#ofthelace

To Mom and Dad,Thanks for coming to see me. I wish you could have stayed longer. Can you bring some more sweets from the castle? They were really good! Not that I don’t like the ones the caretakers give me. 

I really like the blanket you brought too. Does the castle actually smell like that? It’s oldish, but it felt homey too. 

I can’t wait til you both visit again. Your bedtime stories are the best. No one here tells them the way Mom does. But I guess they don’t have the same interesting stories you do. Are you both having fun? Thanks for being so brave. You fight to keep Nohr safe and I want to do that too one day. Just like you two.

Love,Siegbert

Dear Mother and Father,I am pleased to hear the state of affairs in Nohr is favorable. 

 The missives have also informed me that you plan to travel to Hoshido by sea in the near future. I’m certain the bodies of water here in the Deeprealm are tame in comparison. Recently I had the opportunity to sail a modest river to assist the locals in trade. I’m told that such resources are not nearly as commonplace in Nohr. The Deeprealms are lush and boast a plentiful harvest. My caretakers insist that I do not have to assist them, but after all they’ve done to accommodate my stay it would ill behoove me.

You and Father are in my prayers. I aspire to the example you set and pursue my studies with the same diligence.  I look forward to reuniting once you have returned.

May the gods be with you.

     His hair is a lost cause; They both know it, although she never confesses it aloud because no inch of her boy is hopeless. The signature curls framing Siegbert’s face are a union of his mother’s and those that graced the heads of past Nohrian kings.

     The years are a blur. Concept of time has been skewed by the Deeprealms’ supernatural qualities. But she is here now and firmly resolved to not miss a single moment. He advances towards aspirations under her watchful gaze. Accomplishments great and small are all praiseworthy. She is his pillar of support.

     His mother strides over to him with the practiced grace expected of a queen (showing marked improvement since their reunion). Her kiss is the first of many gifts bestowed to him on this memorable day, but perhaps the most treasured of them all. He reaches to join their hands because regardless of how many years pass he’s yet to outgrow the habit. Comfort is found in the warmth of her palms against his. Home was never the Deeprealms, but the tenderness she looks upon him with. Love for her darling son is exhaled in each breath and shone through a generous supply of affectionate gestures.

—  ❝ D-Do I puff my chest out like this? Or is this when I'm supposed to straighten my back? Or do I do both? ❞

Percy felt a mixture of stilted, stiff, and awkward as he tried to learn from his mother's guidance on how to converse effectively and radiate an aura of charisma. Going from a more laid-back, care-free lifestyle where he spent his days roaming and playing with Ace to now worrying about how to interact with his peers was... needless to say, jarring, but he still tried to put forth his best effort.

    ❝ Heck, I'm sorry but I don't think I'm getting it, Mom... Do I really need to pay attention to all this stuff to get others to like me? ❞

“Lord Ryoma has better things to do then deal with likes of you.” 

Harsh, but was Saizo ever anything else? Lord Ryoma had important business to attend to with the other royals. Or at least that’s what he was going to tell her. He had noticed her trying to warm up to his liege and Saizo wasn’t going to allow a strange woman into his liege’s love life.  What if she had some ulterior motive? 

Saizo had to protect his liege from any potential threat. 

headcanon hour(s)

en referendum: the state of plegia

plegia, long before it was in its current state, was a collection of smaller countries that, while highly interlinked by trade and a need to survive in the desert, stood on their own on the map. Invading a desert is just hard, so they don’t really have much of a need to band together. eventually, oversea and threats from the growing Ylisse and Regna Ferox caused them to unify into one country, but there are still very obvious cultural divides, across the country, even after like, a thousand years or so.

en referendum: part two.

    An understatement, really, but to express as much would be to ruin one moment of brilliant, searing honesty. Shoulder-to-shoulder, affected sweetness forgone in Charlotte’s voice for something lower, something with more bite to it– only to parse the incredulous story, as she feels the gravity of Rajya’s words sink deep into her bones.

