrible thing after all.

· ─────── · 𖥸 · ─────── ·

The market had overrun the square with sunny industry: stalls humped with fruit and folded cloth; copper pans set up to catch the light and make a show of it; a woman whose ankle bracelets talked as she moved—little bright notes, like water against stone. The air was thick with wholesome things—new bread, hot spice, fresh greens—and the hum of buying and selling rose and fell with the steadiness of any well-kept household.

Corinne went among it as one goes through a party meant for other people. She put her hand to a pomegranate as if it might tell her something; it had only its proper weight and the rub of its skin to offer. The flowers were clean and sweet, their earth clung honestly. Nothing in it offended, but nothing in it found her. She had come to be buoyed by the common cheerfulness of the place, to borrow some spark, and discovered—what many discover—that gaiety, when wanted most, keeps its distance. It seemed to her then that everyone had a small portion of ordinary happiness laid out on the counter before them, and that she, with all her means, had brought no coin to buy it.

She did not blame the market; it went about its day and did not know her. But she felt, with an unreasonable envy, how easy other people’s errands appeared: bread for dinner, cord for a broken blind, a book for a child—needs that could be met and carried home. Her own want had no shop and no stall; it could not be weighed or wrapped.

Rynathil kept pace at her shoulder. When men glanced too long, he became a sort of weather they thought better of. Offers grew reasonable; prices remembered their manners; curiosity remembered its business elsewhere. The world, it seemed, did business more readily with a lady if a gentleman stood within call—as though civility could be advanced upon his credit and collected from her purse.

“I don’t like lilies,” she said to no one in particular, turning a spool of fine blue thread between finger and thumb. “I mean, I do. They are lovely. They are very well-bred about being lovely.” She put the thread down. “Perhaps I am merely sulking.”

“No one is above a sulk,” he answered gently. “Present company included.”

“Do you ever—” she began, and stopped. They had turned into a narrow lane, cool with shade. A cat slept on a windowsill with magnificent disdain. “Do you ever wish to be someone else?”

“I have wished,” he replied easily, “to be a truer version of the same man. Other people are poorly fitted.”

She smiled and his—slight and fond—met it; the reserve he kept for her had seemed to yield by an inch, and the glimpse of it felt companionable in a way she had not thought to claim.

They moved along until they came upon a stall whose proprietor had a talent for unnecessary articles: hairpins cut like laurel leaves, a narrow book of paper for pressing flowers (already intimate with summers not her own), wafers of scented wax, and a box of ribbons in careful order. Corinne’s hand hovered over a length of deep, impossible green—the color of the forest floor in the first breath after a rain. It was a simple, foolish thing—so small, so childish, that it felt shameful. What use did a Magister’s wife have for a yard of moire ribbon? With a sigh that carried the weight of the entire day, she let her hand fall and turned away, the color already fading from her mind’s eye.

Rynathil said nothing. Later, when she was teased into sampling almonds and pretending to like them, he doubled back to the stall. The ribbon-seller had gone to her chair and was fanning herself with a bill of prices. “Back for the green, sir?” she asked, the fan pausing just enough to register that she knew what she knew.

“For the lady,” he said. “A neck ribbon, if you please, with a keeper ring set at center.” And, because he had been sent on such errands before by women who did not like to repeat themselves, he measured with thumb to forefinger, widening the span with the care of a man who trusted his hands over rule. “From here… to here.”

The woman’s eyebrow, which had opinions, climbed no further than civility would permit, but she set to her task.

He slipped the ribbon away in his coat where papers were kept that must not be creased, and returned the same way he had left, as if he had only stepped aside to let a carriage have its way. Corinne had paused to look into a yard where a fig sent up its coarse, clean leaves.

Her mood did what such moods do: climbed, slipped, found a ledge, and—claiming some small mountaineer’s pride—pretended it had meant, all along, to come down. They returned by the south streets.

· ─────── · 𖥸 · ─────── ·

The manor received her in its usual manner, which was to say it arranged itself quietly around her and did not inquire. The sun, having made a show of itself in the morning, went quieter and more gold, as if someone had said the word “afternoon” in a tone it respected. The corridors grew considerate with shadow and the staff went about as sailors before a wind, setting their tasks to catch an imminent master.

