#tam.ask

so uh. swordcrossed is a fantasy romance novel set in a port-side city called glassport. it's vaguely historical, there are other towns and cities and politics and such at play, but none of that matters. the main thrust of the book is that mattinesh jay, the heir to a wool and textiles house, is engaged to sofia cooper, the youngest child of an up and coming house that works in wines and liquors.

matti needs to marry sofia because her family has money that can save his from collapsing entirely. sofia needs to marry matti because his family name carries respect and historical value, as his house is much more established than hers.

the book itself is about mattinesh (matti) and luca piere and their time together as matti attempts to 1) save his family from financial ruin 2) marry himself off 3) actually ruin his own wedding instead. it's a great time! i thoroughly enjoyed it! that being said, i think sofia cooper, as the other side to matti's coin, is INCREDIBLY compelling and i wanted to see SO much more of her than we got to. hence, the fic.

(side note: the jay family, as a house devoted to wool and textiles, follows the rites and rituals of the goddess huna. she oversees such things. the cooper family, working in alcohol, worships maha, the god of wine and agriculture. that's not super important beyond fun worldbuilding, but if you're wondering why those names pop up in the fic, that's why!)

sofia is rumored to be in love with another man, adrean vane. he's a songwriter, and he wrote a song about her that went the ye-olden equivalent of viral called "wildflower under the glass," so everyone -- matti and his family included -- is pretty sure she loves and actually wants to marry adrean, and this whole marriage is against her wishes. (it is not. she fucking hates adrean. he's a tool.)

sofia's story, as far as i've been able to deduce from the book, is: she knew she had to marry someone for her family's sake. she had this guy hanging around who was harassing and, essentially, all but stalking her, and he managed to convince the entire town that they were secretly in love this entire time.

she never, at any point, had the ability to control either her narrative or her future. any opportunity to do so -- whether through falling in love with someone else, pursuing a career that interested her, or literally just telling a guy to fuck off -- was cut off at the pass by needing to remain desirable marriage material. she could do that, and she did it, and it wasn't great for her but she's very stubborn and determined. as long as matti knows where she stands, and as long as she knows where he stands, the two of them can make this damn thing work.

(and then matti goes and falls in love with someone else, and starts sleeping with him while sofia is planning their goddamn wedding, which. man. that one sucks, matti, i have to say. you could've handled the whole thing better.)

anyway. mayanesh is matti's younger sister. she's pretty commonly referred to as the "rose oil" in any situation, because she's great at smoothing ruffled feathers and making people feel comfortable and welcome. matti loves her! they're two years apart, they look very similar, and maya is one of the only people matti actually confides in about anything he's thinking or feeling. which means she is one of the first people to know both that he is not happy about the impending marriage AND that he's falling for someone else.

as the person who is universally recognized as The One Who Makes Everyone Happy, she sees that her brother isn't going to put his whole heart into marrying this beautiful girl. so she goes about helping sofia to plan the wedding instead. it's taking something off matti's very full plate, it's making sofia feel supported and welcomed to the family, win-win!

it is very clear from quite early on that it's not... completely winning, though, because no matter how it shakes out, maya loses. if the wedding is called off, her family enters financial ruin; if it goes ahead, the woman she loves marries someone else. her brother, no less, so they'll be living under the same roof with no way to actually develop the relationship the way she wants. poor girl.

there's another layer here, too, which is that maya quickly becomes a confidant for sofia, as well. so she not only knows that sofia isn't entirely happy with this marriage, she knows that sofia has never had the chance to pick the things that would make her happy. whatever happens to sofia, it's always something she is tied up in, rather than something she wants. so obviously maya isn't going to run up to her and say, "well, i have feelings for you too, so there!" because sofia wouldn't want another person forcing her into the role of the love interest.

except that sofia already knows that she loves maya, and that she can't marry maya, and is so caught up in all the other shit that she has very little idea that maya feels the same way. i don't blame her; she has an obsessive creep following her around AND an unfaithful fiance. one crisis at a time, ykwim?

you might be asking, what does maya get out of this? great q. the book doesn't tell us that much. sofia is beautiful, sure, and sofia is from a wealthy family, and she is smart and she is capable. great. but why does she fit so well with maya?

this is all conjecture. but. i personally think it would be pretty difficult to be the one who is not the heir to the house, whose opinion isn't often consulted, and whose job is primarily to "make everyone happy." that's a ROUGH lot in life. and one of the things we get to see from sofia is that she listens. she asks questions and she learns.

she does pick up the hand signals from maya, and she appreciates maya's skills in planning, attitude management and design. she appreciates maya's knowledge, her creativity, her kindness. after her entire life spent being the one who exists to make other people feel good about themselves, it's probably pretty damn nice to have someone look at you and admire things no one else has even seen before.

anyway. the fic is canon compliant, in so much as it can be. when the wedding comes around, adrean vane challenges for sofia's hand and loses. then, at luca's urging, maya challenges for sofia's hand and. wins!

after some quick clarification, it is confirmed that maya isn't just challenging the marriage to keep it from going forward. she does, in fact, want to take her brother's place. sofia is elated about this, her parents approve, jay house still welcomes her and matti is free to be with someone he actually loves -- and so is sofia! thank fucking god, am i right.

i definitely had to flesh out a lot of sofia's relationships with her own family members, and i had to figure out her dynamic in the day-to-day with maya a little bit more. but the general broad strokes, and the idea behind them falling in love, for me, is that sofia finally found someone who respected her boundaries AND loved her enough to make her happy, no matter what that looked like. and maya found someone who saw her and listened to her and appreciated her, and would give back anything she gave in equal measure. and that's pretty cool.