    “…I mean, it’s a lot to take in.” Tempering her blunt tongue takes a certain amount of wits and vigilance, the type cast aside in the face of such an unusual tale. But there is sincerity and a weight to every detail; she knows liars and Rajya is far, far from one in the moment. “A lot.”

    The only comfort she brings is through a thin mask, but she tries, knows one pointed word can draw blood and drive chasms between them– and she’s done that once before.

    Not again, not by her own power.

    “…But I believe you. You… wouldn’t go about and lie about all this, and you definitely wouldn’t be foolish enough to do it to my face.”

    A prolonged moment of silence– uncomfortable, and she fidgets in her seat before resting a hesitant hand on Rajya’s shoulder.

    “So what happened next? When you woke up, and saw this… Prince Chrom fellow?”

     “ That’s... a sore subject.”

    She’d call it manipulation, roping her into a conflict that is not hers, turning her against her people, but she wouldn’t call it that malevolent, or that intentional. They did not think, and she had no capacity for agency, with no memories and all the lessons she knows now having been vacant. If she could go back - she knows, she would have been more careful. Would have ran the other way, until she could find someone like her. 

     But, she shrugs, as if her previous statement had been naught but hyperbole. “ I helped them protect a town from bandits, and I traveled with them, hoping for my memory to come back. It was... not the best time, I’ll admit. ” She leaves it there. 

    Hopefully, and hope is all she’s good for, Charlotte will believe that Rajya only refers to being amnesiac as not the best, not the war itself, the fighting and the sudden realization that she is a refugee, fighting for the wrong side of the war. Dethroning Gangrel was all well and good, but she could have done it without being against her home. 

     “ Then we went all over the place. I don’t think there wasn’t a little hamlet or village that we didn’t visit and try to fix its problems. Mostly successfully, might I add. ” Perhaps her one good feat. “ Rescued a farm boy, recruited him too. Chrom was -- too generous, might I say, with who he gave army positions to, and I was just the one who did all the actual battlefield managing. ”

  “Charlotte?” Leon asked, curiosity clear on his face. “Why is it that you appear to be a completely different person on the battlefield than you are off of it? Could it be that you don’t realize how capable you are?”

fill in the blank @ofthelace

     “ W-Well... ”

     If Charlotte’s intention was to throw her off, or somehow make her lower her guard, she had succeeded with aplomb. Rajya certainly wasn’t shy about her past, but somehow, discussing her old flames, some of which she still considers good friends, with her frightened her, just a bit. But, after taking a second to consider the question, Rajya breathes in, and calms herself. “ Well, of course, I have. ” 

    “ I mean, I was a little girl once. I had plenty of crushes back when life was a bit simpler. And a few once I got older, there were quite a lot of pretty women, and men, in the army. But -- like this? ” Another pause, as if the answer is somehow unclear. What is this? A serious, dedicated relationship? Or does she mean something else? Something less permanent? A spring fling? 

     She almost feels like asking, what did Charlotte consider them to be? Rajya could always hope for the best, and describe her one comparable experience ( if Charlotte says, no, we’re nothing like that, then Rajya will simply shrug. you asked. ) She tries her best to recall, but details of an autumn — and winter and spring and summer and autumn all over again — romance are hazy, even if she can remember the exact feeling of satin under her finger tips and the moment they decided, maybe this won’t work. 

     “ It was during my time in the Shepherds. This one girl, Tharja and I, well, we dated for a while. Bunch of dates. A year or so, maybe? But time just, went on and we figured out our personal ways of living just didn’t work together, and we broke it off. No bad blood or anything. Guess I’m lucky. ” She purses her lips, thinking. Strange things for her to mention, “ Tharja went on and married someone else in the army, and me -- well, I was resident bachelorette, really. Someone even accused me of being a spinster. ” Always an odd word -- a Ylissean one, with no real Plegian equivalent. Hard for her to grasp, sometimes.