Rynathil saw her as far as the threshold of her sitting room and then stood aside with the correctness of a man whose duties had line and rule. She paused in the doorway, as if a different room might be made by a different pause. It could not.

“Thank you,” she said, which was the sort of thing one offered when one had nothing of equal weight to give back. It was not payment, but it was tender. “For letting me squander a morning on nothing at all.”

“Your morning,” he said. “Squandered to your measure. An honorable use.” He came nearer by degrees. When he spoke, his voice had that plainness he favored in all useful acts—like shutting a window against a draft without making a business of the cold. “I have something for you, my lady."

A thing announced with that grammar could not be trifling; or if trifling, then exact. She was foolishly afraid she would cry. The fear did not make her smaller. It made her honest. “Have you,” she said, as if an amusement, and because she wished not to look the foolish girl in front of him. “Is it a sensible something?”

His hand went to the inner pocket of his coat. “For your birthday,” he said simply. “If it pleases you.”

For a moment her breath met the surface of her throat and could not decide which way to go. She had not been asked, in some time, if a thing would please her; more often she was informed that a thing would suit. Suitability had been the wisdom of her marriage, the masonry of her house, the creed of the dinners where her smile was an instrument. She felt at once the comfortable shame of being found out and the unreasonable pleasure of being understood. It was indecent how little it took to be seen in the exact outline of one’s wanting. She touched the silk and was surprised to discover that one may be cheered by very little, provided it is very right.

“It does please me,” she said, and felt wildly unsophisticated for speaking so directly.

Something eased in his face—no smile, not exactly, but that subtle relief a soldier grants himself when the night watch passes. He did not offer explanations, or the philosophy of green things, or a speech about birthdays. He held her present between careful hands, and then, after a small, proper pause—as if he listened to the floorboards, the house, or his better judgment—he asked, “May I?”

The room composed itself around the words. Corinne sat before her dressing-table as if it had been decided very politely between them that she would. In the mirror, the lilies stood behind her like ladies permitted to attend. Rynathil moved without hurry, but with that deliberation which is the only true antidote to presumption. He stood where the light from the south windows complicated his profile.

His hands, large and steady, gathered her hair as a woman might. He did not touch her more than the task required, yet his touch felt like a word in a language she had suspected existed but never learned to speak. He found the keeper ring by the sound it made against his thumbnail. When the ribbon slid, it made the smallest hush, like a page turned by someone careful of the binding.

“Here,” he murmured, not to her exactly, but to the arrangement itself, as though hair and ribbon were a stubborn knot in need of untangling. He drew the tails even. She watched in the mirror as the green settled against the dark fall of her hair, the center ring a discreet bright at the hollow of her throat. It was not showy. It was not anything, she told herself, but tidy.

He had not stepped back. She could see, up close in the mirror, the pale thread of the scar at his lip that had, impertinently, invited her notice before. It was nothing; it was an entire history. Her breath steadied against something that was not steadiness.

“It becomes you,” he said, and had the good manners to let the compliment end there.

The lilies, unreasonable creatures, smelled of innocence.

Rynathil stepped away, and the air he left behind felt like silk that had forgotten the body it had just covered. He found his place in the room’s shadow and, for the smallest second, she saw that private habit of his—fingertips ghosting along the place where his mouth had remembered a wound. Then his hand was again his own.

“My lady,” he said, and the title was both armor and apology. “My watch concludes.” A beat. “I wish you a very good evening.”

He bowed then, more formally than before, and went with the soundlessness peculiar to men whose absence is their last service. Some desperation in her wanted to detain him with nothing at all, to ask after the weather or his supper, to command a report on the condition of the stair carpet—anything small and undignified that would require his answer and not his leave-taking—if only to keep the quiet where it was, warmed by their breathing. But she did not. The door completed the sentence he had begun. She listened for his tread until it became a part of the stair and then ceased to be particular.

For a while she sat as if her sitting might undo it. The mirror held her like a witness who had been made to swear and then told to be silent. The green at her nape was not a great thing. It was a thread drawn through the day and tied off with care. She put her fingertips to it and felt how a ribbon could have temperature—how silk could remember a hand’s warmth longer than it had any business to.

