A Dream of Wings
By: Amber Michelle
For: measuringlife
Prompt: Pelleas/Micaiah
Words: 2192

Notes: inspired by the themes "never mine" at 30_breathtakes and "making love in the temple" from this month's 31_days set. The correlation isn't immediately obvious, at least for the second one.

Strangely, I have this image of Micaiah wearing rabbit slippers. They'd be from Pelleas, of course, because they're tasteless but still somewhat functional, and look rather like something Volug should want to eat.

I don't know where that came from.



.................................................................


Pelleas slept easier once the heron prince and his queen departed - once the palace was theirs, and the coronation had taken place. For a few days, the strain of his new position didn't touch him. He sat on the throne in the morning to hear reports on the state of the city instead of a camp, and listened to domestic grievances instead of supply reports, though it was just as hard not to fall asleep. Izuka advised him, and his mother seemed aware of how he should respond, though she cared little for the matters brought to his attention; matters ran smoothly without his input, and his eyes often turned to the windows of the throne room and the sunlight beyond, the birdsong. It shined silver through the glass, limning cloaks and hair and faces with white light.

She was outside somewhere - talking to people, lighting their days. He wished she would come to his audiences and lend her grace to the proceedings. When the Silver-Haired Maiden spoke, she would be met with smiles and compliance. Her hair would shine like a halo and her presence would adorn the hall like the careful painting of an illuminated manuscript, robed in red and purple, her outlines strong and black.

It took him weeks to realize what it was about the heron prince that bothered him when they shared a room. The wings, he'd thought-- the wings are huge, they take up so much space, it's no wonder he fills the room with his golden presence. In sunlight they glowed like snow. His hair was spun gold and Pelleas once wanted to touch it, not because it was beautiful - though it was - but because when he sang it became white light, and reminded him of another's hair, silver thread he wanted to run through his fingers.

Micaiah didn't gleam like a jewel when she sang, but the sun caught in her hair and made up for it. He heard her humming one afternoon when he passed the back gardens on his way to the library, two books under his arm and a cloak thrown over his shoulder. The rains had passed, but more coiled on the horizon, and the air was chill and moist. The soil lay dormant and bare, still wet. Mud smeared her arms to her elbows and a basket sat on the ground where she knelt, packed with small burlhap pouches of seeds and bulbs. A tin water can sat on the flagstones at the edge, and she knocked it with her feet when she inched back. What will you do with all of this? he asked when she told him what she wanted. Planting season is short in Daein, Micaiah said, and if you want to begin your reign by showering us with gifts, let them be gifts that will brighten the city.

How long since Nevassa saw a profusion of summer flowers? How long since color painted the drab stone of the capitol?

Never, his mother said. Flowers were of no use to Ashnard. They were of no use to Pelleas either, or the townspeople, or the army, but if every gift he gave Micaiah was functional - weapons, boots, supplies - the items meant nothing.

She was more than a general, more than a symbol. She spread the wings of her dreams over Daein and brought the country to life, but she was also a girl who shuddered from the cold as soon as the sun went down and hid her feet in fur-lined slippers too large for her.

Pelleas watched her scrape dirt over the bulb she planted with an iron spade. Flat mounds of dirt dotted the flowerbed in uneven rows, arranged in squares of nine holes. Her hair slid over her shoulder when she pressed the dirt down with her hands. The folk song she hummed was familiar, but he didn't know the words, and he'd learned not to sing such 'common' songs when his mother might be in hearing range.

"Do you need me for something?" Micaiah straightened and rubbed her hands. Mud cracked, rolled, and fell, fragments of darkness. "I'm almost done."

How did she know he was there? He knew how to walk quietly. It was a hard-earned skill, honed by many failures that resulted in bruises and damaged books, and once a black eye. "No." He left the shadow of the columned walk and wove his way between the flower beds to reach her. His boots were tailored to be silent. "Aren't you cold?"

She looked up, blew a strand of hair from her eyes. It glinted like metal. "Not after all this," she said, sweeping her hand over the soil. "The gardeners said nothing will grow here, but there'll be sprouts before summer. They maintain gardens year-round in Begnion. I'm sure we can do it here."

"I believe you." Pelleas adjusted the books under his arm, starting to offer his help when she stood up, but he pulled his hand back when he brushed her sleeve and clenched it into a fist beneath his cloak. She didn't need his help, didn't even notice he'd tried. Just as well. He wouldn't want to lean on someone shaking like a cornered rabbit. "Your voice will inspire them to grow."

Micaiah wiped mud from her knees and smiled. "I wish that were true."

Heat flared in his cheeks, spread down to his collar, and his throat closed around the words. "I didn't mean--" Pelleas cleared his throat, shifted his grip on the books and nearly dropped them in the mud. Idiot. Of course she knew he was speaking figuratively. And the way her smile widened, she knew exactly what he was thinking. "Rafiel," he said, looking away, at the brick wall. "It reminded me of him, and it just, I thought..."

"Do you feel more comfortable with laguz now?"

His eyes glazed, the wall blurred, and then he found himself looking at her again without meaning to. "Well I-- I wasn't exactly..." Pelleas rubbed his forehead. His neck still felt hot. "There's so much poetry about them - about herons. Now I understand why."