The sunflower she'd scrambled up onto swayed, lightly, in the breeze. Bees the size of a house floated overhead with small figures on their backs. Wood elves, Ashe assumed; the thought made her smile.

She hadn't seen so many gathered in one place since leaving home. Even then, it was frowned upon. Too many of them in one place ran the risk of drawing attention, of bringing trouble. They'd mostly hid out in their little tunnels, the holes between roots of towering redwoods.

A shrill whistle startles Ashe out of her reverie. She jumps, setting the flower she rests on to swaying. In a breath, in a blink, she's leaning over the edge with an arrow notched and pointed downward, already glaring.

But no; there's no threat. Only Balgar, standing with one hand held over his eyes and a pair of shears in one hand.

"Steady, friend," he calls. "I call truce. I wanted to help with the, ah..."

He trails off, gesturing to the towering flower stalks around him. The rest of the sentence goes unsaid, but Ashe catches his meaning anyway. She lets her bow rest and drops the arrow back into her quiver, then flips down to wrap her arms around the stalk of her sunflower.

The ride down makes her laugh despite herself, squinting at the fast-approaching ground. She nearly falls, but a hand at her back holds her steady.

"Oh!" Ashe exclaims, turning to face her second visitor.

She'd failed to notice Nova, somehow. Unusual; he rarely managed to keep himself quiet even when they needed stealth. But he's quieter now, at least, only clearing his throat when she raises an eyebrow at him.

"Ah, yes. Well... I thought it might provide some helpful insight into the local magics, to study what you've learned," he offers, looking a little sheepish and a lottish disgruntled.

Ashe sighs. "You won't be able to do it yourself. It isn't proper magic like yours. But you can watch, I guess."

Nova nods at that, apparently willing to follow instructions. Ashe bites her tongue to keep from a snappish remark; it won't help anyone if she spends her time riling him up. So she takes the shears from Balgar's hands and sets, instead, to snipping the buds of tulips from the ground beneath their feet.

"This won't be as potent as the formal valar," Ashe offers, piling the flowers into Nova's empty hands. "You have to wait for the flowers to reach their full size for that. But this is just for practice, and you don't need the real enchantments, anyway."

Balgar blinks at Nova, and then back to her. "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression you weren't a magical lady."

It takes a lot of restraint for Ashe to bite back the angry retort that sits, barbed and pointed, on her tongue. She flaps a hand at Balgar instead.

"Give me your helmet. Come on, before the flowers wilt."

He does as he's told, at least, which is nice. The only reason he doesn't ask questions, Ashe suspects, is because he's too baffled to know where to start. She takes his helmet and flips it upside down, rests it in the damp grass. Then she pulls the tulips from Nova's hands and sets the bulbs inside.

Ashe leans to pick up a rock from the ground, with a few sprigs of the golden baby's breath stems that hide among the blades of grass. She smashes the flowers together as thoroughly as she can without denting the helmet, until the tulip petals are nothing but smudges of color on the metal, until the baby's breath starts to leak the shimmering metallic ichor that gives the ink its distinctive color.

Then she gestures for Balgar and Nova to sit down in front of where she crouches. To her surprise, they both do; they don't even question it.

It's nice to be the one who knows things, for once, Ashe decides. Then she sticks her fingers into the gold pigment she's created and starts to draw in big, looping movements across Balgar's bare palm.

"What kind of boon am I getting?" he asks. "Luck? Dexterity?"

Ashe shakes her head. She realizes, belatedly, that her tongue is poking through her teeth, and she tucks it away. "I'm not that good at it yet. This is just to help with exhaustion and hunger."

It had been the first one she'd learned. It's simple, repetitive: a series of overlapping circles, enough of them that it almost starts to look like vines on his skin.

"Hmph," Balgar says. "I'd like to still be able to eat my dinner, though."

"Do whatever you want," Ashe says. "It'll fade if you wash it off."

Balgar nods, satisfied. When she's done with his hand, Ashe turns to Nova expectantly. He doesn't hold out a hand right away; she has to offer her own, first, and only then does he lay his fingers over hers.

She sets to work on a much bigger piece, this time. It's a more intricate pattern, stretching from his wrist to his elbow. She has to concentrate all her energy into it, trying to remember what she'd seen one of the other elves do just this morning.

Nova watches her intently, his brow creased. "What does this one do?" he asks. His hand, clearly itching for a pencil, twitches against Ashe's thigh.

"Nullifies arcane energies," Ashe says, grinning with one half of her mouth. "Good luck casting any spells for the next twelve hours. This one doesn't wash."