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zg_shadows2008-08-06 03:23 pm
annwfyn.livejournal.com) wrote in zg_shadows2008-08-06 03:23 pm
Entry tags:
Tales of a very conservative kind of honour...
Ripples
The house was a mess. The painting that Pietro's grandfather had claimed was a Vermeer had almost been torn in two and its frame was in splinters. One leg of the ornate baroque sofa had been embedded in the ceiling and the stuffing covered the room like a snowfall. Pietro's laptop, where he had carefully written the first draft of his latest book (which wouldn't bring him much money, for ornithology never did, but had brought him a great deal of pleasure to write) was a small metallic pancake, embedded in the ruined eighteenth century plaster. Most painfully of all, the framed photograph of his mother, the last one taken before she died, was missing. The frame could just be seen, crushed into a tiny gilt ball, but the picture was gone.
Pietro stood in silence for a single shocked second, a bemused and gangly looking figure, in a worn shirt and trousers. He took off his glasses and then put them on again. He always did that when he was nervous.
In the centre of the room a slim redhead sat crouched, with her head pressed against her knees. She was shivering and her breath came in short ragged gasps, her ribs constricting and expanding like a bellows.
"Oh, Katerina..." he said, and then "darling..."
She didn't respond to her name. She didn't move at the endearment but that was when Pietro saw the first tears beginning to fall, and he knew that the frenzy was over.
He took a few steps towards Katerina, before kneeling beside her. She stiffened slightly at his touch when he tried to hold her.
"Please..." he said, and stopped, unsure what he was asking for from his fierce, vulnerable wife. Maybe he wanted her to talk. maybe he just wanted her to stop hurting. He kissed her hair very gently, and tried to hold her again. This time she let him touch her, and that was when her tears began in earnest.
"What has happened, my darling?" he said, and felt her shiver again in his arms. "My poor darling Katerina..."
"It's Bianca," Katerina said, in a trembling voice. "She's destroyed us all..."
********************************
"Apparently he had Scandal called in a Child of Gaia Sept in France," Antonio said. "He admitted to breach of territory, and the spirits received the songs of his dishonour."
Fights the Darkness, Elder of the Silver Fangs, bowed his head in grave acknowledgment of the kinfolk's words.
"The philodox presiding over this Scandal did not, however," Antonio continued "demand that any reparation or recompense be made. Or, in other words, the creature 'Shadow' was allowed to leave after the Scandal, with Bianca."
Fights the Darkness' expression did not change, but there was an unpleasant splintering noise as the arm of the chair he was sitting in disintegrated.
No one said anything for a moment. Antonio Faliero stared at the floor, his hands flexing involuntarily. His wife, Silver Dreams Dying, stayed hunched on the sofa, her arms wrapped around herself protectively.
Finally the Silver Fang Elder looked at his daughter.
"I will not let this lie, Renata," he said. "Bianca is my granddaughter. She is my flesh, my blood, as much as yours. We will find out whether she went willingly with this albino. If she did not..."
The woman on the sofa snarled, her upper lip curling upwards.
"If she did not..." she hissed, in a dark echo of her father's words.
He nodded and both fell silent for a moment.
"And if she did," Fights The Darkness continued, "then we will resolve this matter, none the less. Her honour is my honour, and I will not see our family name destroyed."
He glanced up at Antonio.
"Your older daughter..?" he asked, leaving most of the question unsaid. He did not need to say it.
Antonio nodded.
"She has been informed," he said. His face did not betray any of the emotions he felt. Writing that letter to Bianca's explosive half sister had been one of the hardest things he had ever had to do.
"The one I spoke to in London...those who have her...would not even tell me why they took her," Renata said, her face constricting in anger and grief. "My own daughter, and this Sept of dogs will not even explain why they have taken her from us."
Fights the Darkness bowed his patrician head.
"Oh," he said. "They will tell us. Believe me. They will..."