"Really?" Micaiah bent and wedged the spade into the basket. Her scarf dragged over the soil, the fringe coming up muddy when she stood upright again. "That's unusual for Daein. What have you read?"

"A collection of verses written during the iconoclastic period here in Daein," he said. "They burned most of his books, but there's a collection in the library here." Her brows shot up, and she rubbed her hands, absent-minded, blinking up at him. Silver hair, eyes of gold, she was an image straight from poetry. Heretical poetry.

Pelleas knew what that mark on her hand meant. It wasn't like his. Spirit vessels didn't use magic like hers - they couldn't. He'd tried. His hands still stung when he thought about it hard enough.

Wasn't his Maiden the ultimate blasphemy made flesh?

She tilted her head aside, and Pelleas stammered, pulling his books from under his cloak, rifling the corners of the pages. It wasn't the book he wanted, but he had to say something else, if he couldn't read then he could talk-- "Gerent from Talrega," he finally managed, when Micaiah was just opening her mouth - probably to tell him she had to go. "He fell in love with a heron maiden. All of his poetry is about her moonlight hair and wings of dreams, but nobody has ever done a study on what he meant by that because he was sentenced to death for owning an icon of the goddess and defacing it with the addition of-- um."

Micaiah hugged her arms to her chest. "Go on."

Pelleas bit the inside of his cheek. The sun was steadily sinking, already behind the high walls of the keep, and shade had overtaken the garden. "That isn't really important." He fumbled at the clasp of his cloak with one hand for a full three seconds before he realized it wasn't locked closed and pulled it over his shoulder. The hem dragged on the ground when he offered it to her. "We should go inside."

She said it wasn't necessary, but he held the cloak in front of her until she took it - talking wouldn't help, he'd just convince her he was a dolt - and while she pulled it on and fiddled with the clasp, Pelleas laid his books atop the seeds in her basket and picked it up. The watering can could wait or rust, it didn't matter to him. Tin was cheap, even in Daein. Even for him.

Micaiah looked like a child in his cloak. The collar was too wide, too tall, even folded down. She gathered the folds over her arms to hold the hem above the ground, but it gathered bits of dried leaves on the walk, and dust once they passed beneath the eaves and into the corridor. She tried to apologize, and he wouldn't let her finish. He had other cloaks; in fact, he had too many. What difference did it make if he wore the same one twice, or if he decided to wear blue at the beginning of the week instead of gray, or white? Did it matter if it had a silver clasp or gold?

He preferred silver, but it wasn't the value of the metal that attracted him. It reminded him of moonlight, snow, and the first time he met her.

"So... he was sentenced to death for defacing an icon, even though the king despised images?"

"What?" Pelleas looked down at the top of her head and tripped on an uneven tile. He caught himself, hand pressed to the wall, and pushed away before Micaiah could ask if he was okay. "He... Gerent? He was stoned for blaspheming the goddess."

"But they burned his books for it. How sad." She took the basket once they were inside, swinging it over to her other hand before he could grab his books. "What did he say about her?"

Pelleas listened to the clip of their steps echo in the corridor. The crisp rain scent of the garden was replaced with oiled metal and pitch, and kerosene. The doors here were locked, mostly closets of equipment and storage. Iron-bound double doors at the end of the hall led to the dungeons, which he'd ordered closed at Micaiah's insistence, though Izuka brought it up every day. It's wasted space, he said. Who was king here - the maiden, or was it Pelleas, who must learn to resist her charm?

He quoted the passages he remembered exactly, everything he could recall that did not mention silvery hair or gold eyes - your song, soaring on heaven's wings - your love, like glass. What was it like to love something that would outlive you, someone who would live on to find others? A heron never loved but also left. Pelleas still felt the distance between Rafiel and himself, a product of Izuka's long stares, Pelleas's Daein upbringing, and the prince's reserve. But did he ever share his own thoughts? The heron listened to others and never spoke of himself.

Micaiah's story was as much a mystery on this day as it was when they met. She flitted from friend to friend like a butterfly, visiting acquaintances and speaking with the men under her command, but never stayed. Sothe clung to her arm as if he expected her to disappear.

Sothe was at the end of the hall, coming their way. Micaiah waved, and Pelleas didn't sigh, though he doubted she would notice once they caught up to her so-called brother.

He ducked around her when they met Sothe, grabbed his books, told her to keep his cloak - the servants would return it to him eventually, and she was still hunching beneath the heavy fabric and holding it tightly closed. Pelleas turned his back on them with a nod to the other boy.

Three steps away, Micaiah stopped him. "About that poet--" He paused and looked over his shoulder. The heavy silk slithered over her arms. "What is his collection called?"

Pelleas looked down at the books in his hands: spirit-channeling and the philosophy of magic. Dull reading, even when he'd dedicated his life to learning the craft. "I have it," he said, curling his fingers around the binding. "Tomorrow, if you come by-- I'll keep it for you."

He expected her to put him off, but her mouth curved, and for once her smile was directed to him alone. "Deal."



.....................................................................

Yeah, so, trying Pelleas's POV was a bad decision, but it's done?