It would have been useful, she thought, to be angry with him. Anger has objects; it can be counted and spent. Instead she felt the bewilderment one feels before a kindness too exact. What had he seen? Not much: a woman reaching for something and then refusing it on principle. And what had he done? Purchased principle’s refusal and returned it to her as permission. Nothing indecent; nothing arguable. Only that most treacherous of gifts: the suggestion that her wanting was not a nuisance.

She pressed her thumbs to the ridge of her brow as if a door might be found there and opened. She did not cry. The house would have swallowed her tears as it swallowed footsteps, and she had no wish to offer it the satisfaction. It had been constructed to accommodate dignity the way a river accommodates boats; it preferred you upright, facing forward, moving steadily downstream. If you wished to float on your back and watch the sky, you were asked to do so discreetly.

“Don’t,” she told herself softly. To whom she spoke, she couldn’t say. The word made no impression. Want had already taken hold of the good furniture and was sitting with its knees up.

This is foolish, she told herself without heat, because foolishness was sometimes the exact word that guarded a treasure. This is perilous. This is very small. This is very large. She let the sentences arrive without order and did not tidy them. If he had lingered, she might have said something unwise. If he had lingered, perhaps she would not. No one had ever taught her how to measure the scandal of wanting a thing that did not belong to you, when the thing that did belong to you never asked how you liked to hold it.

To the mirror she lifted her hair, gathered it, let it fall; turned her head to show herself different profiles, as if one of them might belong to a woman permitted to want out loud.

“I am not unhappy,” she told her reflection, and meant it, and knew at once that it was a poor defense against whatever was waking in her: for unhappiness was a thing that could be managed, fed or kept lean, but desire was far less governable.

“Did you go along?” His blue-black eyes twinkled and he steepled his hands in front of his mouth with the eager question.

Khaeris matched his lean on the little cafe table. Eyebrows rising as her curiosity met his own. Infinite dragons could be so confusing! And confused! And the environment of the Everywhen Inn didn’t help. Timelines were knotted in this area of the Eon’s Fringe in the Temporal Conflux. “What do you mean? Go where? With who?”

The human visage wiggled his nose like he was casting a spell--or was really wanting a rabbit visage?--and thought hard for a moment. The blood elf could practically see him trying to untangle which thread of time he was meant to be grounded in right now. Grains of golden sand flickered in and out of existence around his hands, causing Khaeris to sit back instinctively. She hated that stuff.

“Eternus. The Broken Shore. Timerunning!”

That made her lean in again. “There’s another Timerunning job coming?”

“Was.” He tapped a now clawed finger on his temple, then the table. “Yet?” His lips got a little too reptilian and he tried to purse them, losing concentration as he continued to try to orient himself.

If the Bronze Dragonflight was generally considered and measured, the Infinites were considered chaos. Which was probably why Khaeris preferred the Infinites.

Khaeris let her companion keep talking, her mind buzzing. “Did you touch the Shadow? You have. Will you? You will. Someone will go back to the start of this mess. Unfortunate. For everyone, but I went, too.”

It was like talking to a drunk Pandaren monk at times. Both thought themselves wise and enlightening, but left more perplexed than directed. Infinites were the most Reactionary of dragons. It was how their Flight formed, after all. Chains of reactions, flowing forward and back and sideways. A note from a celebratory kazoo sounded a half-second before appearing at the now dracthyr-visage across from her.

Khaeris grinned slowly, confirming, “Yes, I went along.”

Nearly three thousand years had passed since the withering had claimed his father. And yet, on this same day every year, Draeun found himself drawn to the barrier—like a wound he could not stop reopening.

He knew the truth. The chance of ever seeing him again was nothing but ash in the wind. But still, he came. Still, he waited.

A blanket was unfurled across the cold earth. A small basket set down with deliberate care, its contents a ritual. Draeun poured himself a glass of deep red wine, reclining.

And so he waited.

Hour after hour, his eyes tracked every withered figure that stumbled past the shimmering wall. His gaze lingered, searching for some scrap of recognition—anything that could tether the husks of the damned back to the man he had once called father.