********************************
The Sept of the Golden Lagoon had been a generally quiet place since Bianca Faliero's disappearance. It had the uncomfortable feeling of a hot summer day before a storm. Bianca's husband, handsome young Eagle's Glory, had said little on the matter. He was just a fostern, six years younger than the woman he had been married to, and seemed utterly lost in this situation which was now mostly being discussed by the Sept Elders, far above his head.
The situation was just entirely new to the vast majority of the Garou of the Sept. Kinfolk didn't run away. They didn't vanish. Especially not Silver Fang kin. The Eldest Galliard of the Sept, the cold eyed San Marco's Song (who was normally called San Marco) said that the last incident of bride stealing in Venice had happened in 1802, when a French Silver Fang had taken a fancy to the beautiful Cassandra Quirini. In those proud days, every adult Garou in the Sept had set off in pursuit, willing to die rather than let a Venetian Silver Fang be despoiled by a foreign invader. When they found that the kinfolk's virginity was no longer intact, she and her lover had both been executed on the spot.
But the world had changed since then. Bianca's own uncle, Riccardo Faliero, was currently living in Edinburgh with the two pups he had gotten on a Garou of House Austere Howl, one of which had gone through the first change. The wife was now dead, but she had been received politely in the Sept, for all her relatively humble British origins. Even more radically, a cousin from a cadet branch of the family had married a Glasswalker from Pisa four years ago, and one young kinfolk girl from the Orseolo family had managed to persuade her parents to 'arrange' a marriage for her with a fairly pretty young French boy of kinfolk stock.
Still, there was a difference between an ill advised marriage with a man or woman, of garou blood, and ideally some rank (if not good breeding) and...this. No one in the Sept had ever thought that one of their precious kinfolk would ever consider fleeing Venice with a creature they barely classed as deserving of oxygen.
********************************
Beneath a star drenched sky, Katerina Faliero, sat with her chin propped on her knees. The terrifying frenzy that had run through her earlier had subsided, but still, she felt it safer to leave her three year old daughter with Pietro for the evening whilst she cleared her brain out.
First, she thought of Bianca, her spoilt, beautiful, occasionally petulent half sister. The two sisters were only a year apart in age, and so they had been close once. Then Katerina had gone through First Change when she was seventeen and her father had arranged her marriage when she was eighteen. He had found the last scion of an impoverished house in the mountains of northern Italy and she had been sent there after meeting Pietro once.
It had been difficult at first, miles away from everything she knew, angry at the world, but Pietro - her husband - had been nothing like any man she had known before. And one morning she had realized that she loved him, and he loved her. On that day her life had begun anew, and she had left her past behind.
That meant she had seen little of Bianca over the past six years. She knew that the first husband that Bianca had been promised to - a charmingly boyish theurge from Turin - had died before they could be wed, and since then attempts to marry her had stalled. She suspected Bianca was not overly keen on the idea of marriage, and even less keen on leaving Venice for some wilderness where she could cling to nothing she knew. That had made it even more difficult to find an appropriate mate.
That a mate had to be found was not something that Katerina had ever particularly questioned. It was the traditional way. The old, pure lines grew a little smaller every year. Eagar young cliath charged into battle, seeking glory and finding only death, before they had ever known the comfort of a lover's touch, or been able to bring forth heirs and successors. And so bloodlines which had lasted a thousand years died out, and their stories were forgotten.
Therefore, those that could mate, did their duty to their blood as soon as they could. In an uncertain world, you had to. It was just the way it was. And furthermore, you were expected to not just do your duty, but to act in a manner which upheld the family honour and reputation as a mate to whosoever your family chose for you. Because in the world of the Italian Silver Fangs, in a land where the greatest families still told tales of the battles of the Senate, where the Fangs fought the leeches that subverted the Republic and brought about the decadent Empire, these things mattered.
Katerina sighed, her thoughts dragged inexorably onwards. If honour and reputation mattered, then what did Bianca's public betrayal and humiliation of her husband and family mean?
In the short term, Katerina's stepmother had already forfeited her Elder challenge. How would one inspire honour and loyalty in the lesser ranks of the Nation if one could not inspire it in one's own daughter. Katerina suspected she would also be unwise to attempt a rank challenge in the near future.
In general, those hardest hit would be the four kinfolk girls of marriagable age who were attached to the Sept of the Golden Lagoon. Katgerina remembered that one of them, a pretty nineteen year old, had recently become engaged. She and her fiance seemed very much in love, and it was an arranged marriage in name only. His family were known to be arch-conservatives and even if the Bianca situation was resolved, Katerina doubted that the engagement would survive. The boys would suffer too, but not in quite the same way as Carissa, or Elena, or May, or Lori.
The whole Sept would suffer when it came to dealing with other Septs. The cliath and fostern would be mocked. The adren, athro and Elders would be treated with cool courtesy. And Katerina's own Sept, high in the north, would be viewed with some pity that their Sept Alpha's only son and heir should be married to the sister of such a treacherous whore as Bianca would be seen as.
Further into the future, if the situation were not resolved, it would affect Marcella...
Katerina felt her heart seize up. She loved Marcella. She loved her daughter more than anything and the the thought of her precious child being tainted, cast out of her own tribe for reasons which were not her fault...
Katerina forced air back into her lungs.
Why had Bianca done this? What could possibly have compelled her to do this to her family, to everyone she knew? What had happened to her? And how on earth could this be resolved?
The house was a mess. The painting that Pietro's grandfather had claimed was a Vermeer had almost been torn in two and its frame was in splinters. One leg of the ornate baroque sofa had been embedded in the ceiling and the stuffing covered the room like a snowfall. Pietro's laptop, where he had carefully written the first draft of his latest book (which wouldn't bring him much money, for ornithology never did, but had brought him a great deal of pleasure to write) was a small metallic pancake, embedded in the ruined eighteenth century plaster. Most painfully of all, the framed photograph of his mother, the last one taken before she died, was missing. The frame could just be seen, crushed into a tiny gilt ball, but the picture was gone.
Pietro stood in silence for a single shocked second, a bemused and gangly looking figure, in a worn shirt and trousers. He took off his glasses and then put them on again. He always did that when he was nervous.
In the centre of the room a slim redhead sat crouched, with her head pressed against her knees. She was shivering and her breath came in short ragged gasps, her ribs constricting and expanding like a bellows.
"Oh, Katerina..." he said, and then "darling..."
She didn't respond to her name. She didn't move at the endearment but that was when Pietro saw the first tears beginning to fall, and he knew that the frenzy was over.
He took a few steps towards Katerina, before kneeling beside her. She stiffened slightly at his touch when he tried to hold her.
"Please..." he said, and stopped, unsure what he was asking for from his fierce, vulnerable wife. Maybe he wanted her to talk. maybe he just wanted her to stop hurting. He kissed her hair very gently, and tried to hold her again. This time she let him touch her, and that was when her tears began in earnest.
"What has happened, my darling?" he said, and felt her shiver again in his arms. "My poor darling Katerina..."
"It's Bianca," Katerina said, in a trembling voice. "She's destroyed us all..."
"Apparently he had Scandal called in a Child of Gaia Sept in France," Antonio said. "He admitted to breach of territory, and the spirits received the songs of his dishonour."
Fights the Darkness, Elder of the Silver Fangs, bowed his head in grave acknowledgment of the kinfolk's words.
"The philodox presiding over this Scandal did not, however," Antonio continued "demand that any reparation or recompense be made. Or, in other words, the creature 'Shadow' was allowed to leave after the Scandal, with Bianca."
Fights the Darkness' expression did not change, but there was an unpleasant splintering noise as the arm of the chair he was sitting in disintegrated.