None ever did.

When the darkness settled fully, Draeun finally rose, folding the blanket with mechanical precision, placing everything back into the basket as though tidiness could disguise futility.

Another year. Another failure.

His voice was flat, almost mocking in its restraint as he turned from the barrier. “Happy birthday… Dad.”

The words fell into the silence, swallowed by the night. Draeun walked away without looking back.

Before she moved into her house, Nahi had never thought much about crafting. Cooking, yes. Styling an outfit, definitely. But crafting? That was something other people created. Then came the patio mosaic. Six months of piecing together tiles to create the sun and she felt accomplished.

That was then. This was now.

The spare bedroom looked less like a workspace and more like a trash heap where some mutant nest had taken root. Aluminum foil, plastic flowers, clean takeout containers half-folded, crepe paper, trash bags, tubing, an entire landfill in progress. None of it was working. None of it looked right.

Nahi sprawled on the bed, forearm draped over her eyes in the most dramatic “I give up” pose possible. She had spent three days just deciding what to make, and now she was about to drag out the paints she used for After Dark, guaranteeing to get her in trouble, which would mean a lecture from herself. Maybe people would be amused by it, anything for the masses, right?

Her eyes flicked to the standing mirror across the room. Bits of foil clung to her hair, a scrap of crepe paper stuck to her cheek, and sheets of teal paper drooped over the mirror’s frame like exhausted party guests. The whole place was a wreck. So was she.

This was an important event, other people might not think so, Succulent Tart do raves all the time. Advertise, stock the bars and play music, and they will come. All of that was true but this is an anniversary, the celebration should be big for the troupe as well as trying to make it memorable for everyone there. 

And that, of course, meant she was overwhelmed.

She gave the feeling its due space in her head, then sat up. Enough. Time to shift gears.

In a move that felt wildly out of character, she shoved everything off the bed in one sweep. A rain of plastic and paper hit the floor. Then she used her foot to push the debris out of the mirror’s line of sight. The reflection cleared, she smiled finally, and pulled a bag of supplies from the party store.

Red and magenta banners spilled across the sheets, each one stamped with Happy Anniversary. She untangled the little flags, turned them all in the same direction, then held the string in front of the mirror like a measuring tape.

The reflection showed her, bedraggled and stubborn, arms full of bright banners.

“For Light’s sake…” she muttered, and with a shake of her head she started laughing.

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Celebrate/Reactionary

“He's…watching me again.” Eluvianna's steps quickened along the corridor.

“Who? Velen?!” Liora stammered, skipping to keep pace.

Of course, it made sense for Netherlight’s dormitories—a vault of stained glass pulling light through an idealistic scene:

Prophet Velen with his staff raised to the heavens, the spark of M’uru held aloft before the Sunwell. Holy fire scattering redemption upward from the font. Kil'jaeden and the naaru of Tempest Keep darkening the horizon. The glass burned from violet to gold and crimson, an arrangement more vision than memory.

And yet—always his face. The artistry had twisted his features into something molten and grotesque. She could never decide if the glazier disliked the prophet or merely lacked the skill to spare him dignity. Velen looked less savior than sacrifice, a saint writhing mid-grimace. Each time she passed, the expression grew more unbearable: near-demonic with desperation, as though his greatest miracle would be reaching a chamber pot in time.

At their door, Eluvianna fumbled with the handle, refusing to acknowledge the disdain. Somehow, the prophet seemed particularly desperate today.

His eyes followed them, condemning her alone for immortalizing his predicament.

Breathless, Liora shouted at the glass, “Go towards the porcelain light, Velen!”

She was grinning when he handed it to her, a nicely packaged parcel that given how pristine it arrived, some extra coin must have been included when it was sent along its way. To think that an ocean divided them and yet, things could be sent back and forth so quickly that it felt nearly like they lived in the same place. Except given Laeynna’s history on that side of the world, Ankalei had to assume she probably wasn’t real eager to go reliving those experiences. Either way, maybe one day, they’d be in the same place. If her sister was ready for that. When her sister was ready for that.