No one said anything for a moment. Antonio Faliero stared at the floor, his hands flexing involuntarily. His wife, Silver Dreams Dying, stayed hunched on the sofa, her arms wrapped around herself protectively.
Finally the Silver Fang Elder looked at his daughter.
"I will not let this lie, Renata," he said. "Bianca is my granddaughter. She is my flesh, my blood, as much as yours. We will find out whether she went willingly with this albino. If she did not..."
The woman on the sofa snarled, her upper lip curling upwards.
"If she did not..." she hissed, in a dark echo of her father's words.
He nodded and both fell silent for a moment.
"And if she did," Fights The Darkness continued, "then we will resolve this matter, none the less. Her honour is my honour, and I will not see our family name destroyed."
He glanced up at Antonio.
"Your older daughter..?" he asked, leaving most of the question unsaid. He did not need to say it.
Antonio nodded.
"She has been informed," he said. His face did not betray any of the emotions he felt. Writing that letter to Bianca's explosive half sister had been one of the hardest things he had ever had to do.
"The one I spoke to in London...those who have her...would not even tell me why they took her," Renata said, her face constricting in anger and grief. "My own daughter, and this Sept of dogs will not even explain why they have taken her from us."
Fights the Darkness bowed his patrician head.
"Oh," he said. "They will tell us. Believe me. They will..."
The Sept of the Golden Lagoon had been a generally quiet place since Bianca Faliero's disappearance. It had the uncomfortable feeling of a hot summer day before a storm. Bianca's husband, handsome young Eagle's Glory, had said little on the matter. He was just a fostern, six years younger than the woman he had been married to, and seemed utterly lost in this situation which was now mostly being discussed by the Sept Elders, far above his head.
The situation was just entirely new to the vast majority of the Garou of the Sept. Kinfolk didn't run away. They didn't vanish. Especially not Silver Fang kin. The Eldest Galliard of the Sept, the cold eyed San Marco's Song (who was normally called San Marco) said that the last incident of bride stealing in Venice had happened in 1802, when a French Silver Fang had taken a fancy to the beautiful Cassandra Quirini. In those proud days, every adult Garou in the Sept had set off in pursuit, willing to die rather than let a Venetian Silver Fang be despoiled by a foreign invader. When they found that the kinfolk's virginity was no longer intact, she and her lover had both been executed on the spot.
But the world had changed since then. Bianca's own uncle, Riccardo Faliero, was currently living in Edinburgh with the two pups he had gotten on a Garou of House Austere Howl, one of which had gone through the first change. The wife was now dead, but she had been received politely in the Sept, for all her relatively humble British origins. Even more radically, a cousin from a cadet branch of the family had married a Glasswalker from Pisa four years ago, and one young kinfolk girl from the Orseolo family had managed to persuade her parents to 'arrange' a marriage for her with a fairly pretty young French boy of kinfolk stock.
Still, there was a difference between an ill advised marriage with a man or woman, of garou blood, and ideally some rank (if not good breeding) and...this. No one in the Sept had ever thought that one of their precious kinfolk would ever consider fleeing Venice with a creature they barely classed as deserving of oxygen.
Beneath a star drenched sky, Katerina Faliero, sat with her chin propped on her knees. The terrifying frenzy that had run through her earlier had subsided, but still, she felt it safer to leave her three year old daughter with Pietro for the evening whilst she cleared her brain out.
First, she thought of Bianca, her spoilt, beautiful, occasionally petulent half sister. The two sisters were only a year apart in age, and so they had been close once. Then Katerina had gone through First Change when she was seventeen and her father had arranged her marriage when she was eighteen. He had found the last scion of an impoverished house in the mountains of northern Italy and she had been sent there after meeting Pietro once.
It had been difficult at first, miles away from everything she knew, angry at the world, but Pietro - her husband - had been nothing like any man she had known before. And one morning she had realized that she loved him, and he loved her. On that day her life had begun anew, and she had left her past behind.
That meant she had seen little of Bianca over the past six years. She knew that the first husband that Bianca had been promised to - a charmingly boyish theurge from Turin - had died before they could be wed, and since then attempts to marry her had stalled. She suspected Bianca was not overly keen on the idea of marriage, and even less keen on leaving Venice for some wilderness where she could cling to nothing she knew. That had made it even more difficult to find an appropriate mate.
That a mate had to be found was not something that Katerina had ever particularly questioned. It was the traditional way. The old, pure lines grew a little smaller every year. Eagar young cliath charged into battle, seeking glory and finding only death, before they had ever known the comfort of a lover's touch, or been able to bring forth heirs and successors. And so bloodlines which had lasted a thousand years died out, and their stories were forgotten.
Therefore, those that could mate, did their duty to their blood as soon as they could. In an uncertain world, you had to. It was just the way it was. And furthermore, you were expected to not just do your duty, but to act in a manner which upheld the family honour and reputation as a mate to whosoever your family chose for you. Because in the world of the Italian Silver Fangs, in a land where the greatest families still told tales of the battles of the Senate, where the Fangs fought the leeches that subverted the Republic and brought about the decadent Empire, these things mattered.
Katerina sighed, her thoughts dragged inexorably onwards. If honour and reputation mattered, then what did Bianca's public betrayal and humiliation of her husband and family mean?
In the short term, Katerina's stepmother had already forfeited her Elder challenge. How would one inspire honour and loyalty in the lesser ranks of the Nation if one could not inspire it in one's own daughter. Katerina suspected she would also be unwise to attempt a rank challenge in the near future.
In general, those hardest hit would be the four kinfolk girls of marriagable age who were attached to the Sept of the Golden Lagoon. Katgerina remembered that one of them, a pretty nineteen year old, had recently become engaged. She and her fiance seemed very much in love, and it was an arranged marriage in name only. His family were known to be arch-conservatives and even if the Bianca situation was resolved, Katerina doubted that the engagement would survive. The boys would suffer too, but not in quite the same way as Carissa, or Elena, or May, or Lori.
The whole Sept would suffer when it came to dealing with other Septs. The cliath and fostern would be mocked. The adren, athro and Elders would be treated with cool courtesy. And Katerina's own Sept, high in the north, would be viewed with some pity that their Sept Alpha's only son and heir should be married to the sister of such a treacherous whore as Bianca would be seen as.
Further into the future, if the situation were not resolved, it would affect Marcella...
Katerina felt her heart seize up. She loved Marcella. She loved her daughter more than anything and the the thought of her precious child being tainted, cast out of her own tribe for reasons which were not her fault...
Katerina forced air back into her lungs.
Why had Bianca done this? What could possibly have compelled her to do this to her family, to everyone she knew? What had happened to her? And how on earth could this be resolved?
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I meant the story was that well written it left me practically speechless! I've not had a piece of RP stuff get into my head quite so much as the way Shadow has, and this story really shows just how much thought and effort you put into your venue's storyline.
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Whispers by the firelight
Hey, wasn't one of the signs of the Apocalypse a child with a Metis parent?
Setting aside the BSD brain...
Silver Fang Brain engaged
I'd be expecting two levels of response from the Fangs - the public one where they will demand her return and she will go all Juliet on them "but i looooove him" - and the private one where the House Seneschal will despatch sneaky Fangs to make the problem vanish, she might find herself blackmailed or coerced into publically admitting that Shadow forced and violated her (think what JTD was prepared to do to clean up the Winters' Sorrow problem - kill the corax, potentially mind control Lara).
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
Though the only way to recover family dignity is to show that she didn't want to go with him, and that he kidnapped her. Geas and Headgames should sort her right out.
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
Silver Fang seneschals are like Shadow Lords, but better looking.
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
Re: Silver Fang Brain engaged
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Makes rape cases really painful to read...
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